NFE Workshop: "take a Seat" Mapping Belonging Through Space, Rules, and power

Buğra Durmuş and Sueda Esen
Koç University

Abstract

Our workshop is designed with Non-Formal Education methods, which is a methodology that centers on human experiences, emotions, and peer-learning. It is to be understood as an approach to education that aims to destabilize the existing paradigms of hierarchy within the educational system and resorts to learning through sharing between equals. “Take a Seat” will be a minimum of 60 minutes long and will explore the spatial and communal aspects of belonging, all the while politicizing the procedure through immersing the participants in a theater-inspired, lively, and interactive simulation. This workshop will transform the concepts of space, movement, and scarcity into a lived model of how different institutions/individuals/groups regulate who is allowed to come inside, who is kept at the door, and who is pushed towards the margins. The participants will situate themselves in the system of four symbolic “islands” (Inside, At the Door, Outside, On the Margins), these being clusters of chairs situated within the space of the room. Each island is designed with fewer seats than the number of participants, as they will be asked to physically “take a seat” at the island that they belong to in everyday life. Through its successive rounds, the workshop will layer the system with structural constraints and institutional shifts, allowing participants to feel how structural constraints shape one’s ability to “take a seat” in public, professional, and political life. The simulation will be followed by an open-ended and structured discussion, connecting this experience with the participants’ personal, academic, and political realms. The closing discussion allows participants to observe the systems at work in real life. The existing injustices, symbolic & rigid boundaries, and the question of public visibility may all become more visible and easier to tackle after having experienced its impacts and debriefed the conditions altogether. The closing remarks will be on the question of what the world might be like without the structures of various forms of oppression. It is a question aimed at using imagination as a form of activism. Hence, we expect the participants to reflect on their own unique realities critically and start a process of change within themselves in small steps.

Presentation