Launching the Movement Learning Catalyst: A Year+ Programme

How can we challenge and overthrow the many interconnected kinds of oppression we face today? How can we bring our different movements together, across race, class, gender and other divides, beyond borders to grow the power we need to make a different world? How can we develop the strategies we need not just to make a splash but to actually win?

We’re living at a historical point of disruption which contains both great peril and promise. The stalled engine of neoliberal growth, bankrupted political leadership, an increasing sense of distributive injustice, intensifying racist and patriarchal violence and the fierce urgency of the ‘ecological now’ delimit the terrain upon which we need to contest our future. Against a backdrop of a rising far right, big data, and the ongoing consolidation of unaccountable power by elite groups, we have a lot to do to really be in this fight.

With the Movement Learning Catalyst programme, we aim to nurture the interconnected movements and responsive strategies needed to challenge the interlocking systems of oppression we face today.

With the Movement Learning Catalyst programme, we aim to nurture the interconnected movements and the needed strategies to challenge the systems of oppression we face today. It combines high quality training, an action learning framework, as well as cross organisational and movement networking.

In late 2021, we engaged activists involved with more than 100 organisations across Europe, to ask them about the key challenges their movements and organisations were facing. Most pointed to fragmentation, persistent divisions within and between movements, and a lack of movement capacity for longer-term and coherent strategy.

We took this on board to develop a training programme to help overcome these challenges and to equip ourselves to develop movement responses that are transversal and transnational in nature, able to connect across issues, communities, and socio-political cultures – supporting the building of the kinds of majority social movement alliances required to achieve the depth of structural transformation we need today.

The first year of the programme will support a cohort of 40-60 activists from across Europe in a mixture of online and residential trainings to:

• Embed structured action-reflection learning within their movement building practice, by providing a well-crafted framework for ongoing action learning, mentorship, and peer-to-peer inquiry
• Access high quality training on key themes and issues related to movement building and transversal and transnational organising
• Enhance capacity for the development of long-term strategic projects capable of adaptation and responsiveness
• Leverage the kind of relationship building that happens within a learning space to foster networks of relationships across organisations and movements able to seed new transversal and transnational initiatives

We’ll inquire deeply into how our organisations and networks relate to the wider ecology of activism within our movements – and how these movements relate to wider struggles in the ever changing cultural, socio-political and ecological context. Participants will engage in deep analysis of their own movement practice and movement ecology. They will have opportunities to explore and develop skills and understanding related to bridge building within and between movements and give attention to the opportunities and challenges of transnational movement building.

The programme is more than a training. It is designed as a transversal movement project – connecting different struggles and communities across barriers of gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, social class, dis/ability and others. The course places action-learning, deep ongoing reflection, and building solidarity-based relationships at its core.

The programme is more than a training. It is designed as a transversal movement project – connecting different struggles and communities across barriers of gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, social class, dis/ability and others. The course places action-learning, deep ongoing reflection, and building solidarity-based relationships at its core.

In addition to exploring key themes related to transversal and transnational movement building, the programme aims to model these practices and provide a well designed framework for ongoing action-learning and relationship building. While we can learn a lot from what has gone before and what others are doing in diverse contexts, critical reflective learning is key to translating experience across different contexts and for developing the responsiveness needed to develop effective strategies amidst the complexity of social change processes. The programme is designed to strengthen our capacity to embed learning across our different movements’ practices, so we can continue to learn from experience, design creative and testable interventions, and build strategic approaches that can respond to the ever-changing conditions we struggle within.

Who is it for?

The programme is aimed at activists, artists, organisers, and trainers based in Europe who have substantial personal history of social movement engagement, are embedded in organisations, recognise the importance of developing our capabilities to organise transversally, across multiple forms of difference within and between our movements, are conscious of the translocal and transnational dimensions of organising today, and are responsive to people’s needs and interests.

Whether the movements you are involved in focus on workers, feminism and gender, migration, anti-racism, anti-imperialism and decolonialism, ecology, culture and arts, housing or the many other parts of the ecology of social movements across Europe, you are welcome to join the program.

We will select participants to bring together a range of people from diverse movements and contexts across Europe to share and learn from each other. Where possible, we encourage participants to take part in pairs or small groups from the same organisation or network, so as to create learning partnerships that can support action learning and implementation.

How does it work?

This programme will be designed with you and tailored to your context and needs

Recognising that activists and organisers face a wide range of challenges, have different access to resources, and diverse demands on time and energy, we are designing this programme to be adaptable to these different contexts and to support accessibility. We will offer multiple components and resources, which can be tailored to support optimal levels of participation and value for those involved.

During the initial stage of the programme, we’ll engage with you in a close process of understanding your context and specific needs. From this we will combine elements of the programme into a number of differentiated pathways, designed to support cohorts of participants to follow different routes through the programme in ways that best suit their capacity and needs.

How can you get in touch?

If you are interested in being part of the programme and in the process, please contact us at info@euroalter.com.