FACILITATOR MANIFESTO

Why do I do this?
Includes my Safeguarding, Child Protection, Diversity and Inclusion Policies

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I BELIEVE

  • all children,  young people – and all human beings – have a voice and a right to be heard

  • writing for wellbeing can be gardening, as well as weeding

  • writing should make language once again peculiar and special, helping us treasure the magic of language (and it is magic)

  • writing should value the skewed angle and the unexpected narrator

 

TO FULFIL THESE BELIEFS, I WILL:

SAFEGUARD

Always take steps to safeguard the physical and emotional wellbeing of all young people (and all people involved in our activities)

STAY UP TO DATE

Keep an up-to-date DBS certificate with Update Service to facilitate more efficient background checking on projects or placements

FAMILIARISE MYSELF WITH POLICIES

Familiarise myself with a school or establishment’s own Safeguarding and Child Protection Policies, where they exist.

BE AWARE

Be aware of the signs of physical, emotional, sexual abuse, and neglect – (in both children and adults) and report all concerns or disclosures to the appropriate person (LADO or member of staff, depending on context) in a timely manner.

POETIC MANIFESTO

What am I up to in my writing?

MY POEMS

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  • are sites of serious play, worlds where funhouse mirrors are held up and not always flattering (including to myself)

  • are engaging, humorous and furious

  • are an invitation to puzzlement, to moments where the mundame flips over and we see the mud under lawns

  • strive towards a queer ecopoetics which divests of purity narratives, inviting a critical, somatic, sensuous re-engagement with environmental and social justice

  • embrace decoration, as peacock spiders embrace it in their dances, as lyre birds do in their elaborate abodes

  • are amphibious and evolving, spiny and scaly, fossil and future

  • remake being a 'man', knowing they will fail

  • love men tenderly in our remaking

  • edge towards as silhouettes

  • become experiments in language and what I am brave enough to use it for

  • weaponise camp, clowning and foolishness.