Xenia turns 10
Exactly ten years ago today, 11th June was a Saturday.
It was 2016 and we were two weeks away from the Brexit vote. People had been using the phrase 'hostile environment for migrants' for a few years already. We thought things were getting pretty bad.
A lot of politicians were talking about the responsibility of people from migrant backgrounds to learn English and integrate without much consideration of the wider picture, and it led me down a big rabbit hole about all the particular barriers to accessing ESOL that women are faced with.
There was also a lot of focus on people recently arrived in the UK, but I was concerned about what that hostility was feeling for people who had been in the UK for years too, no matter how they had arrived or when (including previous generations).
That weekend in June also happened to be in the middle of the 2nd Antiuniversity Now festival, still one of the most inspiring weeks of my life (https://lnkd.in/ep9suPXA)
I proposed an experiment at the festival, with a simple plan - for women learning English and women who speak fluent English to participate in a workshop together, designed to get them connecting across language and cultural barriers and learning about each other. The stars aligned and the legend that is Emma Winch thought the event might work really well at Hackney Museum.
On Saturday 11th June 2016, we hosted our first Xenia workshop - 'xenia' being the Greek form of love between hosts and guests. The theme was Welcome, and the plan was to see if this simple format could work and build some community (with childcare provided, of course). There was a queue out the door, and at the end of those three hours full of laughter and languages, everyone asked when the next one would be.
We ran monthly workshops for a while, then fortnightly, and within a few months Xenia women met every Saturday. And it's been going for ten years.
There are women who've been coming since the beginning, and it's also rare to have a week without a new face. Xenia is no longer at Hackney Museum but now has two new homes in London, and one in Sheffield.
I'm no longer involved, but Xenia existing is probably the thing I'll be most proud of for the rest of my life. It is a completely non-hierarchal community of women, it is fully co-created, and it is the most hopeful thing you can imagine to be part of. It has changed more lives than just mine.
Happy 10th birthday Xenia - to the next decade of connecting, sharing and learning in the face of whatever is to come 🧡
https://lnkd.in/ebTrvnfr
