Call for Workshops!

Asia Pacific Feminist Forum 2024
Feminist World-Building: Creative Energies, Collective Journeys


12-14th September, 2024 – The Empress Hotel, Chiang Mai, Thailand
Workshop Proposal Form: Here
Deadline: 22nd April, 2024

 

The Asia Pacific Feminist Forum (APFF) invites feminists and women’s rights activists from all across Asia and the Pacific region to submit their workshop proposals for the 4th Asia Pacific Feminist Forum, 12-14th September, 2024, taking place at The Empress Hotel, Chiang Mai.

 

Under the theme of Feminist World-Building: Creative Energies, Collective Journeys, the 4th APFF will be a space for Asia Pacific feminist movements to dream, build and lead critical pathways to a  new feminist world. The Forum will run across three days, moving and weaving through these guiding questions:

  • Day 1: Where We Are
  • Day 2: Where We Want To Be
  • Day 3: How We Get There

To learn more about the APFF, please see the concept note here.

 

Workshop Objectives

Workshops will run throughout the three days of the Forum and are required to contribute to the following objectives:

  • To engage in a cross-regional, cross-issue, cross-movement, and cross-generational sharing of skills, strategies for advocacy, and best practices in our movements.
  • To reflect on the systemic oppressions we face, trace the roots of our most difficult and persistent struggles, identify the new forms of our oppressors, and overcome our internal fractures.
  • To reinvigorate our solidarities and alliances across movements and generations, and catalyse greater feminist movement-building among our local, national, regional, and global allies. 
  • To build a new roadmap and commitment to our feminist world that celebrates and supports us all as equal people on a shared planet. 

Workshop Criteria

  1. Workshops must follow participatory methodologies with interactive discussions and activities to fully engage participants. We encourage applicants to be innovative in their workshop design by utilising art, music, poetry, theatre, audio-visual methods, etc. in their methodologies.
  2. Workshops must be focused on a minimum of one sub-theme. Workshops which are focused on multiple sub-themes will also be considered in recognition of the intersectionality of our struggles and issues. 
  3. Workshops should consider physical and cognitive accessibility requirements of participants. We encourage proposals which are inclusive in design and methodology.
  4. Workshops should endeavour to minimise environmental impact and incorporate a feminist ethics of care for people and for our surroundings. We encourage proposals which reflect on the creation of spaces, inclusion and diversity of identities in spaces, and ensuring gentleness and harmony with the Earth and its resources. 

Workshop Sub-Themes

The APFF is a diverse space of feminist imagining, and workshops can be submitted against the following sub-themes. Please note that this is not an exhaustive list; if you see a sub-theme where your workshop proposal fits but the topic of your proposal is not mentioned in the description, you can still submit your workshop proposal. 

  1. Feminists Against Globalisation: One of the biggest threats feminists are fighting across our regions are economic policies that underpin privatisation, deregulation of labour, unjust economic pacts and coalitions, and create enabling environments for foreign investment at the expense of local communities, particularly women and marginalised groups. This workshop sub-theme explores processes of globalisation and neo-liberalism in our current contexts, the different ways it impacts us and the resistance of our movements. 
  2. Feminist Frontiers- Resisting Hegemony and Militarism: Geo-political conflicts in Asia and the Pacific have continued to rise, and not just in isolation; authoritarian regimes collude with neo-liberal corporations and military forces to maintain the power of the ruling elite. This continuous power play for economic, political, and military supremacy has a multifarious impact on the lives of the most marginalised communities in the region. Our greatest hope for peace and justice lies in the resistance of WHRDs, feminists, and grassroots activists. This workshop sub-theme will focus on a feminist response to militarism, and build a collective feminist analysis that can act as a roadmap for our interventions.
  3. Feminist Spotlight on Deepening Shadows: In the past few years, we have witnessed a global  backlash against human rights and feminist movements, rapidly increasing militarism and authoritarianism as the handmaidens of patriarchy, and a rollback of hard-won victories that have resulted in shrinking of spaces, free speech, and freedom of expression. We have also seen alarming new trends in the form of anti-rights and anti-gender movements, and the global funding flows that prop up anti-rights actors in our countries and regions. This sub-theme will create space and dialogue on new and emerging threats to our movements, and identify the key work we must do to build a feminist world. 
  4. No One Has Become Poor By Sharing: As global politics and neoliberal economies shape and impact our realities, our movements envision and work towards alternative models of development that prioritise economic and redistributive justice. We see this in action when feminists innovate new modalities of resource mobilisation ranging from local funding to community-based crowd-sourcing. Under this sub-theme, we explore feminist visions of the global political economy, including alternative economic models and feminist resourcing of our movements.
  5. Feminists Fighting Back! Feminist strategies for advocacy and organising are diverse in issues and methodologies, from occupying Western-dominated global policy spaces, to utilising international policy mechanisms and holding our states and our regions accountable against international commitments; to building regional networks and solidarities that bridge man-made borders, to feminist litigation and legal strategies. This category is focused on workshops which strengthen our movements through collective advocacy and different modalities of feminist organising.  
  6. There is No Plan(et) B: The climate crisis only worsens by the day, and our resistance grows fiercer; feminists and activists are fighting on the frontlines for climate justice, food sovereignty, equitable access and people’s control over resources, challenging narratives of false solutions, and claiming loss and damages. This sub-theme is for workshops which address the issues and strategies used by our movements and organisations in fighting for the planet.
  7. Nothing About Us, Without Us: While we are demanding accountability from powerful people and institutions, we must also hold space for our own movements to cultivate a culture of accountability, one which enables us to examine how we succeed- or fail- in including the most marginalised voices in our resistance and advocacy. This includes our indigenous, LGBTQIA+, disabled, and caste-oppressed communities. This workshop sub-theme is all about building a culture of accountability within and beyond our movements.
  8. Nurturing Our Movements, Nurturing Ourselves: Feminist wellness at the APFF positions our movements and collectives as the site of building a feminist ethics of care, because by focusing on the well-being of our movements, we are able to ensure the well-being of every individual within our movement. Whether it is focused on spiritual and cultural practices, or bringing feminist practices into the workplace, this workshop sub-theme is all about sustaining our movements on a journey of feminist world-building.
  9. Making the Revolution Irresistible: Our feminist bag of tricks is anything but predictable; feminist work and activism have always utilised art, media and journalism, music, theatre, poetry, and literature as a means of resistance. This sub-theme is for workshops which teach creative methods of feminist work and share ways of incorporating it in our activism, as well as strategising around the challenges which feminists, women’s rights activists, and WHRDs face as artists, creatives, and media practitioners using their craft as part of their resistance. 
  10. Feminist Skill-Building: The feminist toolbox has always been bottomless, with skills ranging from Do-It-Yourself (DIY) projects like feminist ‘zines or creating a podcast or web-series; to building communication skills, developing or launching a social media campaign, or learning to write funding proposals; to developing crowd-sourcing initiatives, building solidarity in a grassroots movement, or organising a local protest. This sub-theme is for workshops which aim to build or enhance different skill-sets for feminist knowledge-building, advocacy and organising..
  11. Feminist Ways of Knowing & Being: In all our work and movements, feminists are doing the labour of preserving the knowledge, traditions, and political herstories of our movements, many of which have been culturally preserved by generations of women, transgender, and non-binary folks. This ranges from feminist archiving and documentation; inter-generational feminist political education; representing indigenous voices within our national narratives; preserving oral traditions of knowledge and storytelling; and honouring cultural rituals such as collective grieving. This sub-theme is for workshops which explore, honour, or inform the ways our movements build and sustain feminist knowledge and ways of being. 
  12. Feminist Art and Performance: This category is for performances ranging from music, poetry, theatre, dance, to art installations, interactive exhibits, and games. Interactive exhibits and art installations can be for a specific day of the APFF, or for all three days. 

 

To apply: Submit your proposal via the workshop proposal form. All applicants will be notified of the outcome of their workshop proposal by June. For any difficulties or accessibility requirements, please email ghausia@apwld.org or rose@apwld.org. 

Deadline for applications is 22nd April, 2024.