Last month saw the anniversary of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, who was killed in a racially motivated attack in Eltham by a group of […]
Image Download Vesak – 05.05.23 Image credit: Photo by Cloud Walker on UnsplashVesak, is also known as Buddha Jayanti, Buddha Purnima, and Buddha Day. The […]
PILAA Research Associate (Consultant) Vacancy – Disability, accessibility neurodiversity and mental health
We are looking for PILAA personalities to become part of our growing family of PILAA Research Associates. Are you an expert or have relevant experience in Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion themes, but specifically on disability, accessibility neurodiversity and mental health and well-being.
Do you have what it takes to educate and inspire others in a fun and creative way, utilising PILAA’s key values which embody FOCUS (Fun, Open-mindedness, Creativity, understanding, Sincerity)?
If you want to make a difference to people’s and businesses lives, through action and learning and if you think you have what it takes to become a PILAA personality, we would love to hear from you.
Key Responsibilities
Key Person Specifications
Salary – Consultancy day rates and training rates apply
How to apply
If interested please send a CV, along with a 500-word statement or thereabouts (by text, audio, video, or any other alternative way) on why you want to be a PILAA personality, addressing the points mentioned in the job vacancy.
Send to info@pilaa.co.uk
In email subject heading add: PILAA Research Associate Vacancy – Disability, Mental Health, Neurodiversity, Well Being
Deadline – Open until Tuesday 5pm on the 9th of May 2023.
We welcome anyone to apply, from all walks of life, from all backgrounds as long as you want to make a difference. Our roles are open to all!
PILAA Research Associate (Consultant) Vacancy
We are looking for PILAA personalities to become part of our growing family of PILAA Research Associates. Are you an expert or have relevant experience in Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion themes, whether that’s on race, gender and sex, disability, neurodiversity, age, class, the psychology of human behaviour, facilitating difficult dialogues, inclusive leadership, policy and advocacy or any other topic not mentioned above or typically not talked about?
Do you have what it takes to educate and inspire others in a fun and creative way, utilising PILAA’s key values which embody FOCUS (Fun, Open-mindedness, Creativity, understanding, Sincerity)?
If you want to make a difference to people’s and businesses lives, through action and learning and if you think you have what it takes to become a PILAA personality, we would love to hear from you.
Key Responsibilities
Key Person Specifications
Salary – Consultancy day rates and training rates apply
How to apply
If interested please send a CV, along with a 500-word statement or thereabouts (by text, audio, video, or any other alternative way) on why you want to be a PILAA personality, addressing the points mentioned in the job vacancy.
Send to info@pilaa.co.uk
In email subject heading add: PILAA Research Associate Vacancy – Open
Deadline – Open until Tuesday 5pm on the 9th of May 2023.
We welcome anyone to apply, from all walks of life, from all backgrounds as long as you want to make a difference. Our roles are open to all!
Image Download Stress Awareness Month Image Download Stress is an unavoidable part of life that can manifest in different ways, both physically and mentally. It […]
“A basic truism in gerontology is that age per se is meaningless: it is always mediated through social processes and cultural attitudes.” (John Macnicol, 2006)
On March the 13th we witnessed the 95th Academy Awards, otherwise known as the Oscars, where history was made on multiple grounds. Stealing the spotlight were two of Hollywood’s greatest women, Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis, winning Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role and Best Actress in a Supporting Role, respectively, for the film Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022). In Yeoh’s speech as she collected her award, she goes to say:
“For all the little boys and girls, that look like me, watching tonight, this is a beacon of hope and possibilities. This is proof that dreams, dream big and dreams do come true. And ladies, don’t let anybody tell you, you are past your prime. Never give up.”
Her words were significant, for Yeoh had made history. History as the first East Asian actress, of Chinese-Malaysian heritage to win the award, bringing visibility to such minority communities on the grounds of racial difference. Simultaneously, and perhaps more pertinently, her speech also addressed, what sometimes is seen to be a hidden conversation, one which references age, and in this case, at the intersections with gender. This Oscars along with other key award ceremony’s this year, were dubbed “as the year that actresses in mid-life and beyond are finally getting their due.” (1) Along with Yeoh, we saw actresses like Angela Bassett and Jennifer Coolidge, all in their 60s being nominated, with statistics proving that women over 40 made up 4 out of 5 of the nominations for best Actress at the Oscars, and 5 out of 6 of the leading Actress and Supporting Actress nominations at the Bafta’s.
Moving away from the workings of gender, on the flip side of the social perceptions around age, on March the 28th, we saw Humza Yousaf being sworn in as the current First Minister of Scotland. Not only is he the first minister of South Asian heritage and who is Muslim, but who has also become the youngest person to take up post at the age of 37. It is worth noting here, that the First Ministers first role within the political landscape, came in 2006, when he worked as a parliamentary assistant for Bashir Ahmad, Scotland’s first Muslim MSP in 2007 until Ahmad’s death two years later. He also went on to be a parliamentary assistant for other MSPs, including Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, who 16 years later, he has now taken over from.
This article then, looks to the question of age, from both sides of the spectrum. It will look to why age is part of the Equality Act and how discrimination plays out, where for example someone perceives you to be older or younger than you are and treats you unfairly because of it. In any case, age should not be an issue when it comes to getting the right person to do the job, however we know that throwaway comments that you might often hear in the workplace, around age, such as “being over the hill”, “of a certain age”, “little old lady”, or “your young and naïve”, would suggest otherwise.
To read the full article, “Every Statement Needs a Platform: Guidance For When to Make a Statement”, you must be a PILAA Member.
Notes:
(1) White, T (2023) Women Over 60 Are Finally Winning Awards, But Is It Enough? ELLE online. Available at [https://www.elle.com/uk/life-and-culture/a42907939/awards-season-older-women-representation/]
(2) Macnicol, J., 2006. Age discrimination: An historical and contemporary analysis. Cambridge University Press.
“A basic truism in gerontology is that age per se is meaningless: it is always mediated through social processes and cultural attitudes.” (John Macnicol, 2006)On […]
Photo by Y K
On Saturday the 4th of February Stand Up to Racism an anti-racist mobilisation action group, alongside the Trades Union Congress (TUC), hosted the one-day Trade Union Conference, “Fighting for anti-racist workplaces”, at SOAS University. The conference took place against the current back drop of national strikes across multiple sectors that have gripped the nation, including those by Teachers, Ambulance workers, Nurses, Rail workers, university staff and at the end of this month, Junior Doctors.
The timing of this conference was therefore well placed. This reflective review has been written, with the hope of addressing the key themes, as they emerged throughout the day, and as we have understood them. The article is structured in a way, that addresses three broad themes, and then uses them to give tips as to how you can go about fighting for an anti-racist workplace or to tackle other forms of social injustices.
Four Screen, 2008
The first place we start, which may be a contentious point, is in reference to how the term Black was being used during the opening of the conference. Whilst it is important to address the experience of racism faced by black union members, the focus solely on this group, at a conference positioned as fighting for an anti-racism workplace, did two things. The first suggests that racism, was only experienced by and about black bodies and reinforces a black and white colour divide, with black people and those of African and Caribbean descent, at the eternal bottom of the rung, and other minority racialised groups, above in the hierarchy of race.
Focusing on black workers in itself would not have been problematic, if the conference stated that it was addressing anti-black racism. This term can be referenced, especially when taking into account the nuances of racism by different communities. However, under the present conference title and the way in which racism was referenced only in relation to black workers, by default, it omitted other racialised minority groups from the discussion. Indeed, it seemed slightly at odds, for two panellists in the opening plenary session, Kudsia Batool, the Chair of TUC Head of Equalities and Riz Hussein, a member of the TUC Anti Racist Taskforce, to speak about black workers, with no reference to their experience, as members of other minority racialised groups. In some ways, this harked back to the use of political blackness as an umbrella term ethnic minorities from both Black African and Caribbean descent and Asian communities in the 80s, used in solidarity to fight against racism.
Margaret Greer, the Unison National Equality Officer, then spoke about the challenges of achieving race equality, especially where support had fell short, even for members within the unions themselves. This was an interesting point made by Greer, in a speech that was reminiscent of the sentiment shared by anti-slavery and women’s rights campaigner, Sojourner Truth’s in “Ain’t I a Woman?” delivered at the 1851 Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio. Greer reminds us that unions are made for the workers and that if their needs were not being met, members had the right to hold the unions to account. Racism as we learnt, can seep through all aspects of the workplace, even inside the very support systems for workers, that unions have been built on.
Key advice 1:
1. Be clear on terminology. If the focus is on specific identity groups and the impact of racism, then state it as such. For example, “black anti-racism”, would be different to, ‘Asian anti-racism”, or from “indigenous anti-racism.”
2. Whilst it may be true that black people experience disproportionate levels of racism in certain contexts more than other minority groups, and there will be other times, when this will not be the case, you should also consider the impact of absorbing and being positioned at the bottom of the rung, or of others being sympathetic to one’s situation, as if outside such systems of oppression. We are reminded here, of two instances of liberational thinking. The first is from Reverend Jesse Jackson, the civil rights activist, when he said in 2013, that “you need to abandon your minority complex and adopt a majority complex.” The second is from what race educator, Dr Joy DeGruy describes as ‘post-traumatic slave syndrome’, and the challenge to undo the impact of the legacies of slavery, and its effect on the mental health and well-being of the African American subject, and White Americans too.
To read the full article, “Every Statement Needs a Platform: Guidance For When to Make a Statement”, you must be a PILAA Member.
We are pleased to announce that joining PILAA’s creative leg of the business, is the acclaimed British artist, Dawn Woolley. Woolley’s artistic practice encompasses performance, photography, video, and installation, blurring the boundary between self-portraiture and still-life. In Woolley’s practice, described as a feminist critique, she examines her experiences as a neoliberal subject in contemporary consumer culture and the processes of constructing ideal gendered bodies through a queer, feminist and anti-capitalist lens.
This began with an examination of naturalized gender performance and idealized representations of femininity in early works such as The Substitute (Holiday), 2007-8. In her still-life work, she attempts to describe the idealized, gendered, ageing body through commodities. She also creates public domain interventions in physical commercial advertising spaces in cities and in virtual ones, on online social networking sites.
Dawn is also a research fellow, with an active profile. She is the solo author of “Consuming the Body: Capitalism, Social Media and Commodification”, published in 2022 by Bloomsbury and other recent publications include: “The Quantified Self, The Ideology of Health and Fat”, in The Body Productive, London: Bloomsbury, 2023; and “The Dissecting Gaze: Fashioned Bodies on Social Networking Sites”, in Revisiting the Gaze: Feminism, Fashion and the Female Body, (London: Bloomsbury, 2020).
As part of the PILAA team, she will be lending her artistic craft to our EDI campaigns, making her the perfect PILAA Artist to work with on all projects and briefs dealing with gender, consumer culture, still life and self-portraiture.
Dawn Woolley, Wonderland, 2015, Blueback Print, 300cm x 600cm
Dawn Woolley, The Substitute (Holiday), 2007-8, C-type photograph, 100cm x 100cm
For members, look out for her work in your monthly EDI calendar and yearly subscription of images. For non-members or anyone looking to work with Dawn on your next EDI social justice campaign, or advertising ad, get in contact with us to see how we can help.
Image Download International Women’s Day (IWD) – 8th Image Download Wednesday the 8th of March, sees the annual celebration of International Women’s Day (IWD). Each […]
We are pleased to announce PILAA’s partnership with Corps Together, our new PILAA Friend.
Corps Together is an award-winning ED&I Initiative run for, and by, Colleagues & Guardians (a group of passionate individuals who have volunteered to champion EDI) at Corps Security, the Social Enterprise established in 1859 and specialist security service provider. As the only major Social Enterprise in the sector, they provide ‘security with social value.’
They are inspired by the voices of the colleagues, and more specifically, of the multitude of voices that are contained within their sites and teams nationally and internationally.
Working with them, we have already begun bringing together our strategy and objectives for 2023. We are very excited to further enhance the work already being done through Corps Together and the wider Corps Security organisation, as they continue to connect with their colleagues and celebrate the communities they serve, which is at the centre of everything they do!!!