This is the third and final year of the BME project funded until the end of June 2025 by The Robertson Trust. The facilitators Gillian and Edwina have continued to run workshops this Autumn in Glasgow and Edinburgh with plans to revisit Aberdeen and offer a course in Dumfries.
It is clear that these workshops are valued. Feedback shows that the workshops have provided a vital safe space for participants to share, often for the first time, their personal stories of attachment, power, and inequality in their families, cultures, and society. To know they are not alone, and to co-create hopeful ways forward.
Supporting participants to learn about and reflect on the complex interplay, for each of them, of different styles of attachment, developmental trauma (early years trauma) and trauma from racism has enabled light-bulb moments.
As well as the sharing of painful experiences and ‘connecting the dots’ there has been much laughter, relaxation, singing and a spot of dancing too! This fun alongside comfortable venues and good food has been and will continue to be really important.
We are delighted to have partnered with other organisations in workshops and would like to continue partnership working with these and other organisations – The Daisy Project and Unity Sisters. We facilitated a workshop with staff in West Dunbartonshire Council who are working with unaccompanied young asylum seekers and refugees.
A central focus of the BME project is, and always has been, sustainability and to that end we have recruited ten trainee facilitators who we are supporting to be able to facilitate training on Attachment, Racism and the Impact on Relationships.
Here is what one of the new facilitators had to say:
I was privileged to join an amazing group of women, who are training to facilitate the ‘Attachment, Racism and the Impact on Relationships’ course for SAIA, to learn, share experiences and have fun in Glasgow on 23rd August 2024.
The training atmospheric energy was positive and attractive. Every single person in the training was warm, welcoming, supportive and inspirational. The content and training style was healing, participatory and inclusive. Both trainers, Gillian Neish and Edwina Grant have fabulous disposition accompany with invaluable knowledge and experiences.
If you would like further information about this project please contact:
Gillian Neish – neishtraining@mac.com
Edwina Grant – edwinagrant@talktalk.net
