Justice In Therapy: A Day on Whiteness and Solidarity

Whiteness is present in counselling and psychotherapy, and in the wider psy-disciplines and helping professions, emerging both systemically and interpersonally within the therapy room, professional training, and across the institutions that shape practice. By design, whiteness is often left unnamed and unexamined leading to ongoing harm and violence.

Our 6^th Justice In Therapy conference, building on the themes that have emerged from our previous conferences, our report, and our ongoing work with marginalised communities, offers a space to explore how whiteness operates within our professions, relationships and organisations. We will consider how whiteness can be recognised, understood and subverted, and what meaningful white solidarity might require in practice.

Through workshops, talks and facilitated spaces to move, reflect, feel and be in community, the day will invite both personal and collective engagement. This is an opportunity to think honestly about power, responsibility and solidarity as living enquiries that affect how we train, practise, relate and organise towards justice for ourselves, those we support and the wider profession.

Who is the day for?

This conference is for counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists and those working across the wider helping professions. Trainees are warmly welcome, as are those without formal therapeutic training or qualifications who are interested in engaging with these themes.

Our sessions include: 

• Confronting Complicity in Psychotherapy: Lessons from Palestine - Talha AlAli
• Beyond Good Intentions: Deconstructing Whiteness and Practising Solidarity as a Decolonial Act in Psychotherapy Training - Victoria Baskerville
• Rehearsing Solidarity: Poetry as Witness and a Language for Refusal - Tolu Agbelusi 
• Journeying Through The Labyrinth for Embodied Liberation - Loki Grey
• Nodal Networks: Building Networks of Solidarity - Phil Nowell 
• On Critical Reparations - Kim Loliya
• Confronting Complicity in Practice: Awareness, Accountability and Action - Dr Frances Bassett 
• Multiracial Identity and Proximity to Whiteness: Exploring Racial Multiplicity and Complexity - Namalee Bolle and Jamila Andersson
• Navigating Whiteness as Embryological Socio-somatic Praxis - Emmalou

Our Pricing

The pricing for our day is significantly under market rate to support as many people as possible to join the event. Our ticket bands are priced intentionally in line with economic justice, solidarity and reparations. If you are unfamiliar with these terms, please research them before attending, as they are integral to the justice work that we are engaged with. We have also included lower-cost tickets for both Global Majority and white student practitioners as an acknowledgement of the financial cost of training. If you would like guidance on whether to pay for a standard ticket or solidarity pricing, please refer to the Green Bottle Method. Please note we do not offer refunds/exchanges due to the labour involved with organising this kind of event.

Access and practical information

The event takes place on the ground floor of Pan Intercultural Arts Centre and the venue is wheelchair accessible. Kitchen facilities are available, including a microwave and a fridge. A quiet room will be available throughout the event along with masks, hand sanitiser, and sensory toys. 

About Black Psychotherapy

Black Psychotherapy is a Black and Global Majority counselling, psychotherapy and training organisation committed to transforming mental health through justice, community and collective care. We provide culturally-attuned therapy, supervision, training and organisational consultancy grounded in decolonial, anti-oppressive and intersectional practice. Our work recognises that emotional wellbeing cannot be separated from the social, political and historical conditions that shape our lives. Alongside our clinical services, we develop learning spaces that invite practitioners, organisations and communities to rethink dominant approaches to mental health, incorporating African-Centred and Global Majority ways of knowing and being to support collective mental health and wellbeing.

We look forward to sharing space and building power with you! 

Black Psychotherapy Team

“I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.”
― Audre Lorde