As part of Staffordshire St's Festival of Community 2024 we invite you to a collective trip to Glengall Wharf Sauna. 

After cooling down, join us for a consciousness-raising workshop at Staffordshire St where we reflect on the collective experience of being in the sauna with strangers and interrogate some of the ways life under contemporary capitalism prevents us from freely engaging in relaxation.


For this two-part event, we want to explore the role of water, heat and relaxation in building collective freedom and solidarity through visiting the Glengall Wharf Garden x Community Sauna CIC pop-up.

As a group we will engage in an 1-hour sauna session that will involve both quiet and meditative time, as well as a chance to chat and form connections as a group. If you have never been to a sauna before, we would highly encourage you to come and experience it yourself.

We will then all walk together to Staffordshire St (15 minutes) where we will delve deeper into the experience with an 1-hour long consciousness-raising session. We will first speak of the history and context for Consciousness Raising, and the rules of the space rooted in generosity and respect towards everyone's contributions. The facilitators will then ask a series of generative questions, with each person taking it in turns to respond in however way they wish.

Consciousness raising has a deep political history, particularly in second-wave feminist movements as a way to build commonalities and solidarity amongst women and strengthen political groups. As a group of facilitators we are interested in re-igniting this practice to explore the intersection of the body, our individual experience and forging solidarities with strangers. In reflecting together on the experience of the sauna, as well as exploring other themes of freedom, relaxation and space we hope to experiment in the body’s role in building collective consciousness.

Info:

Wednesday 31st July
17.45 - 21.00

Schedule:

17.45: Please meet promptly at this time. We will meet at the front of the sauna as a group and introduce the workshop.
18.00 - 19.00: Sauna session
19.15 - 19.30: Walk to Staffordshire St
19.45 - 21.00: Consciousness-Raising Session (+ soft drinks and snacks)

Tickets:

Each waged ticket is £6. 

You can book a maximum of 2 tickets. We do this so that we can ensure the group has lots of new people that don’t know each other, and is a chance to build new connections.

We have a number of free tickets available and want to ensure that cost is not a barrier to accessing this workshop. If you are unwaged, please email (no questions asked) info@staffordshirest.com to request one of these tickets, which will be on a first come first serve basis.

To get the most out of this workshop, we ask that you attend both the sauna session and the consciousness-raising workshop. The workshop has very limited space so if you can no longer come, please email us as soon as possible so we can give the ticket to someone else.

Things to bring:

• 2 x Towels (one for drying yourself, one for sitting on in the sauna)
• Swimsuit/shorts (whatever you feel most comfortable in)
• Pair of flip flops/sandals to walk around
• Bottle of water (it’s very important to stay hydrated!)
• There is a shower on site and changing facilities.

Information on collaborators:

Previously working together at The World Transformed, a political education project and festival, Sarah, Charlie and Connor are united in their love of saunas and are interested in the recent surge in use, and the new co-ops and community-run saunas popping up across the UK. Together they were part of the team producing TWTFM, a magazine-style political education and culture podcast, and wrote an episode about Bathhouses that you can listen to here.

They each have extensive experience running workshops, political education events, consciousness raising sessions, podcast production and writing and are interested in consciousness-raising as a method of deep personal and collective enquiry to the conditions in which we live.

Important information:

Before booking, please read the Glengall Wharf Sauna etiquette guide. 

For accessibility information for the sauna, see here. Please note the sauna is not wheelchair accessible.

If you have any health/or mobility issues that might impact you from traveling from the sauna to Staffordshire St (15 minute walk), please let us know and we can arrange alternative travel for you.

About the Festival of Community 2024: 

Staffordshire St presents our annual Festival of Community. The collaborative programme of workshops, events and fiestas will celebrate our neighbourhood and the communities that fill its streets.

This year Pipe Dreams, a collaborative project conjured by Jimi and Madeleine Famurewa, will form the centrepiece of the Festival - prepare to be transported to the half-remembered fantasia of a London orbital waterpark in the mid-1990s.

Exploring notions of community, place and belonging,  over the summer Staffordshire St will become a locus for playful creativity and celebratory knowledge sharing.

Accessibility: There is step-free access to the gallery via the door to the left hand side of the main entrance. There is a wheelchair accessible toilet. The event will be taking place in the exhibition space, which is a large open room with bright lighting and some seating available.

Staffordshire St is an independent project space in Peckham, South East London. The venue facilitates arts and cultural events and provides affordable studios for artists, makers and designers. ​

Staffordshire St is not-for-profit and all income is invested into developing our public programme which launched the summer of 2022. The venue was established as an art gallery in 2017, before then it was vacant for many years after a community centre closed. Originally it was built as a Methodist Hall. We intend to support a range of cultural events for the local community.

Staffordshire St will build on the established record of these histories, opening up again to the neighbourhood and developing a welcoming interdisciplinary arts space. More information on upcoming events at : info@staffordshirest.com or @staffordshirest

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