This is a 10 minute documentary that highlights the key moments and insights from the 2013 Johannesburg conference “Building a global citizens movement”. This conference co-organised by CONCORD, CIVICUS and GCAP aimed to start building a Global Citizens Movement, building partnerships between NG(D)Os and other CSOs, initiatives and movements. Together with the "Johannesburg Compass: questions and orientations" text it represents the most important direct documentation of this event.
The Johannesburg conference is generally considered as the single most transformative event of the DEEEP4 project. The event, which was highly influenced by the opening speech from Bayo Akomolafe, set the project team and the participants on a journey toward re-examining established practices of (mutual) engagement, theories of change and normalized assumptions about “problems” and “solutions”.
It is difficult to capture (even on video) how different from the “business as usual” this event was, especially in its ambition to “de-colonize the hearts and minds” of those involved, but the documentary still provides relevant insight for those seeking to better understand the challenges involved in such a task.
While the process of “Building a global citizens movement” disintegrated with the end of the DEEEP4 project, its lessons (particularly of its ambitions and inevitable shortcomings), are of value to anyone interested in building partnerships between participants from very different backgrounds and to those interested exploring topics of complicity (in systemic harm), paradigm shifts, translations across different communities and engagements with difficult/uncomfortable knowledge.
While watching these videos it is important to observe to what extent do positions of the various participants challenge and/or affirm the “status quo” – that is the existing hegemonic structures of power, understandings of what kind of change is required, and ways on how to achieve it.
- Documentary from the “Building global citizens movement” Conference in Johannesburg in November 2013
- This event was followed-up by a similar conference in Johannesburg in November 2014 and participation of the members of the movement in the World Social Forum in Tunis 2015.
- An interview with some of the participants is available here. Interviews with individual participants of this series of events are available on DEEEP Youtube channel.