how to mitigate segregation: an unanswered question

On 27 Apr 2019, at 18:46, Eric Kaufmann <e.kaufmann@bbk.ac.uk> wrote:

Dear Emma,
Thanks for your enquiry. I really think this is an unanswered question. We have no real body of successful case studies or data for integration policy that gets beyond small-scale settings (ie classrooms). And I don’t think those small-scale studies - which have also been questioned - really get us to any policies for countries or even cities. Attempts at top-down social engineering have often done more harm than good.
Jeffrey Alexander (2013 in Ethnic and Racial Studies) says somethings similar. Sorry not to get beyond this. I did try and get government funding to run some experiments at ‘nudging’ integration, but haven’t got funding.
Best
Eric

Department of PoliticsBirkbeck CollegeUniversity of LondonWC1E 7HX
twitter: @epkaufm  (https://twitter.com/epkaufm)web: www.sneps.netuniversity staff page: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/politics/our-staff/academic/eric-kaufmann

On 27 Apr 2019, at 11:32, humanKINDER <emma@humankinder.uk> wrote:

Dear Eric,
I have just read a very useful article by you on Integration Hub from 05.09.16 regarding the Casey Report, link here http://www.integrationhub.net/majority-avoidance-one-of-the-few-holes-in-caseys-strong-report/.

My current work is about using food as a catalyst to amplify silenced voices, in effect as a tool for integration. I have just completed a year’s field work around Europe cooking with displaced and refugee communities and I am now writing a book. As a trawl though notes from the last couple of years it was this sentence which stood out, and which I’m hoping you may be able to shed further light on: "there is very little grasp in the academic literature of what can be done in free societies to mitigate segregation..."

I find your analysis about housing very useful, but if you were able to point me in the direction of further cases or resources in academic literature that you have found, or indeed where the gaps are, that would be very much appreciated.
Thanks and Kind Regards,
Emma 

humanKINDER logo or vision?

It seems a while ago now that I first sketched out this idea. I initially thought I was creating a logo, after many years working alongside some great service designers, but… as time has come to pass I’ve realised that actually what I wanted to share – and celebrate through imagery - was not a logo, but a vision. A vision is not designed, rather it emerges over time, in my case by listening to others and through personal experience and reflection.

So what is the story behind this vision?

In 2014, while still working in government, I attended a Mental Health Conference as a ‘Professional’. It was at this event there was a performance by an incredible young singer Natalie who had faced and was overcoming her own challenges by finding her voice - her own expression of self - in a way that was breathtaking.

There are a few things that clicked into place that day. Once you start meeting and understanding how people – myself included – have learned to live through traumatic conditions, accidents or illnesses which affect how their brain works day-to-day; how we think, see, feel and experience with heightened perception, a new world opens.  

On that day I walked out the building and took a quick snapshot of a bird flying overhead. But when I looked at the photo it was not a single bird, it was the bird and its shadow. The camera had caught something that in our ‘reality’ arguably was not possible, yet in my mind, the image of this bird and its shadow stayed absolutely stuck in my head.

Over the coming weeks it brought to the fore all of the other images of birds that I’d been seeing in the art and stories of freedom, from incredible people who I’d met over the years who’d defiantly chosen to LIVE despite the challenges and struggles they faced daily.

People who have found freedom in their own minds, expressed through their art, by believing in their own and others’ imagination and potential. At that time, this resonated personally with my own need to rid myself of the invisible boulders I was carrying on my weary back, day in, day out from a yet-to-be-diagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after the birth of my son. It was this yearning for freedom – a freedom of spirit – that inspired the humanKINDER vision.

I knew this moment was important, but not yet certain how, or what form that it would take.

In the following months I talked to friends and played around with the image. My friend Joshi told me about a friend of hers who was also drawing birds. And this was how the early conceptual idea was shared with the hugely talented This Lakshmi who transformed the image into a beautiful, strong and timeless vision of freedom that inspires everyday.

Emma Barrett Palmer, Founder