“The best thing about being in an affinity group is that it creates a sense of community, support and understanding… and it creates a sense of security because you know that there are other people who go through similar things to you.”

C3 Member

How Affinity Groups started at Company Three

In 2020, when race was being talked about more than ever, our Black members were actually saying less in open spaces.

It’s not the first time we’ve had social media access to repeatedly watch these horrific moments, this time round felt different. Everyone was talking like they had just discovered that daily racism, systemic racism and white supremacy culture racism existed.

At this time, I - Nuna Sandy - was Associate Director and I noticed and overheard  conversations between small groups of our Black members, speaking about topics which they had only discussed on a surface level during our regular sessions. I sat with one group and they allowed me to join the conversation. They didn’t alter what they were saying or the way they were saying it. I asked them why they didn’t bring this up in the space and they said “It’s harder to talk about this stuff when not everyone is Black. They might not get it.”

It was at this point that I wanted to create a bigger, better space for Black members, held by Black staff, to have those unfiltered conversations, rants, musings, laughter and cries, and allow space for this to be creatively explored. It was evidently clear that they needed to talk in a place where everyone already knew what you meant and you didn’t have to caveat your story.

That’s how the first affinity group, Black Is Safe, started.

Black is Safe is rooted in joy and celebrating each other in a way Black young people can’t at school or in spaces aside from with their family and close trusted friends from the same community. We also acknowledged as a group that we can’t discuss the Black British teenage experience without discussing our pain, but that always brings us back to joy because we needed that more than ever then and now…

As the project grew, we took them to watch Talawa’s Run it Back, a play that was unapologetically Black and didn’t explain itself to anyone.  Although all was welcome, the play assumed you understood the culture, therefore you either got it or you didn’t. The responsibility to understand the cultural nuances and references was on the audience to do their own research.

It was after this that the group decided they wanted to make a play. “You can do that on stage? Talk like that, dance like that, tell stories like that? Ok, we’re down.”

The sessions then took a shift as the group felt more and more comfortable to express some of their own ideas and feelings publicly. It was exciting and refreshing to hear them share their stories and experience in such an authentic way in a drama workshop. We then conceived and created a new play, called #BlackIs…, which captured everything over the last 2 years.

How our next Affinity Groups were started

It was during the first year of Black is Safe that as a team we began to explore what other affinity groups the young people would benefit from. We have always been a young people led organisation, so we do our best to make sure that affinity groups either come from two ways: 

Directly - When our members ask for them.

Observation - If we’ve noticed recurring identity-based conversations and creative ideas being talked about, joked about and discussed during edgelands as we call them. The parts in between sessions- lunch time, train ride to theatre, residential. We then offer the opportunity of a group.

Over the next 6 months we created several more affinity groups.

We saw these groups benefitting from a space to speak through issues that arise connected to specific issues- toxic masculinity, girls group around social media, Islamaphobia, homophobia and self esteem. These spaces create safe environments for questioning, learning and unlearning in a non judgmental way.

What Affinity Groups are, and why they’re important

Affinity Groups are spaces to talk and explore parts of your identity with a creative outlet run by artists who share the same identity. This could be from the core team or we would bring in freelancers to run the session.

We are clear we are not therapists, this is a space to speak unfiltered, creatively exploring conversations, traditions, stereotypes and nuances whether that be through poem, rap, monologue, scenes, dance, art. It can also be a space free of these conversations to actively seek out joy during difficult times, to connect as a community with understanding of why they need a time out together. 

There is not a set out come - it could be that due to current events specific groups need space for wellbeing and joy. But equally it could be a group that lasts a month or a year or a rolling group like Black Is Safe.

What’s created can stay within the group or it can be shared but the output should always be decided by the young people.

What we have noticed is that providing space for this group allowed them to find the words to articulate their stories authentically, get validation from the others in the group who connect with the same experiences, gain confidence, comfortability and normalise speaking unfiltered. When this accrued themes, topics, and stories began to spill out into our main groups and company.

It was organic and it was great to be able to include a wider range of stories and different aspect/ angles to subjects we were talking about in the wider company.