ABOUT OUR PRACTICE
How did we get here?
Co Culture was established in 2017 in response to frustration at tokenistic Diversity & Inclusion policies in organisations, where people from marginalised communities were doing the enormous labour of standing in the gap between what organisations say they’re committed to and what they actually deliver. Through study, mentorship, practice, and rigorous development and research, Co Culture has carved out a unique place in the therapeutic and professional development space, providing a strategic anti-oppressive approach to healing work, and a therapeutic approach to anti-oppressive strategy.
Co Culture is not new, it is built on a foundation of theory, practice, purpose and values, most of which are centuries old. It has developed through the study of Culturally Safe and Responsive Collaboration (CSRC), Relational Gestalt Psychotherapy, Cultural Arts Practice, and Critical Indigenous methodologies. Co Culture is enriched though ongoing development, praxis and feedback from communities, clients and mentors.
What is Culturally Safe and Responsive Collaboration (CSRC)?
CSRC is a framework for strength-based, anti-oppressive and transformational practice developed by award-winning Inupiat filmmaker, educator and facilitator Rachel Naninaaq Edwardson and award-winning Tamil-Australian lawyer, educator and Cultural Safety strategist David Vadiveloo. Developed over 35+ years of practice across the globe CSRC is a comprehensive, rigorous, high-fidelity collaboration and praxis framework designed to work with and centre community, and de-centre the institutions and organisations that seek to serve them. CSRC takes a holistic, multi-directional focus simultaneously toward community, practitioners, leadership and institutional structures to ensure that the structures of transformation are deeply-rooted and collaboratively designed. The CSRC Workbook and accompanying training modules for educators leaders, care practitioners and community leaders, will be available in (US) Summer 2023.
What is Gestalt Psychotherapy?
Gestalt Psychotherapy is relational, embodied field-informed approach to therapeutic work developed by Laura and Fritz Perls and Paul Goodman. With foundations firmly rooted in social justice and personal and collective transformation, Gestalt has developed into a multitude of different ways of working with people in the 60+ years since its inception. Like many other radical Gestalt practitioners globally, Co Culture seeks to honour the social justice roots of Gestalt Practice ensuring that therapeutic work reaches beyond the clinical relationship into the community and ultimately, toward transformation for individuals, relationships and social structures.
Indigenous Sovereignty & World View
In colonies and settler colonies, any anti-oppressive work must be traced to the colonial roots of oppression. Singularly focused efforts fail to understand the full picture of colonial domination and more importantly — what existed before. This means locating the work in a broader story and re-tethering to a history that acknowledges the thousands of years of unbroken relationship between Indigenous people and their lands. Co Culture is grounded in Indigenous values and wisdom from story-tellers, theorists, activists, academics, educators, elders and artists. ‘Decolonisation is less about returning to a pre-colonial society and more about recognising that we live under a colonial system. That things are the way they are, not by accident, but because a particular ideology has systematically erased others while normalising itself. Once something is normalised it’s hard to imagine anything else. ” - Aotearoa Liberation League.
What’s in a name?
Co Cultural Theory is a framework developed to attempt to understand the communicative adaptations people from non-dominant groups adopt, in order to protect themselves and function in the dominant paradigm. Co Cultural is the preferred term of researcher Mark Orbe, referring to groups that are often called ‘marginalised’, ‘non-domiant’ or ‘oppressed’. Co Culture was intentionally chosen for this business as a way of referring to groups that are targeted by oppressive systems but should not be defined by that oppression. Co Cultural as a term seeks not to diminish the impact of oppression on certain social groups, but rather remove the deficit in which they are often placed, and focus towards their strength, resilience and wisdoms with deep respect and reverence.