What is a Community of Practice? Communities of practice and issues of identity are universal and have always they have existed for as long as human beings have learned together. However, according to popular conceptualisations, a community of practice (CoP) is, according to cognitive anthropologists Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, a group of people who share a cause, interest, profession or vocation. In a nutshell communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. They are held together by a common interest and are driven by a desire and need to share problems, experiences, insights, tools, and best practices. Communities of Practice can exist online, such as within discussion boards and newsgroups, or in life settings, such as at work, in a community group, or elsewhere. Rather than looking to learning as the acquisition of certain forms of knowledge by individuals, Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger maintain that learning is a process of social participation which takes place through a connection of interactions and understandings with others. It is also important to remember that a CoP is a strategy or approach, it is a way of participants working together with various stakeholders to achieve common and agreed goals in a manner that can be more beneficial than each member working in silos.
What are the advantages and benefits of working as part of a community of practice?
• Map knowledge and identify gaps in existing knowledge • Encourage knowledge sharing; open to both explicit (published) knowledge – articles, reports, websites, protocols and guidelines – and tacit (personal) knowledge gained through experience and reflection;
• Promote learning from previous mistakes and correction of movement-building weaknesses; • Support members to identifying solutions to key issues and challenges;
• Prevent duplication of reparations organising and campaigning efforts; • Facilitate connections and collaboration among reparations advocates, activists and allies.
Why an African Reparations Transnational Community of Practice (ARTCoP)?
As part of ensuring that my research is relevant to the ISMAR, in association with research participants, I am co-facilitating an African Reparations Transnational Community of Practice (ARTCoP). The ARTCoP is essentially an informal network for research participants and other interested stakeholders who share a an interest or passion for African reparations advocacy or activism and can be supported to share information knowledge and learning in order to strengthen or improve their reparations advocacy, campaigning or organising actions as they interact regularly. In fact, the pedagogical, understood as knowledge practices and learning processes, often takes a pivotal role in the emergence, development and sustainability of social movements and community struggles. Notably, building the ARTCoP consciously critiques the assumption that ‘knowledge’ is only generated only in academic institutions of learning such as universities. The purpose of developing the ARTCoP is to give recognition to all those involved in co-producing knowledge relevant to African reparations and then to facilitate processes for the effective use of this knowledge in the service of the International Social Movement for African Reparations (ISMAR).
What are the aims of the ARTCoP ?
• Provide a much-needed space for critical reflection as a basis for taking more effective strategic action by supporting members of the International Social Movement for African Reparations (ISMAR) and their allies to strengthen and improve their movement-building activities enabling them to learn from, compliment and collaborate with each other to achieve common reparations-related objectives;
• Enable participants in the ARTCoP to develop a shared understanding of the history of the ISMAR; • Facilitate the learning and the sharing of ideas, knowledge, information, experiences, expertise, research, strategies and resources among participants in the ARTCoP pertaining to the history and heritage of reparations thought, advocacy and activism;
• Gain recognition in mainstream academia and amongst policy-makers of the knowledge and pedagogical practices being produced outside of formal educational institutions on reparations and to bridge the gap between these various knowledges;
• Stimulate dialogue among and between members about the ISMAR’s past, present and future;
• Support participants in the ARTCoP to develop various resources such as tools, documents, vocabulary and symbols that in some way carry the accumulated knowledge of the ISMAR. On the basis of learning being gleaned and constructive engagements from research participants thus far there is a need for the creation of a reparations movement-related education, learning and reflection space which accompanies efforts to mobilise and organise constituencies within the community of African reparations interest, builds a clear reparations social change agenda, and prepares the constituencies to choose their targets, strategies and actions to bring about the changes or improvements sought.
In light of the above, the following have been proposed as priority concerns of the ARTCoP:
1. To counter fragmentation amongst constituencies within the community of African reparations interest and reparations groups, networks and organisations by promoting understanding of the common grounds and shared goals between many reparations groups, organisations, campaigns and other social justice movements;
2. To promote honest discussions on the obstacles to integrating a reparations framework in the work of other social justice causes and movements; 3. To promote honest discussion of the obstacles to building a more inclusive ISMAR and existing reparations advocates, activists and allies working together more constructively.
For further info about how you can contribute to building the ARTCoP please email: artcop.edu@gmail.com or E.Stanford-Xosei@chi.ac.uk ________________________________________ [1] Lave, Jean; Wenger, Etienne (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-42374-0.; first published in 1990 as Institute for Research on Learning report 90-0013
Reparations Scholar-Activist 