HOPEFUL MESS DOES TRAINING
Everything we do begins with Joy, is held by Community and moves us toward Change. We work in the messy, beautiful spaces where culture, wellbeing and decolonial practice meet. We create training and workshops that help people and organisations imagine new ways of being together.
Our sessions are warm, practical and built for real people navigating real life. We use simple language to create tools that help communities care for themselves and each other.
All of our training is bespoke, and tailored to the needs of your community. We do not believe in tick box training or a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.
Below some examples of the types of training we provide
SAFEGUARDING
Safeguarding doesn’t have to feel like policing. Our approach to safeguarding centres care, consent, culture and collective responsibility. Finding approaches together to avoid punishment or fear.
This training is for organisations and community groups who want to protect people without replicating the systems that harm them. We explore how to create safer spaces in ways that honour lived experience, collectivist values and the realities of navigating institutions that weren’t built for the people in them.
Expect:
- Practical tools for community-led safeguarding
- Approaches focused on trust and relational care
- How to respond to challenges with care, not control
- Realistic scenarios and language that people actually use and understand
MENTAL HEALTH
Our sessions explore how to support people who may be having a difficult time in ways that are tangible, accessible, immediately useful, culturally grounded and community-first. This training is for anyone working with communities who wants to show up with compassion, clarity and confidence. A lot of the mental health training we have encountered centre a very narrow eurocentric worldview
We look at:
- How distress shows up across different cultures
- How to support people without overstepping or pathologising
- How to use language that feels human
- How to build community care systems that don’t rely on broken institutions
- How to look after yourself
SUSTAINABLE PRACTISE: LEADING WITH JOY
We know “resilience” often gets weaponised. It can be a way of telling people to endure harm instead of changing the conditions causing it. That is why we provide practices that help people doing social change work to stay hopeful and connected, even when the work is heavy. This is for activists, organisers, cultural workers and anyone holding emotional labour in their communities.
We explore:
- Collective coping strategies
- Boundaries that honour your capacity
- Joy as a political tool
- Ways to sustain yourself without burning out
COLLECTIVE IMAGINING
For people and organisations who feel stuck or who know the world could be otherwise.
Our collective imagining sessions are spaces where people come together to practise the collective art of possibility. They’re not brainstorming workshops or strategy meetings.
They help groups loosen the grip of “how things have always been done” and step into new ways of being together, that prioritise joy, community and change
We look at:
- Unlocking imagination as a collective muscle
- Seeing beyond the limits of current systems
- Reconnecting with joy as a method of change
- Shifting from scarcity thinking to abundance thinking
- Rehearsing alternative futures
