A Space to Breathe extends the work of the BIPOC Women Heal project to expand support and improve CUNY campus climate by piloting a BIWOC-centered approach within Hunter’s Silberman School of Social Work program.

Background & Story

Black, Indigenous, Women of Color (BIWOC) educators, students, staff and administrators working in predominantly white institutions (PWIs) disproportionately experience violence rooted in historical, structural, and interpersonal oppressions that negatively impact mental and physical health necessitating multi-level healing. A Space to Breathe is born out of the findings from the BIPOC Women Heal study, a project that guided women of color who are social work faculty in predominantly White institutions (PWI) in sourcing their own safety and healing while navigating the intersecting forces of racism, sexism and heterosexism within the academy. The BIPOC Women Heal project, funded by a PSC-CUNY Enhanced Grant, used Critical Transformative Potential Development (CTPD), a theoretical, philosophical, and practice-based framework, with BIWOC educators to explore both the trauma and healing potential from the impact of violence and harm rooted in capitalism and White Supremacy. CTPD incorporates a five-prong method: 1) Affinity, 2) Awareness, 3) Accountability, 4) Agency, and 5) Action.

A Critical Action Project Experiment (CAPE)

By using decolonial strategies, including storytelling and transformative healing spaces, CTPD encourages the cultivation of critical consciousness and transformation of that consciousness into sustainable health and wellness practices. The method ends with critical action project experiments (CAPEs), invoking radical imagination to develop multi-level interventions (e.g., processes, practices, programs, policies) that support our shared humanity from the molecular to the macro.

Although most participants invited to the BIPOC Women Heal project were over-extended or lacked the capacity to participate, those who could, experienced the collaboratively cultivated healing practices as radically transformative and diametrically opposed to PWIs’ cultural norms and values that drain, drown, suck dry, and suffocate BIWOC educators. Through weekly group sessions, using storytelling, music, dialogue, and journaling participants reclaimed their sense of agency. They experienced validation, support, encouragement, and safety as they met weekly. The process motivated the women to think creatively and strategically about their well-being, their work and how to center their voices within the university. Preliminary findings suggest the emergence of an iterative strategic process: Invitation, Space and Time, Community, and Reflection. 

Answering the invitation for radical imagination

In May 2022, as the BIPOC Women Heal project neared its culmination, participants decided to submit three proposals in response to the Black, Race and Ethnic Studies Initiative (BRESI) RFPs focusing on: “Creating BRES-focused student internships”, “Faculty support for BRES publications” and “BRES projects to improve the college climate.” The proposals were put together within the span of a week as collaborative effort by women of color in full-time and tenured faculty positions, doctoral students, adjunct lecturers, and women holding positions in other offices and departments within academia. Awards were announced in early September 2022.

Space for Possibilities

The Space to Breathe is a BIWOC-centered critical action project experiment (CAPE) funded by a CUNY’s Black, Race, Ethnic Studies Initiative (BRESI) award. The project was selected as one of the 126 proposals awarded funding from over 500 submissions across CUNY as an aspirational example of what is possible when institutionally marginalized groups access material resources and institutional backing for transformative change. The project offers a potentially replicable framework that affirms healing strategies rooted in multiple BIWOC knowledges, practices, and ancestral wisdom. The goal of this project is to expand on prior similar liberatory action projects contributing to a social movement dedicated to BIWOCs healing from daily living in a dehumanizing society and the collective creation of our new world.