Kathleen Bright, living sustainably and joyfully

Creative / Crafter / Caketivist

Queer, vegan / freegan, anti-capitalist, anarcha-feminist, life-affirming, enthusiastic activist. Open-minded, free being, wandering / wondering spirit. Mmm, brains...

Check out Daily Feminist Action: For what I did to overthrow sexism today. Plus, Feminists of Hackney; get involved!

Check out Inspire With Hope: Articles and detailed updates about what I do in my life.

Email inspirewithhope@gmail.com: I'd love to hear from you!

A bit about me

  • I'm a full-time activist. I volunteer at Pogo Cafe; it's excellent, come and visit!
  • I'm do web stuff; I'm interested in finding more stuff that's inline with my values.
  • I'm interested in meeting needs (like shelter, food, community) outside of "the system", for example, without money. Housing's what I'm finding most challenging. Long-term, I'm working on starting an ethical activists housing co-operative (or joining an existing one).
  • I'm passionate about challenging oppression and exploitation, with a particular awareness of patriarchy and capitalism as oppressive structures. I like inspiring people and making positive changes to the world. I like being creative and using satire to highlight absurdity. I like free spaces, safer spaces, warmth.
  • I absolutely love this article: How to Drop Out, by Ran Prieur.

Politicised? Active? Challenging the status quo? Let's hang out!
Want to be more active? Some tips!

Coming up...

Other stuff I'm co-organising:

  • Crafty feminists - workshops, arts and crafts, zines. Get in touch if you'd like to help out in any way. :)
  • Forum theatre type events for Quakers, anarchists and feminists. Not sure what yet, but somehow!
  • Collective communication for our activist communities - more events

I really love working with my activist friends; it's awesome!

July 2010

Non-violence and Food

On Tuesday 13 July, I co-facilitated a discussion on Non-violence and Food: "Is what we eat, and how it's produced, an aspect of our lifestyle which ought to be informed by a commitment to nonviolence? What might a nonviolent diet look like? Or is worrying about a "nonviolent lifestyle" a luxury, when there are so many more obvious forms of physical and structural violence around us?"

It was great!

June 2010

Collective Communication: Weekend of Workshops

I'm co-organising a facilitation and consensus event, with Seeds of Change, for our autonomous communities, on Saturday 3rd - Sunday 4th July, in Hackney, East London. It's free but you need to book, limited places.

Feminists of Hackney

I co-started a local feminism group for self-identified women. One of the aims is to bring different kinds of feminists together. Yes, I'm a unity feminist. I call it inreach. Picnic, 17th July, everyone welcome - bring shoes you don't want or need any more if you'd like to participate in the art...

Theatre of the Oppressed workshop at St. Ethelburga's

It was excellent! I've been to playback theatre as well, which I really enjoyed. I'm looking forward to exploring performance more, especially the idea of spectactors (i.e. the audience participates in the acting too).

Zine Symposium & Zine Fest

I went to my first ever zine fairs. They were brilliant! I'm particularly interested in feminist zines so I got loads of those. I'll be writing about them at Daily Feminist Action. I'm inspired to start my own zine on something feminism-related. I might start off with contributing to Ladyfest Ten's crafty zine.

May 2010

Learning electrics & plumbing with Women and Manual Trades

It was awesome. I want to learn more plumbing; I'd be interested to hear about available courses.  »More

My focuses lately

  • Radicalising the mainstream with a mixture of conversation and articles
  • Looking for ethical web agencies & organisations that want freelancers
  • Exploring different housing set-ups that might fit me better

April 2010

Anarchafeminist gathering, Manchester

Utterly amazing! Write-up on its way

Demo against the Digital Economy Bill

I'm not sure where to start with what's wrong with this bill! Roughly 20 supporters of the Open Rights Group demonstrated outside UK Music, looking official and disapproving before delivering a disconnection notice for Feargal Sharkey.

March 2010

  • I've become more adventurous and intrepid as an explorer, when travelling, which is cool.
  • I decided to become a single-issue campaigner: Membership with lots of groups, therefore giving me a greater variety of possible actions to support.
  • I started working on a collection of work to make activism more accessible / mainstream

Film screening of BBC4 Women documentary

London Feminist Network members watched the first and last of this three-part series. It was cool to be sitting near some of those on film!

Launch of new UK feminism group

Lots of ideas and new energy, pretty exciting. I'm hoping this new initiative will help bring together a lot of the stuff that's going on already, as well as helping to centralise things a bit.

Demo against lads' mags being sold in supermarkets

Over 30 activists shook up Tescos. In addition to the usual Feminist Friday antics (covering lads's mags in anti-sexist slogans), conga-ing round the shop singing, "Let's get rid of lads' mags. Let's get rid of lads' mags." :) Watch it on YouTube

Conflict resolution and peace

Some brilliant conflict resolution (difficult, challenging, inspiring) kickstarted my thinking about this and then I was intending to go to a discussion on Non-Violence and Gender the next week anyway, so I did that and it's really interesting how all this stuff is synthesising in my brain!

Free School Weekender

I worked on this with a bunch of people for some time! Confronting hierarchy and inequality in education. Reclaiming knowledge to develop self-reliance. Challenging gender oppression. Bikes, welding, software, French, puppets, make your own underwear, sexual consent and *loads* more... I was interviewed for IndyMedia and I did some pretty far our welcoming at the front desk! Write-up on its way...

Women's Liberation Conference, Oxford

It was great! I facilitated a crafting space, with jewellery workshops and knitting. Lots of brilliant conversations, ideas and networking. Write-up on its way...

Cooking (what's it called if you "cook" it, but it's raw?!)

I've been experimenting with creating my own recipes. So far this has resulted in:

  • Complicated carrot and potato pink soup (includes beetroot, courgette (raw), broccoli (some of it raw))
  • Garlic, mushroom and leek, wholegrain risotto
  • Chilli garlic houmous (includes sunflower seed and pumpkin seed oil)

February 2010

Loving kindness, Quakers and Buddhism

One of the things I've been focusing on is meditation and similar practices, like Quaker Meetings and listening groups, with the aim of nurturing a general friendliness towards life. Hanging out with Buddhists and Quakers helps with this; I went to Young Friends' General Meeting (a Quaker thing for 18-30ish year olds) and met some awesome people.

Jewellery craft workshops

Jewellery workshop Look what beautiful things we made Crafty things My workshop area on my stall

Photos from previous jewellery workshops I've run

I ran some jewellery workshops at Sweet Tooth in Brixton Village.

13 creative & enthusiastic participants, of different ages and genders, made earrings, bracelets and necklaces; I was really impressed by the creativity. It was a really fun experience for all of us.

More photos and a write-up to follow...

Cooking

I've been experimenting with creating my own recipes. So far this has resulted in:

  • Pink onion soup (includes beetroot and carrot)
  • Crunchy peanut butter soup (includes broccoli, sprouts, kale)
  • New potato, gorgeous greens and oyster mushroom hot soup (includes kale, sprouts, courgette)
  • Chilli greens soup (includes new potatoes, kale, broccoli, oyster mushrooms)

January 2010

Sorting out my life: You know, the usual...

Further achievements & recognition


Pancake time!

What I do during the week

It varies.

I don't have an answer that is both pithy and accurate. I tend to talk about what I've been up to in the past week or so, with a sprinkling of other highlights.

Some of the things I've been focusing on recently include...

  • thrashing out (huggaly, emotionally, intellectually) what kind of living situations might work for me
  • saving for the ethical activist housing co-op I'm starting
  • challenging patriarchy in a gentle, angry way and doing feminist stuff
  • hanging out in free spaces, self-organising with other anti-capitalists, web activism for feminism and veganism, organising free crafting stuff, homelessness activism
  • updating my websites, building HTML emails, working on creating time to fit in redesigning Kathleen Bright (dotcom), looking for ethical web agencies who want freelancers
  • volunteering at Pogo Cafe, cooking and eating tasty vegan noms
  • drooling over radical books, travelling across the UK, building self-confidence, becoming a better communicator, meditating, mediating, quaking and cuddles

Sites

I'm on facebook, linkedin, twitter etc.

Articles

More of my writing at inspirewithhope.com

Skills

  • I write fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
  • I'm a freelance web designer by profession. I'm potentially available for short part-time contracts & small projects requiring awesome HTML & CSS skills - please ask.
  • Freelance web design, web development, web editing etc.
  • Web design consultations - especially accessibility, usability, look & feel etc.
  • Jewellery craft workshops
  • Custom-made bead jewellery
  • Specialty baking - especially happy vegan cookies
  • Copy-editing
  • Proof-reading

More of my writing at inspirewithhope.com

More of my web design at brightportfolio.com

Email me
inspirewithhope@gmail.com

Because I'd love to hear from you! :)

Alternative living - support and help

There are infinite alternatives alternatives to capitalism, patriarchy and "The System". Here are some favourites...

Places in London

  • 195 Mare Street - free community centre
    Hackney, East London
  • Pogo Café - not-for-profit & yummy vegan too
    Hackney, East London
  • Housmans - radical bookshop (online too)
    King's Cross, Central London

Initiatives: Let's get activisty!

Ideas: Make positive changes

About food and nutrition

On vegan freeganism