The seeds of environmental and humanitarian advocacy were sown early in Dr Joanna Burch-Brown’s life, growing up in close proximity both to nature and communities dedicated to social justice. The radical environment of Oberlin Liberal Arts College in Ohio affirmed her interest in philosophy as a practice and discipline that nurtures understanding and drives conscientious change. After attending Cambridge for her PhD and Oxford for a post-doc, she found her way to Bristol in 2012 where a more “hands-on” approach to philosophy reaffirmed her sense of vocation.
In 2015, Dr Burch-Brown played a key role in the Countering Colston Campaign, and in the subsequent development of the Bristol History Commission, which led to the 2021 launch of Bridging Histories, a free online learning project focused on bringing divided communities together. Continuing the collaborative and community-centred approach that underpins this work, the Enterprise Fellowship awarded to Dr Burch-Brown and the team behind Bridging Histories will allow the project to expand its reach and make a greater difference.
Your writing, teaching and research is rooted in explorations of contested heritage, transitional justice, black philosophical thought and environmental ethics, and on reducing prejudice. How and when did you become interested in this area of work?
I grew up in the Apalachee Mountains in Virginia, way out in the countryside, so I became very interested in environmental issues and nature. In 1991, when I was 10, the Rodney King beatings happened in LA. All across the country there were protests around racial inequality and police brutality. Going to some of those protests were very formative experiences for me, which makes me think about how important those historic moments can be for shaping people’s outlooks.
I then got really lucky; my mum met her partner, who is an amazing theatre artist, and we became part of an organisation called Alternate Roots, a networking organisation of incredibly diverse artists across the south of the US who use the arts in communities to bring about positive social change and social justice. All of that shaped my interests and my view.
How did your experience and your training in philosophy inform your approach to working with the Countering Colston Campaign?
I spent a good period of time listening to people who had longstanding connections with Bristol explaining their thoughts about what the city’s priorities should be. As a philosopher, I was looking to see what I could usefully get behind. Engaging in those conversations, hearing what people had to say and analysing that to systematise the different views was where I felt my contribution to be.
From 2015 until 2020, I worked with the Campaign to listen to the arguments on all sides of the debate, and to then distil the most important points on both sides. I was interested in finding a way for everyone to hear each other and work towards creative solutions. It was a really hands-on way of working as a philosopher, which I loved.
Engaging people in conversations around “contested heritage and public memory” is no doubt inherently and necessarily complex and challenging – how do you navigate those conversations in a way that builds greater understanding?
With the Countering Colston Campaign, one of the other campaigners, Mark Steed, collected hundreds of letters that were coming into the Bristol Post about the proposed renaming of the Colston Hall. By analysing them and identifying each of the arguments that were being made for and against, I was able to put the arguments into systematic terms that everyone could understand.
Another key benefit is that it can be very calming for people to feel they are being heard and understood when you relay back to them the points which they can then clearly see on the table. It can also be extremely helpful for institutional decision makers, who may not have had time to study the views in great depth, to be able to see a digested version of the key concerns. All of that helps to build a bigger picture which enables people to see what creative solutions might be possible.
Tell us about your motivation for developing Bridging Histories.
I believe in acting from an attitude of fundamental respect and love towards every person. I’m interested in exploring the positive intention behind people’s views. Even if there’s something that I disagree with very deeply, I want to understand the intention behind that view and find creative ways to honour and respect different perspectives.
In developing Bridging Histories, the idea has been to dissolve the very rigid debates and frameworks that we can get locked into. Once you get people telling their stories, sharing their personal memories, so much shifts in your social imagination. As people start hearing each other’s stories and becoming curious about each other, they can step outside of what can seem like a rigid problem and find a more imaginative response.
It’s been an incredibly wholesome initiative to be running – we invite anybody anywhere to join in a series of activities that celebrate their unique identity in a way that traverses the past, present and future. We invite people to write an “I am from” poem, share a family recipe, share something about the history of where they grew up, and share something about their family history. We also invite people to investigate or even create a monument or mural. Finally, we ask people to consider how they are inhabiting the role of changemaker. There’s something beautifully connecting about the process and the stories that emerge.
Tell us about your Enterprise Fellowship; how will it expand and extend your work with Bridging Histories and what do you hope to achieve?
We’ve created a wonderful community of ambassadors who are helping to organise collaborations and changemaking projects. Now we want to take that basic structure and build a social enterprise that will allow us to work with more people. We’re frequently approached by schools, charities, museums, companies, all kinds of groups with their own reasons for wanting to bring people together across difference. Sometimes they want to solve a particular problem, sometimes it’s just about celebrating the community. By building a social enterprise, we’ll be able to offer both free resources and a more formal, bespoke package of tools, resources and support to help people tackle whatever challenges they’re facing.
What are your personal and professional aspirations in terms of where this work will lead you next?
My dream would be to have Bridging Histories roll out on a global scale, with cohorts of ambassadors all over the world, so that people could start projects anywhere they wish, where ambassadors would have the tools to apply the resources and methodologies in a locally appropriate way.
The social meanings of particular problems as faced by different communities are often really nuanced, you can’t just provide a blanket solution. The dream would be to have activities happening in different places in different ways that help to spread more awareness of how we can tackle these apparently thorny problems in a way that is really uplifting and brings people together.
I’ve been incredibly lucky to connect with some incredible partners and collaborators, from the co-leaders to the ambassadors and everyone involved in the projects we’ve had the privilege and the pleasure to be involved in. To see the project and the people involved grow, that’s the dream.
Dr Joanna Burch-Brown is a Senior Lecturer and co-Director of Teaching in the Department of Philosophy, a founding member of the University of Bristol’s Centre for Black Humanities, and academic director for the Fulbright Summer Institute on ‘Arts, Activism and Social Justice’. She also serves on the Bristol History Commission.