What The Future Holds

This project will seek to identify the collective care practices which formed an integral part of the
Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) and use them to create a care toolkit relevant to
contemporary contexts. Audre Lorde writes ‘self-care is not self-indulgence it is self-preservation
and that is an act of political warfare’ (1988, 112). Lorde in pointing to the racialization of who can
afford to care about oneself and who cannot, highlights how self-care contributes to the survival of
marginal and often fragile political communities. The politicizing of care has been one of the
enduring legacies of the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) including the questioning and
revaluing of women’s responsibilities for unpaid care, and their strategies to make care work
visible. This work has highlighted the ways that care includes both physical and emotional
activities, requiring complex skills in addition to its demanding interpersonal dimension. In this
project we are researching the diverse meanings of collective and self-care present within the FAS
which will give voice to a series of strategies, to create a Care Toolkit.
What The Future Holds project aims to:
1.Create a knowledge base of self-care and collective care strategies from Feminist Archive South
(FAS).
2. Create a downloadable Care Toolkit, which will take the form of a pamphlet and poster; including
FAS care strategies, checklists, contracts, and artwork.
3. Evaluate the effectiveness of Care Toolkit by collecting qualitative data from test group.