The Dark Side of Activism: Why Our Safe Spaces Turn Toxic

Whose Equality? | Reform, DEI and the Post-BLM Backlash

DEI is under attack. But what exactly is being defended? We take on the three letters that have become everything from a flagellant workplace promise, to an impotent political punchline.   We get into Reform UK’s proposal to scrap the Equality Act, the backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion, and the class conversation that keeps being used as a wedge instead of a route to solidarity.   Tamanda explains what the Equality Act and Public Sector Equality Duty actually do, why the Bank of England internship controversy became such a political flashpoint, and why class and socioeconomic status need to be part of any serious     conversation about equality.   Aiwan reflects on the creative industries after BLM, the realities of being treated like a quota, and why marginalised creatives do not need endless “emerging talent” schemes as much as they need infrastructure, commissioning, fair pay and real backing.   Together, we ask: What happened to DEI? How did radical struggles for justice become corporate diversity awards, PR statements, bureaucratic documents and business-case language? And can DEI ever be reclaimed if it cannot talk honestly about race, class and power?   🎙️ In this episode: * Reform and the Equality Act: What the proposal to scrap the Act reveals about race, class and political dog whistles * Tokenisation vs. Transformation: Aiwan shares her personal experiences of being "box-ticked" by white-led companies during the BLM era and the "disheartening dehumanisation" of being instrumentalised for PR * The Missing Class Link: Why the exclusion of socioeconomic status from the Equality Act allows elites to use "divide and conquer" tactics to keep marginalised groups at odds * The Language of Distraction: A look at the ever-shifting terminology, from "BAME" to "Global Majority" and whether this towering "Babel" of acronyms prevents us from facing systemic racism head-on * Radical Histories & What DEI Should Become: Remembering the legacy of warriors like Doreen Lawrence and the McPherson report, and why we must restore DEI as a moral and ethical imperative   🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts 🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Y2-pmW9WwV0 [https://youtu.be/Y2-pmW9WwV0]   ☕ Support the show: https://buymeacoffee.com/rigourandflow [https://buymeacoffee.com/rigourandflow] 🔁 Share this episode with someone ready to move beyond the "business case" and toward actual justice Please rate, review and subscribe for weekly episodes. Connect with us on: * TikTok [https://www.tiktok.com/@rigourandflow] * Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/rigourandflow] * LinkedIn [https://uk.linkedin.com/company/rigourandflow] * AiAi Studios [www.aiaistudios.com] * Roots & Rigour [www.rootsandrigour.org] This is an AiAi Studios [https://open.acast.com/networks/67d57addaaba807fb7eb365a/shows/67d57d23b3ef7ea352b50da3/www.aiaistudios.com] Production ©AiAi Studios 2025 ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Hard to Reach or Easy to Ignore? | The Truth About Community Research, Anger & Power

Why do we let 'experts' from outside our communities decide what we need? Today, we’re talking about the politics of help, the myth of the 'hard to reach' and why genuinely community-led research has the potential to solve global crises like suicide and inequality.   From Black maternal health to Black men’s mental health, in this episode Aiwan and Tamanda explore what could happen when money, power and agency move directly into the hands of communities. When communities set the agenda, choose the questions, shape the process and decide what counts as change.   Aiwan reflects on entering Tamanda’s research world, being baffled by its language and slowly realising that terms like “participatory action research”, “community engagement” and “co-production” point to a pivotal question: who gets to decide what matters and what change is needed?   From there, the episode moves into the anger that surfaces when communities recognise how often they have been studied, used, consulted, underpaid and discarded. Aiwan speaks honestly about the fury of realising how often “help” is designed without the people it is meant to serve. Tamanda unpacks why this anger is not a distraction from the research, but part of the process of knowledge production. Together, they explore the difference between research that extracts and research that heals.   🎙️ In this episode: * Beyond the Buzzwords: Stripping away research jargon to understand the truths * The Extraction Economy: How communities have been "used and discarded" by traditional research institutions * Research and Community Agency: What happens when we stop being the "subject" and start being the "architect" * Setting the Agenda: Why the "most important problem" shouldn't be decided upstream by strangers * Relational Research: Why connection is the only real antidote to a disconnected world * From Local to Global: How community-led insights can fix our hyper-connected but deeply fractured and unequal world   🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts 🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/7f5vKA-hYNQ [https://youtu.be/7f5vKA-hYNQ] 🔁 Share with someone who believes communities should lead the change that affects them ☕ Support the show: https://buymeacoffee.com/rigourandflow [https://buymeacoffee.com/rigourandflow] Please rate, review and subscribe for weekly episodes. Connect with us on: * TikTok [https://www.tiktok.com/@rigourandflow] * Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/rigourandflow] * LinkedIn [https://uk.linkedin.com/company/rigourandflow] * AiAi Studios [www.aiaistudios.com] * Roots & Rigour [www.rootsandrigour.org] This is an AiAi Studios [https://open.acast.com/networks/67d57addaaba807fb7eb365a/shows/67d57d23b3ef7ea352b50da3/www.aiaistudios.com] Production ©AiAi Studios 2025 ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

The Dark Side of Activism: Why Our Safe Spaces Turn Toxic

What happens when the oppressed become the oppressor?   In this episode, taking inspiration from an article by Dr Yvon Guest, Aiwan and Tamanda pull back the curtain on the concept of the "wounded activist”, a phenomenon where unresolved trauma drives social movements, often leading to the very oppression, hierarchy and exclusion we claim to fight.   From the "untouchable founder" to "brand activism", we reflect on justice spaces we’ve been in that felt like fundamentalist religions and explore how to understand and break the cycles of trauma-driven bad behaviour.   Aiwan shares about entering Black queer activist spaces with hope, only to find new rules, "pronoun politics" and exclusion. From vegan safe spaces to the murky line of “no hierarchy”, she traces the ways community can quickly turn into conformity.   Tamanda brings the conversation inward, questioning her own journey in antiracism and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) work. She takes a vulnerable look at her historical need for recognition from white institutions and the identity collapse that happened when she realised no movement could heal her wounds. That she had to do that work herself.    🎙️ In this episode: * The Wounded Activist: How trauma can become both fuel and fracture in justice work * The Oppressed as Oppressor: How marginalised spaces can recreate the hierarchies they hate * Activist Archetypes: Identifying the “Spiritualisers”, “Perpetual Martyrs” and “Untouchable Founders” * Class Silence in Black Queer Spaces: What gets hidden when everyone performs sameness * Burnout and Identity Crisis: Who are you when activism is no longer your whole self? * Healing the Core Wound: How come activists die young and how to break the destructive cycle   Note: This is not an anti-activism episode. It is a conversation about what happens when people carry their wounds into spaces that promise belonging, then reproduce the same control, hierarchy and judgement we were all trying to escape.   🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts 🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/tmYBzXCMWYo [https://youtu.be/tmYBzXCMWYo] 🔁 Share with someone who has ever loved a movement, left a movement or been hurt by one ☕ Support the show: https://buymeacoffee.com/rigourandflow [https://buymeacoffee.com/rigourandflow] #RigourAndFlow #WoundedActivist #PsychologyOfActivism #ActivistBurnout #SocialJusticeAnalysis #DEICritique #BlackQueerThought #CriticalThinking #TraumaInCommunity #SocialMovements Please rate, review and subscribe for weekly episodes. Connect with us on: * TikTok [https://www.tiktok.com/@rigourandflow] * Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/rigourandflow] * LinkedIn [https://uk.linkedin.com/company/rigourandflow] * AiAi Studios [www.aiaistudios.com] * Roots & Rigour [www.rootsandrigour.org] This is an AiAi Studios [https://open.acast.com/networks/67d57addaaba807fb7eb365a/shows/67d57d23b3ef7ea352b50da3/www.aiaistudios.com] Production ©AiAi Studios 2025 ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Policed by Design: Why Your Neighbourhood Feels Like a Prison

Have you ever looked at your own neighbourhood and felt like you weren’t actually meant to be there?   In this episode, Aiwan and Tamanda reveal that it’s not in your head. It’s in the blueprints. We dive into the sobering reality that communities are increasingly under surveillance, including how the Metropolitan Police are far more directly involved in the architecture of homes, schools and playgrounds than we might ever imagine.       With memories of the Meridian Estate and the "prison-like" Ferrier Estate, Aiwan explains how our built environment is designed to infantilise us, and why the antidote is teaching the "structure of local politics" from a young age. We explore the possibility of training the next generation of architects directly from the community, so the people designing estates are the same people who call them home. The same people who live, breathe and feel their realities.   Finally, we move beyond the critique of hostile architecture to ask how we take our power back from these structures of control. Tamanda brings in Amahra Spence’s work on "architectures of abolition" - plus learnings from some recent work with The Ubele Initiative - which remind us that safety isn't simply the absence and prevention of crime, but the presence of care, dignity and collective agency.   From Northumberland Park and the shadows of Tottenham Hotspur Stadium to the sterile playgrounds of modern social housing, this is a conversation about race, class and the radical act of reclaiming our agency through architecture that reflects that its communities have been heard. 🎙️ In this episode: * The Met as Architect: How police influence the design of our "securitised" streets * The Southwark Pergola: A case study in how "security" logic destroys community’s sense of safety * The Technology of Power: Why buildings, barriers and shutters are never neutral * Architecture from the Ground Up: Why the kids on the estate should be the ones designing its future * Agency as a Basic Right: Why every living thing needs control over its environment * The Power of the Mass: Why collective agency is the only way to "reclaim and rebuild the block"   🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts 🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rsv0XzIrFp0 [https://youtu.be/rsv0XzIrFp0] 🔁 Share with someone thinking about housing, class or the places that shaped them ☕ Support the show: https://buymeacoffee.com/rigourandflow [https://buymeacoffee.com/rigourandflow] #RigourAndFlow #SpatialJustice #UrbanDesign #PoliceByDesign #LondonHousing #SocialHousing #Architecture #AmahraSpence Please rate, review and subscribe for weekly episodes. Connect with us on: * TikTok [https://www.tiktok.com/@rigourandflow] * Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/rigourandflow] * LinkedIn [https://uk.linkedin.com/company/rigourandflow] * AiAi Studios [www.aiaistudios.com] * Roots & Rigour [www.rootsandrigour.org] This is an AiAi Studios [https://open.acast.com/networks/67d57addaaba807fb7eb365a/shows/67d57d23b3ef7ea352b50da3/www.aiaistudios.com] Production ©AiAi Studios 2025 ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

WTF Happened to Body Positivity? | The Rise of the Ozempic Aesthetic

Is body positivity dead in the wake of Ozempic? We're exploring how weight loss culture and the 'heroin chic' aesthetic are making a high-speed comeback under the guise of medical wellness.   ☕ Support the show: www.buymeacoffee.com/rigourandflow [http://www.buymeacoffee.com/rigourandflow]   With this being Mental Health Awareness week, we couldn’t think of a better time to put the spotlight on one of the most overlooked mental health conditions in the Black community. As just six months ago, body positivity felt like a permanent cultural shift and today, the landscape has changed. People are "shrinking" overnight.   In response, Aiwan and Tamanda interrogate the radical shift in weight loss culture in 2026. From the medicalisation of weight loss using a “miracle” drug to the normalisation of "shrinking," we unpack how quickly the conversation has shifted back toward unhealthy control. We deep dive into how so called “wellness” language - and even medical terminology - is being used to mask aesthetic pressure and the impact of diet culture on Black body image.   Drawing on her personal experience with eating disorders and recovery, Tamanda reflects on the unsettling "seduction" of these new drugs, and what this shift means for a generation of teenagers watching people dwindle in real-time.   🎙️ In this episode: * The Rise and Retreat: How body positivity moved from a cultural force to a quiet disappearance * The Ozempic Effect: The medicalisation of weight loss and the normalisation of "shrinking" * Wellness or Control?: Decoding how "health" language is being used to mask aesthetic pressure * Race and Body Politics: How Black bodies sit differently inside cycles of visibility, pressure, and desirability * Chasing Capitalism: Why the system needs our bodies to remain "projects" that need fixing * Watching in Real Time: What this shift means for teenagers growing up inside it Subscribe for more critical deep-dives into power, class and the Black experience.       🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts 🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/g-yUKuuTSCU   🔁 Share with someone thinking about what “health” and “beauty” mean today. Please rate, review and subscribe for weekly episodes. Connect with us on: * TikTok [https://www.tiktok.com/@rigourandflow] * Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/rigourandflow] * LinkedIn [https://uk.linkedin.com/company/rigourandflow] * AiAi Studios [www.aiaistudios.com] * Roots & Rigour [www.rootsandrigour.org] This is an AiAi Studios [https://open.acast.com/networks/67d57addaaba807fb7eb365a/shows/67d57d23b3ef7ea352b50da3/www.aiaistudios.com] Production ©AiAi Studios 2025 ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.