SPEAK International Community
International links
SPEAK links with people wanting to build networks with similar values in courtiers wider than UK. The history we have linked with the Fale Network in Brazil. We have done campaigns together and linked with networks and groups in Holland, Germany, and the USA. Many of these groups have been making key contributions to our campaigns and gatherings. In more recent years we have stayed in touch for solidarity via video calls and had occasional meet-ups. SPEAK people tend to gather for retreat, networking, learning, and inspiration at a Monastic eco-village in Portugal called Mount of Oaks.
Below is a picture of representatives from SPEAK Holland, Germany, and the UK together in 2016 (literally 1 week after the Brexit vote) we reunited showing community is more important than any debate about nation-state structures.
In 2013 at the international gathering Sound Check, we had a meeting with SPEAK Holland, Germany Brazil, and UK. We started a SPEAK international Facebook group but that remains for informal spontaneous community collaborations rather than very organised action.
FALE-SPEAK Brazil
- SPEAK Brazil Facebook https://www.facebook.com/redefalesa/
- SPEAK Brazil blog http://redefale.blogspot.com/ )
SPEAK UK AND SPEAK Brazil did a joint campaign on pesticides together in 2011. Below is the prayer and post and Video.
https://youtu.be/Y9SSv6YKTuM?si=hjAr7ZqbPHJWENBH
Fale has been going since the year 2000 and achieved some amazing things and brought groups to various SPEAK gatherings over the years.
Fale was inspired by SPEAKs model of Pray and Post cards, and campaign resources. Fale is the only international group to adopt similar campaign resources for many years as SPEAK UK. The founder of SPEAK UK showed the campaign prayer and postcards to the Founder of FALE/ SPEAK Brazil at a conference in 2001 called Urbana in the USA and we were amazed and excited when they sent through all their campaign resources for mutual solidarity and encouragement.
Fale has revived funding from Tearfund at various junctions. Their blog spans time from 2006-2020 they are also one of the few other SPEAK-related Networks to employ staff members.
We are not in the position to SPEAK for them in terms of immediate updates… so we hope to feature future blogs from them on their journey.
SPEAK IN GERMANY
SPEAK in Germany was started by a group of people we met in 2004 and for a while they shared resources in the form of a SPEAK bank account. There were also lots of creative connections with SPEAK in our journey for artists from Berlin into performance art, prophetic action, and dance who joined us at many SPEAK gatherings and events including the SPEAK angel in this powerful video below
SPEAK in Germany also connects with a lot with Jesus Freaks in Germany and in their gatherings organised a shared kitchen for some years as a way of sharing social justice values
We haven’t done anything too official and structured but relationally SPEAK representatives UK and SPEAK reps in Germany stayed in touch informally and shared prayer requests for more support over the challenging era of 2020 when we were meeting online and dancing together with SPEAK Holland!!
SPEAK in Germany had performance art and strong angel links and have enjoyed internal angel arts collaborations with Ulrike from Berlin who has come to the UK for various activism and arts training sessions. She still gives us advice and support at a distance and we send arts/ campaign updates.
SPEAK Connections In Holland
We were invited to SPEAK at an international conference in Holland Dec 2001 and to new year 2002 the TEMA mission conference. SPEAK founder spoke there too. There we made some lovely connections we stayed in touch with people from that too who stayed on our mailing list using our campaign resources.
In 2004, we contributed to some workshops at a Christian arts festival in Holland called Flevo Festival https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flevo_Festival and met with people with a similar ethos from a group then called “Time to Turn” in Holland. There we met them at their offices. Time to Turn was a sister network of SPEAK and their main active years were between 2004-2015 when they decided to intentionally simplify though they still do post occasionally here to keep the relational network connected.
https://www.facebook.com/timetoturn
They also started looking at farm churches and community networks building shared houses with the Catholic worker movement in Amsterdam. There is a lot of collaboration between the Catholic worker movement and SPEAK in the UK and Holland.
We still connect relationally with key people in SPEAK Holland and SPEAK Holland always made a massive contribution to our international gatherings, especially poet skinflitr8 and ambient DJ but also monk Gerard. They do amazing liturgies or lout=ergy at our events with a projector that you have just got to experience. We still connect with individuals from this group for mutual solidarity.
In October 2019 Monk Gerard supported some of the SPEAK team seeking spiritual direction to come to the Monastery in Egomond Binnen for a monastic retreat which was a special time and we lit various candles for SPEAK in the Abbey. This was an important junction of reflection as it was just before everything changed during the Pandemic. In 2019 also able to spend time with other SPEAK connections in Rotterdam.
Throughout the pandemic, SPEAK Holland, SPEAK German, and SPEAK UK connected informally on Zoom for international dance parties on a Saturday night on zoom to relieve the stress! Things like that make it a real community to get us through the challenging times. It genuinely feels like family even though more informal in how we relate. We danced out our prayers and hopes to drum and bass!
SPEAK Connections in Portugal
We have connected in Portugal with an amazing monastic eco-village called Mount of Oaks SPEAK international partners Mount of Oaks https://mountofoaks.org to learn about permaculture and explore getting land for a community, so some of the ongoing action is facilitating local skill/ resource shares, capacity building as well as campaigns
As a monastic eco-village with alternative social justice and spiritual philosophy the monastic eco-village has remained a place where SPEAK UK can gather, meet and connect informally (including people loosely connected to SPEAK values). They also run regular permaculture workshops. People from SPEAK Germany and SPEAK UK over the years went there on retreat and plotted various revolutions and projects and also took time to heal and reset and refocus for the work in each place.
History of Our Connection with Mount of Oaks
In 2005 at an international gathering Roger Mitchell and Sue Mitchell, who were on the SPEAK advisory group at the time, we met the amazing Barbara from Portugal aka Baba who was talking about getting some land. We made an instant connection and were really excited for Babas vision. A year later in 2006 she got the land after a lot of fundraising; by 2008 we were going to visit on regular retreats. We also made sure Baba connected with people from SPEAK Germany and SPEAK Holland as we were sure they would connect. Baba was good friends with Emma a SPEAK Regional Support Worker (RSW) for a good 3 years based in SPEAK Manchester UK Emma started supporting SPEAK and connecting with the build-up of work in Portugal and connecting it back to the network in 2011 Emma and Baba got married! Emma moved over to work with Baba on the land and is still networking all across Portugal today!
SPEAK Connections USA
SPEAK has strong USA connections mainly through Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne who also feature in our video. Shane Claiborne is the Founder- The Simple Way, and Author -The Irresistible Revolution. Prof Tony Campolo- is SPEAK Advisor, Supporter, Author
Red Letter Christians.
Both Tony and Shane have active networks of young and older believers passionate about social justice, especially through Shane’s community.
SPEAK has always had strong connections to the USA since the first week of our existence. In 1998 we had our first meeting in London and then 1 week later we met Tony Campolo at an event in Norwich where he helped support and advise us to get going!
We had done a whole blog thanking Tony for his support over the years here. FUTURE LINK
Here are some links to our friends and Partners:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Campolo
https://www.redletterchristians.org
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shane_Claiborne
https://www.theordinaryradicals.com
https://www.nurturingcommunities.org/vision
HISTORY OF OUR USA NETWORKING
2000
SPEAK took off in UK universities between 1998 and 2000.
One year later, our USA contingents supported by Tony Campolo invited us to an event called Urbana in the year 2000 which then took place in Chicago with another international conference following straight afterwards. When we were in the international networking conference we met others from a few places and shared what we were doing. The most enthusiastic people we met were from Brazil.
https://urbana.org/about-urbana
We introduced the concept of Pray and Post campaigns and while we got an amazing response from our workshops the USA was too big for it to take off in the same way. For students to have the capacity to meet up in the USA is not so easy, so maybe state-wide networks or other forms of initiatives may catalyse in the future.
2011 Networking In USA
10 years later in 2011 Tony also supported us to visit the USA as part of their fundraising conference. We were also able to go networking in New York and Philadelphia spending time living with simple communities of a few days, doing the morning liturgy with people from the community. We were also able to visit squatted churches in New York with a church community working out of a squat which is illegal in the USA. Spending time with these activists was a fascinating and rewarding experience. We have stayed in touch informally with these groups and occasionally have video meet-ups and pray together over our work for justice.
Community Peace Maker Teams (Previous Christian Peacemaker Teams).
We had quite a few connections with CPT with interns working in our office with strong connections to their group over the years and us encouraging SPEAK people to join peacemaker teams who then share their stories and inspirations when they return. They are more based in the USA but people do take part from wider places and do a lot of peace-making in areas of conflict such as in the Middle East – most important and urgent situation.
CPT places teams at the invitation of local peacemaking communities that are confronting situations of lethal conflict. These teams support and amplify the voices of local peacemakers who risk injury and death by waging non-violent direct action to confront systems of violence and oppression.
2022-2022 SPIRIT SPACE
During the 2020-2021 pandemic, we connected with an amazing group called Spirit Space, who are involved in arts and music and organize a team for the Burning Man Festival. In the years when Burning Man didn’t take place in person, it was held online as a virtual gathering. In 2020, we participated by sharing poems, stories, and reflections in the online Burning Man space. 1 year later, in 2022 one of the inspirational facilitators of this movement called Hope came to Glastonbury and was part of the amazing Iona community space at the Glastonbury festival. Some SPEAK people were able to meet in person and share inspiration and we hope to connect over future adventures. We hope to maybe visit the Nowhere festival in Spain (European Burning Man equivalent) or at one junction in the future collaborate at future Burning Man. There have also been informal conversations about the Milatree art installation project in Burning Man USA with Shane Claiborne or doing an equivalent in a USA event but this has been an informal future possibility rather than a definite plan. This is about welding guns into ploughs! Arms to renewables.
We still share prayer requests with the spirit space people and they are just an amazingly supportive community at a distance.
https://linktr.ee/inspiritspace
SPEAK Connections In Poland
In 2006 and in other years SPEAK UK representatives have teamed up with SPEAK Germany representatives to do workshops at slot arts festival we love the vibe and energy of how this festival is done and feel an ongoing connection here.
Some of our previous staff working in the SPEAK UK office have come from Poland and artists we have brought over for various UK events have also come from Poland so still a strong relational connection.
SPEAK Connections In Sweden
SPEAK peeps went on a networking adventure to Sweden in 2005 as quite a few people who ran a fair trade café wanted to form a network for many years after representatives in Sweden came to our international gatherings. We haven’t talked to them recently, but we think people with similar values are still loosely connected in Sweden, albeit informally.
Note to All of Our International Community Friends
Over the years there have been various international network coordinators and various groups that have come to our international gatherings from all over the world.
If you are from another sister network and we have missed you out, big apologies!! There are so many connections over the 25+ years please email us with your update here admin@speak.org.uk
Appendix
We have a Facebook group called ‘SPEAK Informal International Connect’
https://www.facebook.com/groups/516733628378037
If you are interested in joining this Facebook page email with a brief explanation of how you’re connected with the network, or how you want to connect, at admin@speak.org.uk
Quote from Shane Claiborne
“The fine folks of SPEAK are some of my favorite holy troublemakers. They are gentle prophets. Their joy is contagious and disarming. Their imagination provokes us, stirs us, and invites us to refuse to settle for the world as it is now and to dream of the world as it could be. SPEAK’s revolution exposes injustice and interrupts death… but their revolution also knows how to dance, and laugh — and therein lies its power. They are not just protesting — they are protestifying… they don’t just tell you what’s wrong with the world, they invite you to imagine how it could be made right again. So if you haven’t already jumped on SPEAK’s freedom train… jump on. Plot goodness with them. Dive into their holy mischief. Join them as they join God in storming the gates of hell and bringing heaven down to earth.”
Shane Claiborne author and activist
www.thesimpleway.org
Facebook: @ShaneClaiborne
