Not belonging as a superpower!

Open Minds Birmingham Group - Nov 23

This month we were back in Birmingham at our usual venue. It was great to welcome some new faces to the group and to get to know each other a bit better. The theme for the group was celebrating the complicated and rich stories that come from our heritages. Even though we all have brown skin, our upbringings and migration histories were all very different and it was a lot of fun hearing about the differences and similarities between our stories. 

One of the big ideas that we talked about was how to feel like we belong in spaces that often pretend as if we don’t exist. We had a really interesting conversation about the history of LGBTQIA+ people in South Asian cultures as there is a lot of evidence that pre-colonialism we were present and taking part in society. We agreed that we must celebrate this history and continue to find ways to talk about and share it.

We talked about the idea of a ‘motherland’ and how for a few of us, our connection to the places of our parents’ birth is strong and still important. Most of us feel like in some situations we don’t really ‘belong’ in the UK or in South Asia. It’s made more complicated with our queer identities which often add another layer of invisibility.

As the group continued we talked about how some of us have worked to create a space for themselves which recognises all of these contradictions but that still feels empowering. We talked about how some of our parents feel the same kind of barrier with ‘fitting in’ or ‘belonging’ in the UK and some of this is just what the immigrant experience is about.

If we can turn the situation into a positive, it means that all of us have more than one way to think about our lives, our cultures and our futures. We can look at it from an English or South Asian point of view and can choose which one makes the most sense for us. This is a kind of super-power and something we should take advantage of!

We had some fun playing a ‘guess the spice in the masala’ game and as you might expect, it got us talking about our favorite comfort foods. At the end of the group, we decided that for the next session we needed to bring some food and hopefully in the future we can also organise a social event where we can go out for a meal together.

The feedback told us that everyone enjoyed the group and we next plan to meet in Birmingham in February 2024.

With warm wishes,

The Open Minds Project ­

We usually meet on the last Wednesday of each month and if you want to join us at an Open Minds Meeting, please visit the Events page on our website.