Bi's of Colour (the organisation and individuals) have told us that we have two sets of issues with racism at BiCon (which were looked at during the anti racism review in 2020):
- microaggressions
- organising systems that allow repeated mistakes to be made
Last year (2021) at the Decision Making Meeting, the community voted in favour of a proposal to make anti-racism training mandatory for all BiCon attendees. We hope this will address some of the issues that were mentioned in the review.
Training Sessions
Dates for antiracism training have been sent to everyone who signed up for BiCon 2022 and hasn't yet done the training. If you still need to do the training and haven't been emailed about a date to attend, please get in touch.
For those who attend on the day, there will be an opportunity to complete a shortened version of the training on the Friday and Saturday mornings.
Accessibility
We completely understand that if we are making training mandatory we need to make sure it's accessible. To do this we'll run a suite of 'offerings' for people who may need adaptations, based on the YouTube recording we did in a previous session. This will include:
- subtitles / closed captions
- video transcript
- doing the training at your own pace
- doing the exercises in a different format
There are many options we can look at and we can liaise with people about their individual needs. If you want to chat to us about making the training accessible for you, please email bicon.uk.2022@gmail.com.
Exemptions
Exemptions will be made for those who have:
- lived experience of racism (in the way that the training speaks about, i.e. Black, Brown or Asian people's experiences), or
- completed other relevant/more recent training
However, we want the training to be welcoming and you can meet other people in the BiCon communty and make new friends at the sessions, so everyone is very welcome to come to the training even if you meet one of these exemptions. Email bicon.uk.2022@gmail.com to discuss.
If you don't meet either of the above criteria and choose not to complete the training, you'll be unable to attend BiCon 2022. If you have any questions or concerns, please email bicon.uk.2022@gmail.com.