About 30 people gathered at the Friends’ Meeting House in Brighton. After an animated round of introduction, where people discussed their background and their engagement with feminist and antiracist politics, we presented the BRIDGES project, its rationale and how it evolved over the past 3 years. The Virtual Lab was then introduced and explained to the participants, showing the variety of materials, tools, resources as well as how to navigate the BRIDGES course.

Four guest speakers, who engaged with several of the Virtual Lab materials in their own teaching and community organising, then explained how they adapted the materials to their own needs and settings. Each of them picked on a different tool, activity and resource, and explained their relevance and application. We then divided in small groups, facilitated by the guest speakers, and using the Virtual Lab each group engaged with the proposed activities. We then came back to the broader group discussion to reflect on how notions of structural racism, bordering and solidarity were relevant for understanding structural barriers in our society as well as in our classrooms. After these reflections, we continued our discussions by sharing a meal offered by the Jollof cafe, a self-organised migrant solidarity collective. Members of the Jollof cafe explained to all participants the politics and ethics of their project, and by sitting around the table and sharing the meal, we discussed how to challenge structural racism and bordering through our everyday acts of solidarity.