Undercurrents Steve Brett

We were fortunate to meet Kübra Gümüşay at the Realisation Festival in the UK in 2023, as one of the Festival's keynote speakers. We loved her presentation and managed to catch up with her in April 2024 to interview her for 3rd Space. Kübra is an award-winning author, journalist, and activist. She studied political science in Hamburg and at the London School of Oriental and African Studies. She has won awards for her writing and campaigns against racism and sexualised violence. She speaks on issues of social justice around the world and is involved in advocacy and feminist research for 'utopian' and 'desirable futures'. Her book Speaking and Being was one of the most successful non-fiction books in Germany in 2020. She is also a Mercator Senior Fellow at Cambridge University.

Too often seen as mere statistics, the historical context for the dislocation and extreme trauma of young refugees, as well as their necessity for sanctuary and a liveable future, is often forgotten or ignored. Yet, we are the world, and it is a world where more and more refugees will be fleeing the results of war, climate change, and oppressive regimes. Based on her own work and life experience, Renate Keller brings a creative dimensionality and depth to teaching young refugees in Switzerland, and finds in their receptivity and desire to connect, a sensibility for the Heart. This is a rare and insightful glimpse into the challenges and inspiration of working intimately with refugees searching for a life in the West.

We interviewed Manish Jain at Shikshantar, The People's Institute for Re-thinking Education and Development in the ancient city of Udaipur in India. Although born and brought up in India, Manish worked in the US for Morgan Stanley, received a Master's at Harvard University, and worked for UNESCO. He returned to India twenty-five years ago to look after his illiterate grandmother, which began a deep process of Un-learning. In the interview we talk about his discovery of the gift culture in India, its abundance versus scarcity culture, forgiveness, how working with your hands is not extracurricular, and the significance of cow dung.

In the wake of the brutal attack by Hamas and the escalating violence in Gaza by Israeli forces, Mary Adams of 3rd-Space speaks with Yael Treidel from Hadera in Israel. Yael, an activist involved with Women Wage Peace since 2014, currently works for a medical charity, Road for Recovery, responsible for driving hundreds of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza for medical treatment in Israel on a daily basis. Working closely with Palestinian women, Yael and others in WWP, have long pushed for a just political settlement between the two nations.

 

In this episode, Steve Brett talks with the author Tomiwa Owolade, about his book This is Not America - Why Being Black and British Matters. Tom argues that racial identity is not an abstraction, but is contextual and based on different geographical and historical factors. He writes that many of the ideas we have about what it means to be black have been adopted from America, when in fact what it means to be black and British is different from what it means to be black and American.

Steve Brett interviews Dougald Hine on his new book, At Work in the Ruins - Finding Our Place in the Time of Science, Climate Change, Pandemics & All the Other Emergencies. They discuss his remarkable journey from his focus on the Climate Crisis, to why he's not talking about the Climate Crisis anymore. They go on to talk about the impact of the Dark Mountain Project, the work of Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, and how "the end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop. The end of the world as we know it is also the end of a way of knowing the world.” For further references recommended by Dougald, please note, The Myth of Modernity by Michael Greer, and A Small Farm Future by Chris Smaje.