#ResRev22

Call for Papers

Following postponement due to the pandemic, we are delighted to invite you to take part in our International Resilience Revolution Conference, which is now taking place on 30-31 March 2022 and tickets are FREE!

However, if you don’t have a bucket and spade there’s no need for despair as, due to the on-going uncertainties around all things Covid-19, our conference will also benefit from a state-of-the-art digital event space running in parallel via Whova. You can take part from wherever you are, so long as you have internet access.

Welcome to our International Resilience Revolution Conference. 

Like us, you are probably interested in radical ways of researching and practising resilience. Ways that put social justice, systems and community members’ leadership and priorities right at the heart.  We are developing community and professional practices based on our research on Beating the Odds and Changing the Odds. If you share these aspirations then you’ve come to the right place. Our conference will focus on resilience approaches that tackle inequalities and apply what researchers call ‘socio-ecological systems’ thinking. These are ways of thinking that take into account families, schools and wider communities in terms of resilience building. At the conference expect to see challenges to resilience approaches that are dominated by academics and policy makers suggesting we should all just pull ourselves up by our boot straps.

The conference will provide a unique and energetic learning space, with young people, academics, parents/carers, practitioners, researchers and community members all coming together to learn from one another. An exciting and informative combination of research, practice-based evidence and lived experience will have the schedule packed with insightful keynotes, co-delivered workshops and activities all linked to resilience approaches.

Join in with our conference to share what you’re up to if it broadly fits with our principles. If you want to come without your own structured contribution, that’s great too. Come to learn from academics and local communities who are developing research and practice that we want to share and grow with others.

Conference background

The conference is being organised by a complex and passionate partnership – the Centre of Resilience for Social Justice at the University of Brighton in collaboration with the social enterprise Boingboing and HeadStart Blackpool, which is led by Blackpool Council, supported by the UK’s National Lottery Community Fund.

For three years, the University of Brighton’s Centre of Resilience for Social Justice has been working its own community network, Boingboing, alongside Blackpool Council and other partners on a Resilience Revolution which started in Blackpool, UK. The focus is using resilience approaches to develop new ways of working right across a whole town to support young people’s mental health and wellbeing.

Together we’re now organising the world’s first Resilience Revolution conference. The conference is being co-designed and co-facilitated by various members of the Resilience Revolution, including young people and parents/carers, who are eager to share their expertise with the world; from sharing stories of hope to challenging inequalities within systems. Akin to the whole town approach to resilience in Blackpool, everybody involved in development will have a role in making the conference a positive, innovative and exciting event to be part of.

The plans include: visits to schools and other local places to meet children, young people and adults who are putting resilience-based theories into practice in their communities; pre-conference workshops to learn about exciting techniques and initiatives; PhD student project updates, including talks that aren’t just aimed at academics; and lots of informal opportunities to make friends and new collaborations.

Themes of the Resilience Revolution Conference and ideas for contribution submissions

• Resilience research or practice with an activist twist
• Stories of how people have reclaimed resilience-based approaches to make them relevant to their own challenging context, for example, as a local community, youth collective or service user group
• Cultural and cross-cultural aspects of resilience
• Exciting new theoretical ideas on resilience that take us to a higher plain
• Putting revolutionary resilience ideas into practice in a school setting or across a whole town
• Challenges to dominant constructions of resilience
• Research-based and practice accounts of how people are looking beyond the individual and applying resilience approaches across systems

Expect a mix of fascinating keynote talks by leading experts with personal, academic and practice experience, and of course, we want to hear from YOU. 

We are particularly keen to highlight work that has been thoroughly co-produced between different partners (e.g., young people, academics, practitioners). We are also proactively seeking to include contributions from people who face additional barriers to participation, including those who identify as being from an under-represented community, i.e. from an ethnic minority, working-class, LGBTQ+, neurodiverse, or those with a long-term illness or disability. We will have some bursaries for people on a low income, including communities, youth and students who are doing important work that needs sharing.

Keep checking our conference website for further updates and sign up for our newsletter at www.boingboing.org.uk so you won’t miss out.

This conference was postponed from September 2020. For enquiries please email us – resilience@brighton.ac.uk.