Having our programme blessed with your words will be an invitation for all of us to hold onto creativity as a way to get free.
Kim Loliya (25 March 2026)
On Saturday, 25 April 2026, I spent the day at Black Psychotherapy’s ‘Justice in Therapy: Decolonising the Curriculum’ conference.
At first sight (in March) of the ‘calling for papers’ post, I knew I wanted this event to be my April poet moment.
The opening lines of a poem also came to mind,
“When a system is in dysfunctional equilibrium, it is necessary to push it into disequilibrium to regain a functional equilibrium.” – J M Whyne (Nov. 2009)
I had the privilege of opening and closing the conference with poetry. You can watch excerpts of both in the clip below.
The opening poem, ‘Change Deconstructed’, is from a piece that was written in June 2020. This is the poem that came to mind when I saw the ‘calling for papers’ post. The closing poem was a free-flow poem, using attendees’ responses to the prompt.
“We are holding space for…”
It was an honour to be trusted with the attendees’ words. A special mention has to go to Hasan Kurtarici & Deborah McLeod, who were our BSL Interpreters for the day.
The day was a thoughtful and intentional combination of presentations, workshops, a panel discussion, and a Q&A. Some of the presentations that particularly struck a chord in me were:
- Introduction by Kim Loliya, director and founder of Black Psychotherapy (Photo 1)
- ‘Talking with Machines: Making Sense of AI, Bias and Psychotherapy’ – Femma A. (Photo 2 )
- ‘Naming Whiteness, Promoting Justice: Re-thinking Psychotherapy Education’ – Dr Frances Basset (photo 3)
- Personhood: Incorporating Social Justice into Counselling & Psychotherapy Training for MHP – Banjo Aromolaran and Elizabeth Wilson (photo 4)
- Are You Recolonising Psychological Interventions’ Education and Training Through Decolonising? – মুসাররাত Dr Musharrat Ahmed-Landeryou Ph.D (photos 5 & 6). The ‘Recolonising or Decolonising?’ question could and should be asked in all sectors. Dr Musharrat J. Ahmed-Landeryou also used a quote by Rabindranath Thakur. He is a poet I heard about last year during a poetry walking tour by Bookmarked London. So an extra moment of resonance.
If we truly seek to see justice, decolonisation, true liberation etc., we must be willing to interrogate the systems in which we live and critically assess the systems we uphold. We must also, as Banjo Aromolaran highlighted in his workshop, be willing to start with an honest look at ourselves.
Find out more
- If you’d like to pair poetry with your conference or event, please fill out the booking enquiry form. Let’s see if we can make it a perfect pairing.
- You can find out more about me here: ‘Who Am I’
- You can watch my poet reel
- You can check out more of my links (performances, podcast interviews, book reviews, my poetry books, Thursday Thoughts…) on my Linktree
- Buy me a coffee – Kofi.com
