We are committed to care, compassion, joy, hope and change.
The dots: connections for change is a social agency from Ellie Hutchinson. Ellie is part of the collective, an intersectional feminist research and facilitation group based in the UK.
Our vision:
Individuals, organisations, communities, and societies feel better.
Our mission:
We created the dots: connections for change as we know that change doesn’t happen in silos. Feeling better is deeply political. Systemic injustice holds us all back.
Our approach blends work across sectors and spaces. We join the dots between different social issues and different practices. We draw on arts-based research methods and social trauma-informed approaches to wellbeing. We’ve worked on mental health, domestic abuse, poverty, inequality, online worlds, participation and co-design, community development and individual wellbeing.
We support spaces for dreaming, imagination and hope. We create alliances and support networks for change.
We don’t think the solutions are easy, and we know that complicated issues require complicated responses.
We are committed to holding these conversations with care, compassion and joy.
We don’t offer safe spaces, but safer spaces, where we hold space for getting it wrong, getting it less wrong and trying again. We approach our work with human-ness, and all the messiness that brings- pleasure, happiness, anger, hope, laughter, sadness. All of it is welcome here!
We join the dots and find the connections for change.
Our ethical framework
At the dots: making the connections for change, all ethical considerations must flow from the following principle; work must support the social transformation towards holistic, individual, social, ecological, economic and cultural flourishing.
All systems, processes, methods and engagements must enhance dignity, including that of research/facilitation teams. This includes informed and ongoing consent, remuneration, undertaking anti-racist practice, use of multiple methods, centering care and compassion.
All work must be shame sensitive and trauma informed and work with the principle of safe enough spaces, holding accountability, care and compassion with nuance. We recognise that lived/learnt experience is not a binary identity.
Joy is centred as a tool to resist urgency culture and compassion fatigue. Research is non-extractive and meaningful for all involved.
We value different forms of knowledge creation equally. We centre feminist epistemologies, understanding that positionality shapes how knowledge is created and what voices count as evidence. As such we understand that rigour comes in many forms. We de-colonise knowledge creation on purpose.
All work undertaken via the dots must support, build and strengthen communities, alliances and networks
For the next three years, we’ll be focusing on Wellbeing, Challenging Radicalisation and Building Connections. Download our strategic plan to find out more. Our strategic plan