WHO WE ARE
KIN brings black activists, organisers and campaigners together from across the UK to collaborate, strategise and support each other.
THE CONTEXT
Kinfolk Network was established in 2017. At the time, Trump had just been elected and the Brexit referendum had rocked and divided the UK.
As a consequence, there was a felt need for accessible, well-resourced, restorative spaces for Black campaigners, grassroots organisers and activists - across the UK - to come together in community to rest, connect, strategise, heal and be held accountable.
Kinfolk Network’s co-founders saw this as a crucially missing and necessary piece of infrastructure for the Black liberation movement.
THE WHAT
Kinfolk Network (KIN) holds space for Black activists, organisers and campaigners to come together, learn from each other and build meaningful relationships rooted in love, collectivity and kinship. We believe that having a well-resourced, well-connected movement for Black liberation is crucial and that powerful social movements are made up of, in Adrienne Maree Brown's words, ‘critical connections’ which sustain the work of movements for generations.
For Kinfolk Network, Black includes anyone from an African, Caribbean and/or mixed race ancestry. Whilst the main purpose of Kinfolk Network spaces is to centre folk who are of caribbean, african or mixed descent, Kinfolk Network recognises the utility of political Blackness and the importance of working together with other racialised folks, and seeks to be in connection and solidarity with activists who identify as people of the global majority - we do this through coordinating spaces for solidarity.
OUR APPROACH
Learning from, and collaborating with black activists throughout the UK and beyond helps decentralise our thinking and offerings, and better ensures that our work is accessible and relevant.
Creating safer spaces for the most marginalised black activists, including members of the queer community, and those who are most marginalised within it; as well as, people with disabilities, neurodivergent folks, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers working in support of each other.
Restoration, healing and joy is both a by-product and a destination, we strive to be intentional in everything we do and in how we do it. “In a world full of turmoil, remember that joy is an act of resistance!”- Audre Lorde.
Delving into the context within which Black people are fighting for justice, we want to explore what our history, present and future is in achieving liberation. What does Black liberation look like here in the UK? How is it unique and how does it compare to France, Brazil, Germany or the US? What is common in our struggle but not in our strategy? How are we coping as humans in an increasingly openly fascist world?
Core Team
Gillian Katungi (she/they)
Executive Director
Dee. (she/her)
Network Organiser
I'm the founder of the Black Feminist Bookshop, where I host book clubs, pop-ups, and events to nurture and share ideas for radical social change. Resistance, imagination, and care motivate my work. I cultivate spaces for learning, knowledge-sharing, connection, and conversation for Black women, femmes, girls, and non-binary people. I recognise the importance of holding safe and generative spaces.
As a queer Black feminist and grassroots organiser dedicated to empowering Black women, femmes, girls, and non-binary people, I advocate for Black liberation, global justice, and intersectionality. Radical politics and creating meaningful partnerships are woven into my practice.
In addition to starting and running the Black Feminist Bookshop, I co-managed a radical left-wing bookshop in London, have been a member of various grassroots groups, and regularly collaborate with grassroots organisations, activists, and mobilisers who are contributing to the UK's racial and social justice movements. I've been following KIN since its inception, and I'm glad to be part of a team that's dedicated to building a sustainable Black liberation movement.
I am a mother, a multi-disciplinary artist, an organiser, a healer and inifintely more. My purpose feels rooted in collective liberation, joy, and the ongoing healing process. I believe the revolution begins with internal transformation and that the change we are trying to see, at a systemic & structural level, must come from within in order to manifest outside of us. I’m passionate about connecting theory to practice - in community. My life's work is grounded in love, reverence for life, and ancestral connection. My practice is informed by the Black Feminist tradition and inspired by the invitation to dream audaciously via speculative fiction and emerging strategy. My approach to organising centres moving at the pace of trust, going deep, anti-oppression, collectivism and accountability.
For over 15 years I have been deeply committed to social justice through campaigning, grassroots community activism and nurturing the next generation. My experience moves across lobbying, grant-making, income generation, strategy, community building , youth work, arts and healing practice. In particular, I'm interested in cultural change, remembering ancestral wisdom, transformative organising practice, mutual aid, embodiment, decolonizing therapeutic practices, and creative self-expression.
It is my mission to collaboratively create the radical infrastructure that our movement for liberation needs; to facilitate spaces that enable deep and long lasting connections that will be sustained for generations, to co create space for transformation, learning and experimentation for movement building and healing.
KIN Co-Founders
Ayeisha Thomas-Smith (she/her)
Co-Founder / Board Member
Ayeisha is a social justice trainer, writer and broadcaster based in London, UK. She is one of two Executive Directors of NEON (the New Economy Organisers Network) and is currently undertaking a PhD at Goldsmiths University of London looking at neoliberalism and social movements. In 2017 she co-founded KIN, a network for Black activists working for collective liberation, and she sits on the boards of Common Wealth and the Institute for Public Policy Research. Ayeisha is passionate about Black liberation and alternative economic systems, and centres anti-oppression in her approach to organising for power. Ayeisha also presents the Weekly Economics Podcast, Economics with Subtitles for BBC R4 and The Why Factor for BBC World Service.
Zahra Dalilah (she/her)
Co-Founder / Board Member
Zahra is a queer Black feminist from Lewisham, South East London. After living abroad for some years, she delved into the city's political landscape via Take Back The City an anti-gentrification and popular education political project which offered an intervention into local elections. She co-founded a project called Our Fathers and Us which looked into Black British fatherhood and the myths and realities of Black communities and their relationships to fatherhood.Since then she got involved with the community food movement, climate justice work and land-based activism, especially where it is led by people of colour and working class people.
Heeding Malcolm X’s wisdom that “Revolution is based on land [and] land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality”, she begun to work within a framework of understanding that encompasses Black liberation as global land struggle and a fight against white supremacist separation and disconnect from self, other and the land. She follows in the footsteps of her pan-African parents in believing that global solidarity for Africa and the diaspora can unlock the transformative potential humanity needs to heal from the traumas of white supremacist hetero-patriarchy. Dreaming of a thriving independent media sector and joyful black children make her happy.
Kennedy Walker (they/them)
Co-Founder
Kennedy spent the best part of a decade campaigning and organising for social and economic justice across various issues and movement spaces from housing to migration. They are one of the founders of Kinfolk Network and were a founding member of Resourcing Racial Justice and Covid Mutual Aid UK. Currently, they are freelancing working with individuals, collectives and organisations and their existing wisdom to facilitate strategy development, research processes, mediation and more. Kennedy is also a trainee counsellor at the Gestalt Centre in London.
Find them on socials @kennedysrwalker