Developing anti-racist practice in the Early Years

How three practitioners turned fading momentum into a sustained space for anti-racist practice

We created the forum in response to that age-old challenge of introducing, embedding and most importantly, maintaining key areas of practice in busy early childhood settings. We are sure that many practitioners have had similar experiences: you attend training that feels as though it is the answer to your questions. It feels in line with your ethos, values and the way you want to work and be with young children. You finish the training feeling inspired, ignited with a passion to go and put in place everything you have learnt. However, as time goes on, the demands of the job mean your ideas are slowly and unintentionally deprioritised. You can be left with a feeling of discomfort, a feeling of there being a mismatch between what you are doing, and what you want to be doing.

This was our experience as three practitioners in Bristol in 2022: Izzy, Beth and me. The year before, I had organised training by Liz Pemberton. Within the context of a global anti-racism movement at that time, the sessions felt like the answer. It was the ‘how’ to: how do we make our practice anti-racist? How do we talk about anti-racism with young children? How do we make our environments anti-racist? We went away and worked hard in our own settings, putting things into place, but as time went on, felt the momentum fading.

In response, we came together with a shared urgency to keep the momentum going; setting up BEYFARP has been our attempt to do that in our own settings and more widely across Bristol. Here we share our learning, successes, and challenges, in the hope that they may inspire you to do something similar. As you read the following, we invite you to consider what it might look like to start a forum within your own context. 

Connection and sharing

"…alone we know a little, but together we know a lot. This work doesn’t belong to any one person or group, it’s everyone’s work to do together."

Britt Hawthorne

We know that this work can feel particularly difficult if done in isolation, sometimes in contexts where other colleagues may be unwilling to engage. For us, anti-racism educator Britt Hawthorne’s quote serves as a guiding principle for our work together. The original partnership between the three of us personally and between our two settings has been instrumental to the continuation of the forum. The later partnership with Shaddai added even more depth and richness to our work.

Teaming up with others provides accountability, encouragement when we share how we’re applying anti-racism in our settings and reassurance that we are maintaining momentum. When one of us has less capacity, another steers the ship and picks up the slack until we can share it equally again.

What could this look like for you?

How can you find other people or settings to link up with and discuss anti-racist practice? Attending training is a great place to network and swap contact details as it means you might find people with similar interests and goals. Alternatively, reach out to other similar types of settings. Are you a school-based nursery? A childminder? Reaching out to them means you might already have some understanding of each other’s contexts. This can be helpful when thinking about starting a group or facilitating a shared space.

The power of reflection

Before we decided on the structure of the forum and advertised the sessions publicly, we spent a long time reflecting together on what we wanted the forum to achieve, our goals, and, importantly, our positionality within the work. 

As three white women, we were conscious of not wanting to position ourselves as ‘experts in anti-racism’. We were not trying to become the experts in the room; we were trying to create the conditions for shared responsibility, honest reflection and continued action. We spent time thinking about how to move away from being seen as ‘leading’ the forum in a traditional training sense, and towards facilitating a space where practitioners could listen, share, question and learn together. 

We still start each session by explicitly telling attendees:

• What the forum is
• Why we started it
• Who we are within the work.

This has proven effective because it opens the floor for more vulnerable discussions about what is going well and what people are finding challenging. In that sense, the atmosphere is different from many more formalised anti-racism training sessions: we privilege listening over teaching. It is an ever-evolving journey, and we spend as much time reflecting on the forum as planning it.

What could this look like for you?

Spend some time thinking about:

• Your goal.
  Ours was maintaining the momentum of anti-racist practice and helping other nurseries to do this too.
• What problem are you trying to address?
  Perhaps you want to think more deeply about how children negotiate difference and play with power, how to develop a more anti-racist environment, or how to respond to an incident in your setting or wider community.
• What is your own experience of race and racism, and how might this shape how you see children, families and the work itself?
  Take your time working this out. It is important that the purpose feels clear and honest, because this is what will sustain you when the work feels hard.

Even now, four years later, we still return to our original goal in planning meetings: why are we doing this, and does this plan help us maintain momentum? Be brave and honest about the problem you are trying to address.

Psychological and physical safety

Part of our responsibility as facilitators is making sure that the forum feels like a psychologically safe space for everyone who attends. We do this in lots of ways, firstly, we have some ground rules that we share at the start of each session, for example:

• We encourage people to consider the language they use
• We consider impact over intention.
• We talk about having a culture of ‘gentle accountability’ and give attendees options for raising issues both with the group and privately if needed. 

The physical environment is also an important part of the felt safety we try to create. The core forum is always face-to-face, because when you are working together and reflecting on often uncomfortable and difficult themes, being completely present feels important. We pay strong attention to making the space feel warm and welcoming: we have snacks and hot drinks for practitioners arriving at the end of a long working day, keep the lights low, sit in a circle, and spread ourselves as facilitators amongst everyone who comes along. 

We also like to have something to share or give, whether that is a workbook, a staffroom poster, a book recommendation, a toolkit, or access to our lending library of books for children and adults. These small details help people feel welcomed into a shared conversation. 

We regularly seek feedback from everyone who comes, to make sure that our sense of how the session has been matches with people’s experiences of being there.

What could this look like for you?

Think together about what boundaries or guidance you need to put in place to ensure this is a space for everyone. Also think about the physical environment:

• Where will you meet?
• How will you welcome people
• What might help the space feel warm and inclusive?

Before your sessions, think about what you might do in a tricky situation. For example, what if someone says, “What about white people?” or “None of this ever happens in our setting” (See our third article for how we’d respond).

You could even practice some gentle challenges together to help you feel confident about steering conversations in a different direction if needed. It is helpful to give yourselves a bit of time after each session to talk together about what went well, and whether you might need to adapt any of your support for next time.

Celebrate and empower

An important part of keeping the forum going has been celebrating our wins, big and small! Over the past four years, we have had many ups and downs, but we have always tried to remind each other of the impact we have had, even if at times that has felt less than we would have wanted.

We have always felt that if one child in Bristol has a different and more positive experience at nursery because of the work we have been doing, then it has been worth it. When world events feel overwhelming, knowing that we can have a small influence on children’s experiences keeps motivation high and empowers us to make change.

For us, keeping anti-racist practice on the table has meant creating regular opportunities to return to the work, to speak honestly, to share what we are trying, and to encourage one another when momentum fades. The forum has not been about having all the answers. It has been about refusing to let anti-racism become something we only return to when there is time.