Co-revolutionary Praxis: Accompaniment as a strategy for working together

Editors: Abby Cunnane, Charlotte Huddleston, Sakiko Sugawa and Mary N. Taylor

Contributors: Tosh Ahkit, Abby Cunnane, Lisa Gibson, member of Tamaki Housing Group, David Harvey, Charlotte Huddleston, Grant H. Kester, Ella Grace McPherson-Newton, Sakiko Sugawa and Mary N. Taylor

Publisher: ST PAUL St Publishing

Designer: Sakiko Sugawa (cover) and Sonya Lacey (inside pages)

Date: 2015

ISBN: 978-0-9922463-3-4

Price: $30.00

*Please visit us at ST PAUL St Gallery to purchase this publication (cash only), or contact us at sgallery@aut.ac.nz

Made in solidarity with Tāmaki Housing Group and state housing tenants in Aotearoa. Proceeds from this publication will be donated to the Tāmaki Housing Group.

Co-Revolutionary Praxis: accompaniment as a strategy for working together is an outcome of the 2014 ST PAUL St Gallery Research Fellowship with Sakiko Sugawa.

Sakiko Sugawa, a cultural worker and thinker, is usually based in Kyoto, where she co-founded and continues to work for Social Kitchen, 21st Century Social & Cultural Center. For the Fellowship Sugawa engaged with the concept of accompaniment as outlined by Staughton Lynd in his book Accompanying: Pathways to Social Change.[1]

"To accompany someone is to go somewhere with him or her, to break bread together, to be present on a journey with a beginning and an end…There's an element of mystery, of openness, in accompaniment. I'll go with you and support you on our journey wherever it leads. I'll keep you company and share your fate for a while. And by "a while," I don't mean a little while. Accompaniment is much more about sticking with a task until it's deemed completed by the person or people being accompanied, rather by the accomagnateur."

Sugawa’s project in Auckland involved accompanying a group of young activists involved with the Tamaki Housing Group. The exhibition This Home is Occupied, about state housing in Aotearoa New Zealand was one outcome of this relationship, the publication Co-Revolutionary Praxis: accompaniment as a strategy for working together is another. Both came about with support of members of the Tamaki Housing Group.