What is SSF?

Intro
This space is here to collect thoughts on that perennial question: what is the sheffield social forum? Perhaps when there is a diversity of voices represented here we should link to it from the front page of the main website.

Disclaimer: none of the below defines the SSF for the group, or even for the person who wrote the comments (people can change their minds). What it does is indicate the range of ingredients to the constantly changing blend that makes the SSF exist.

Cuthbert
on saturday march 27th 2004 the left was... all in one room, not at each others throats, looking toward the future, making new links, uniting with religious organisations at a grass roots level, seasoned veterans and newbies getting along, from far and wide, whats more the words kronstadt and ice pick were never mentioned! There is more about the day here: http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-sheffield/2004-April/001642.html

Tom Stafford
The Sheffield Social Forum will not be sponsored by any government or corporation. It will not be run by any political party, dominated by any ideology, distracted by any compromise with injustice or discrimination. It will not solve your problems for you, take any actions on your behalf or tell you what to think or do.

The Sheffield Social Forum will not be televised.

The Sheffield Social Forum will put you in the driver's seat

Sarah Jane
What is SSF to me…?

It is about people – who live in/come from/care about Sheffield – as individuals, not necessarily representing anything but our selves, pooling our skills and knowledge to raise awareness about and combat issues in Sheffield and to build relationships with each other. Using this to make the links between our issues in Sheffield and those that affect other people in Britain, across Europe and globally. It is about building relationships with the people around us and each making a little effort which can represent the things we feel/know but don’t have a “formal” way of expressing, or can’t make work through the systems/bodies that we have already. Hopefully, SSF will help give us choices about what the little efforts that we can all make are, so that we can work together, in a fun way, to create change.

For some people, it will be about local issues, such as the incinerator or 9 ladies, or defending or cleaning up local community spaces, for some it will be about national and/or global issues, for some it will be about creating a picture of all the good work that goes on already and for some it will just be about having some choices.

It is important to me that SSF doesn’t duplicate work of others or “stamp on other people’s toes” in any way. At the moment it seems that the greatest need from the vol-comm sector is around having a space that is truly independent – where there are no barriers or restrictions due to funding or political constraints – where we can really express ourselves.

Sheffield Social Forum can really make a difference in my home town – it’s going to be down to the people involved how and what that difference is. I haven’t mentioned love (explicitly) yet – but I do just want to say that love – and the kind of ego-less support that that means, is central to this for me.

Dan Olner
What does it mean to be a member of the Sheffield Social Forum?

If you are a member of a political party, a union, a sports club etc., the role of the member is pretty clear, and not exactly controversial. There are designated roles, and ways of choosing who does those roles. It is easy enough to write down a definition of them.

With Social Forums, its trickier. As Hilary Wainwright has noted, there's a strong current of 'I can only represent myself' in the Social Forum movement. Nobody can be sent as delegates to speak on behalf of the group as a whole. Nobody can make decisions for the group as a whole.

So that's what the Social Forum isn't. But what is it?

Well, here's one idea stolen from Starhawk:

"We cannot change the world alone... To create the situations in which freedom can flourish, we must work together in groups.

"The problem is that we ourselves have internalised power-over, and too often we reproduce it in the groups we form. We may join a group that promises political or spiritual liberation, only to find that it has simply changed the trappings of oppression.

"How do we live a different reality when the ways we perceive, feel, and react have been shaped by this one?

"For a group to become a place of liberation, its structure and process must foster freedom. The ways in which we structure groups and perceive power determine what can happen in a group."

[Starhawk, Truth or Dare, p.256]