A Brew and A Blether

We start by revisiting with Faith and Hope who we met inour first podcast “Who Am I?”. When we last met them it was the day before they left hospital after going through a detox when they were talking about their hopes and fears for leaving the treatment centre and going back to their lives.We meet them in this podcast at a recovery space for women+ one year into their recovery journeys. This is followed by a discussion with a group of women+ from Kairos Women+ who are in recovery from different addictions where we explore addiction and recovery of the “Mind, Body & Soul”.This is then followed by an interview with Aliya Malikfrom Minority Community Addiction Support Service.The purpose of our podcast is to bring hope to all women+ in addiction and recovery, to bring awareness of the struggles which women+ go through in addiction and recoveryand to help reduce the stigma which is still very much widespread in society.A project funded by the National Lottery Community Fund. Podcasts co-created with Erskine Arts. Find out more about Kairos Women+ on our website: www.kairoswomen.org

In this podcast we start off with a scenario where twowomen+, Faith and Hope, are in hospital detoxing and are talking about their hopes and fears for leaving the treatment centre and going back to their lives and they are exploring the question “Who Am I?”Then join us for a discussion with a group of women+ who are in recovery from different addictions, exploring the question “Who Am I?” This is followed by an interview with Tracey McFall, CEO of the Scottish Recovery Consortium.The purpose of our podcast is to bring hope to all women+ in addiction and recovery, to bring awareness of the struggles which women+ go through in addiction and recovery and to help reduce the stigma which is still very much widespread in society.A project funded by the National Lottery Community Fund. Podcasts co-created with Erskine Arts. Find out more about Kairos Women+ on our website: www.kairoswomen.org

The Development Team's Katy Wilson-Scott, Senior Coordinator and Laura Ndanuko, Community Development student on placement at Kairos focus on the cost-of-living crisis and its impact on our lives.They chat to four women+ in the Kairos Community about their experiences as part of our food justice research. This episode contains references to poverty, mental health challenges and food insecurity.Our Cost-of-Living Report found that 61% respondents had been negatively impacted by the crisis. There were 6 key themes coming out of the report including saving less, increased social isolation, changes in diet and nutrition, increased emotional labour, struggling to meet basic needs and the impact of UK government policies such as pension age and minimum wage.Production of this episode was generously funded by the Scottish Government via SCVO. Renfrewshire Council now funds the Community Soup group via the Winter Connections fund.If you want to talk to someone about the content of this episode or book a Welcome Meeting, get in touch:[email protected] 378 5078

What misconceptions are commonly held about mental health and where do these come from?How does the stigma surrounding mental health impact our willingness to reach out for support?How can we as a society improve conversations around mental health to make sure more people can get the help they need?Members of the Wellness Group at Kairos explore the theme 'In/Visible' as part of Renfrewshire Mental Health Arts Festival 2024. This episode contains references to mental health hospital, self harm and suicidal thoughts.Production of this episode was generously funded by the Renfrewshire Health & Social Care Partnership. The Alliance funds our weekly Wellness Group as part of the Nothing About Us Without Us project at Kairos.If you want to talk to someone about the content of this episode or book a Welcome Meeting, get in touch:[email protected] 378 5078

Content warning: this episode contains conversations around homophobia and transphobia, so please look after yourself. In this episode we discuss LGBTQ+ representation in history, both in schools and more widely in popular culture. Members of the Kairos Women+ Equalities Collective explore the exclusion of LGBTQ+ people from the school curriculum, even after the revoking of Section 28 which we discussed in our last episode. They also consider how representation in the media and public spaces affects our understanding of our identities. We then hear an excerpt from a biography written about John ‘Marie’ Campbell who lived in Victorian Renfrew, assigned female at birth yet living most of their adult life as a man, to provide an example of how LGBTQ+ people have always existed in Renfrewshire but are often obscured from our understanding of local history. Here are some resources for more info on LGBTQ+ issues in Scotland and the UK: https://www.categoryisbooks.com/ https://www.lgbthealth.org.uk/ https://www.lgbtyouth.org.uk/ https://www.stonewall.org.uk/ https://www.ukblackpride.org.uk/ If you like what you’ve heard, you can follow us on social media and if you have any questions or comments on this series we would love to hear from you: Email: [email protected] Facebook: /KairosRenfrewshire Instagram: @kairos_women Website: https://kairoswomen.org/ You can also find Erskine Arts on social media: Facebook: /ErskineArts Instagram: @erskinearts

Content warning: this episode contains conversations around homophobia and transphobia. This episode explores Section 28 and the impact it had on LGBTQ+ pupils and also on the teachers who were forced by law to implement it. What is Section 28? Section 28 was a law that was passed by the 1988 Conservative government that stopped councils and schools "promoting the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”. LGBTQ+ campaigners rejected the law and were active in fighting for change, and the law was eventually stopped in Scotland in 2000 and in the rest of the United Kingdom in 2003. We first hear 5 oral history extracts about people who remember Section 28 and homophobia in their schools. These were collected by OurStory Scotland, a charity that collects, archives and presents the life stories and experiences of the LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual & transgender) community in Scotland. To find out more about OurStory, visit: www.ourstoryscotland.org.uk We then hear a conversation between Katy Wilson-Scott, senior coordinator at Kairos Women+ and a lesbian student during the early 2000s, Kate Clarke, Kairos chair of trustees, volunteer and a teacher/headteacher during and after Section 28, and Nicky Irmrie, volunteer at OurStory Scotland and an LGBTQ+ teenager in the early 1990s. They will share their perspectives on how the policy affected pupils and silenced LGBTQ+ voices. Lastly we reflect on more recent changes to the Scottish curriculum as part of Time for Inclusive Education policy, including the Sapphic Scots ‘Poem 49’ of The Maitland Quarto Manuscripts written in the 16th Century. This is a shift towards a more representative curriculum and shows the progress we’ve made in Scottish education since Section 28 was abandoned in 2000. To read more about the poem and other resources included in the new curriculum, visit: www.tie.scot. If you like what you’ve heard, you can follow us on social media and if you have any questions or comments on this series we would love to hear from you: Email: [email protected] Facebook: /KairosRenfrewshire Instagram: @kairos_women Website: https://kairoswomen.org/ You can also find Erskine Arts on social media: Facebook: /ErskineArts Instagram: @erskinearts

Content warning: this episode contains discussion about racism, chattel slavery and colonialism. In this series of A Brew & A Blether, we’ll be talking about our experiences collaborating with Paisley Museum, poorhouses and poverty in Renfrewshire, the legacy of slavery in Scotland, and Section 28, LGBTQ+ education and representation. In this episode we hear from 11-year-old Erin McAleer and her mum Leah McAleer who live in Lochwinnoch. As head of her house in P7, Erin campaigned to change the name of her school house from ‘McDowall’ after Colonel McDowall, a slave trader from Scotland who settled in Renfrewshire. Erin reads us an article written in the Kairos Chronicle by Leah about Cato’s story - a runaway enslaved child from McDowall’s estate in Castle Semple, documented in a newspaper clipping from the Caledonian Mercury (2nd February 1748) - and why this story deserves to be told. We will then hear an interview by Kairos volunteer Arti Gosai with Erin and Leah about their experiences as anti-racist campaigners and the wider implications of not acknowledging the brutal aspects of Renfrewshire’s past. We leave you with Laura Hamilton talking you through Renfrewshire Leisure's (now renamed One Ren) Frederick Douglass walking tour, which you can do in your own time to remember his work as an abolitionist campaigner and his time in Paisley in 1846. Find more information about Colonel McDowall's involvement in the slave trade at: https://www.mearnshistory.org.uk/ Read the article by Leah McAleer in our Kairos Chronicle (Issue 4, October 2021): https://kairoswomen.org/our-zine/ Find out about the One Ren Frederick Douglass walking tour here: https://educationteam7.wixsite.com/fdouglasswalkingtour/ Pachedu is a charity working with Black and Minority Ethnic communities in Renfrewshire: https://pachedu.org/about-us/ If you like what you’ve heard, you can follow us on social media and if you have any questions or comments on this series we would love to hear from you: Email: [email protected] Facebook: /KairosRenfrewshire Instagram: @kairos_women Website: https://kairoswomen.org/ You can also find Erskine Arts on social media: Facebook: /ErskineArts Instagram: @erskinearts

In this series of A Brew & A Blether, we’ll be talking about our experiences collaborating with Paisley Museum, poorhouses and poverty in Renfrewshire, the legacy of slavery in Scotland, and Section 28, LGBTQ+ education and representation. This episode will cover what life was like for people in the poorhouse in Victorian Scotland, with a focus on the lives of women. Lil Brookes, artist and social historian, will tell us more about the background to the Abbey poorhouse in Paisley, followed by a conversation with Annie Tothill, project worker at Kairos Women+, exploring how poorhouses were the beginning of the state’s responsibility to deal with poverty and how the lives of women were very much marginalised until the Suffragette movement of the early 1900s. We will then hear from Ann Lister, Lynda McInally and Kate Clarke - members of the Making Her Mark project - a collaboration between Kairos and Glasgow Women’s Library - about their experiences researching the Abbey poorhouse and the poor law records both from home and at the Heritage Centre in Paisley. Kate wrote a narrative, imagining what life would have been like for two sisters that she discovered whilst looking through the archives, brought to life by Kairos’ volunteers Ruth and Lynda. We will leave you with a reflective reading of names of some of the women inmates of the Abbey poorhouse and asylum from the 1881 Census, whom we know existed but know very little about. Members of Kairos Women+ today invite you to remember these women and imagine some of their stories, since no further details have been documented. A Brew & A Blether's Heritage Series was made possible through the Great Place Scheme, a project funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and delivered through Renfrewshire Council. The music you’ve heard is by Lakbay Lahi, the song ‘Pag Ibig’ which means ‘love’ in Filipino. Love is central to our ethos at Kairos, and a lot of love and volunteer time goes into all of our projects. Thanks to the guests and volunteers who gave their time to make this podcast happen and a special thanks to Erskine Arts for their support, training and studio time recording and editing this series. For more information on Paisley Museum Reimagined, visit: https://reimagined.paisleymuseum.org/ If you like what you’ve heard, you can follow us on social media and if you have any questions or comments on this series we would love to hear from you: Email: [email protected] Facebook: /KairosRenfrewshire Instagram: @kairos_women Website: https://kairoswomen.org/ You can also find Erskine Arts on social media: Facebook: /ErskineArts Instagram: @erskinearts

In this series of A Brew & A Blether, we’ll be talking about our experiences collaborating with Paisley Museum, poorhouses and poverty in Renfrewshire, the legacy of slavery in Scotland, and Section 28, LGBTQ+ education and representation. This episode will dive into the heritage work we have been involved in at Kairos Women+. Our project Kairos Museum, in co-production with Paisley Museum, aims to make the lives of women+ - both today and in the past - more visible, and museum spaces more representative and accessible. When the Museum reopens, we’ll be telling the story of the local Women’s Co-operative Guild through their banners and objects, as part of the Paisley Museum reimagined programme. A Brew & A Blether's Heritage Series was made possible through the Great Place Scheme, a project funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and delivered through Renfrewshire Council. The music you’ve heard is by Lakbay Lahi, the song ‘Pag Ibig’ which means ‘love’ in Filipino. Love is central to our ethos at Kairos, and a lot of love and volunteer time goes into all of our projects. Thanks to the guests and volunteers who gave their time to make this podcast happen and a special thanks to Erskine Arts for their support, training and studio time recording and editing this series. For more information on Paisley Museum Reimagined, visit: https://reimagined.paisleymuseum.org/ If you like what you’ve heard, you can follow us on social media and if you have any questions or comments on this series we would love to hear from you: Email: [email protected] Facebook: /KairosRenfrewshire Instagram: @kairos_women Website: https://kairoswomen.org/ You can also find Erskine Arts on social media: Facebook: /ErskineArts Instagram: @erskinearts

'A Brew and a Blether' is a Kairos Women+ community-produced podcast in partnership with Erskine Arts. In our second episode we look back again at women*'s experiences of lockdown, with a spotlight on how it's affected our mental health. Join your hosts Jules and Frankie, who have a chat with Emmagayle and Liz about the emotional rollercoaster ride that was 2020. Sit back, relax and enjoy a brew and a blether.   For the video version with captions visit: A Brew & A Blether Episode 2 - YouTube