Ubuntu & Community
Healing, connection, culture and collective care in Liverpool
Ubuntu began with a simple conviction:
We were never meant to carry everything alone.
Ubuntu is a Liverpool-based grassroots micro-community for Black, Brown, mixed-heritage and other people of colour.
We create spaces for healing, connection, cultural affirmation, spirituality, creativity, joy, rest and collective care.
Many of us spend considerable energy navigating environments in which we are misunderstood, underrepresented or expected to adapt ourselves continually. We may carry racism, cultural disconnection, family responsibilities, community work, professional pressure and the exhaustion of supporting everybody else.
Ubuntu offers somewhere to exhale.
A place where you do not have to arrive with a polished explanation of who you are.
A place where conversation, silence, music, movement, ritual, laughter and shared presence can all become ways of reconnecting—with ourselves, with one another and with what matters.
Ubuntu is not a therapy service, religious organisation or single spiritual tradition. It is a living community rooted in the understanding that our wellbeing is inseparable from the relationships and communities to which we belong.
A place where more of you can arrive
There are many spaces in which people of colour are welcome in principle but still expected to make themselves understandable, acceptable or comfortable for others.
You may find yourself code-switching, measuring your words or wondering whether an important part of your experience will be minimised.
You may be accustomed to entering professional spaces through your role, community spaces through what you can contribute and family spaces through the care you provide.
It can become difficult to remember what it feels like simply to arrive.
Ubuntu was created as a space where more of you can be present.
You do not have to be inspirational, resilient, knowledgeable, politically articulate or spiritually certain.
You do not have to represent your race, culture, faith or community.
You can arrive joyful, tired, grieving, hopeful, disconnected, curious or unsure.
You can speak. You can listen. You can participate quietly. You can take the time you need to settle.
I am because we are
The word Ubuntu is often expressed through the phrase:
I am because we are.
It reminds us that none of us becomes fully human in isolation.
We are shaped through relationship. Our identities, languages, values and ways of understanding the world emerge within families, cultures, communities and histories. We depend upon one another in ways that highly individualistic societies often encourage us to forget.
For us, Ubuntu means recognising that:
- My wellbeing is connected to yours.
- Every person possesses dignity that cannot be earned or withdrawn.
- Care is something we create together.
- We can be responsible to one another without controlling one another.
- Difference does not have to become disconnection.
- Healing can be personal without becoming purely individual.
- Joy, rest and belonging are communal needs rather than private luxuries.
- Community requires participation, accountability and repair.
The we of Ubuntu must be spacious enough to hold our differences.
It is not sameness that connects us. It is our willingness to meet one another with humanity.
What happens when we gather
Each Ubuntu gathering has its own theme and rhythm.
Depending upon the event, our time together may include:
- A warm welcome and time to settle.
- Grounding or gentle embodied awareness.
- Meditation, stillness or contemplative reflection.
- Drumming, music or shared rhythm.
- Gentle movement or stretching.
- Libation or ancestral remembrance.
- A facilitated sharing circle.
- Reflective questions and small-group conversation.
- Creative activities, imagery or writing.
- Time in nature.
- Ceremony connected with the seasons, land, water or community life.
- Shared food, laughter and informal conversation.
- Space simply to rest and be alongside others.
Not every gathering includes every element.
Practices are introduced with care, and participation is invitational. You will not be pressured to speak, move, pray, close your eyes, share personal experiences or take part in ritual.
You do not need experience of meditation, spirituality, drumming or circle practice. Everything needed for a particular gathering will be explained.
What matters most is not performing an activity correctly. It is the quality of presence and relationship we create together.
Ubuntu Healing Circles
Our healing circles offer regular opportunities to pause, reconnect and be witnessed within community.
A circle may begin with grounding, meditation, music or gentle movement before opening into reflection and shared conversation. Themes may include identity, belonging, rest, grief, change, ancestry, resilience, boundaries, hope, joy or our relationship with the natural world.
The circle is not a debate, classroom or networking event.
Nobody is required to offer advice or solve another person’s experience. We practise listening without immediately fixing, comparing or redirecting the conversation towards ourselves.
There can be something deeply restorative about speaking and discovering that others recognise part of what you carry.
There can also be healing in listening quietly and realising that you are not alone.
Silence is welcome. Emotion is welcome. Laughter is welcome. Not knowing what to say is welcome.
Sometimes healing begins when we no longer have to carry our experience without witnesses.
Our healing circles are not group therapy, although people may experience them as supportive, meaningful or therapeutic. They are community spaces with their own purpose and boundaries.
More than a healing circle
Community cannot live through serious conversation alone.
Ubuntu also creates opportunities to enjoy one another, encounter new experiences and build relationships beyond the formal circle.
Our wider gatherings may include:
- Community wellbeing days.
- Retreats and longer restorative gatherings.
- Nature walks and outdoor events.
- Earth-based and water-based ceremonies.
- Social gatherings, shared meals and live music.
- Cultural celebrations.
- Meditation and spiritual-practice days.
- Creative workshops.
- Conversations about race, identity, spirituality and community life.
- Panels, festivals and collaborative events.
- Opportunities to support wider community causes.
Some gatherings are quiet and reflective. Others are joyful, expressive and celebratory.
Both matter.
A community needs places to mourn, tell the truth and make sense of pain. It also needs music, playfulness, food, beauty, humour and experiences that remind us that being alive can feel good.
A community that only meets around suffering can forget that joy is also part of our inheritance.
Spiritually open without spiritual pressure
Ubuntu is spiritually open, but it does not require a shared religion or belief system.
My own life has been shaped by Zen practice, African-Caribbean spirituality and ancestral practice, contemplative Christianity and Reiki. These influences inform the care, reverence and attention I, and the other members of the facilitation team, bring to Ubuntu, but they do not form a creed that members are expected to accept.
An Ubuntu gathering may include meditation, candles, drumming, libation, silence, words of blessing or acknowledgement of ancestors.
When such practices are included, their purpose will be explained and participation will remain optional.
Some people understand these experiences as relationship with spirit or the sacred. Others encounter them through culture, symbolism, psychology, memory, energy or shared human meaning.
There is room for faith, uncertainty, questioning and no religious belief.
We also recognise that spiritual and religious communities have not been safe for everybody. You may carry religious trauma, feel disconnected from your inherited tradition or be cautiously exploring spirituality after earlier experiences of judgement or exclusion.
You will not be asked to override your boundaries in the name of openness. We approach practices with respect for their histories, communities and differences.
Culture, ancestry and belonging
Culture and ancestry can be powerful sources of identity, continuity and strength.
They can also hold complexity.
You may feel deeply connected to your heritage, or you may carry grief about language, history, traditions or family relationships that were not passed down.
You may be mixed heritage and accustomed to having different parts of your identity questioned depending upon the space you enter.
You may have grown up surrounded by your culture but still felt unable to fit the version of identity expected of you.
You may be reconnecting with ancestry after experiences of migration, adoption, family separation, colonialism or cultural erasure.
Ubuntu does not ask anyone to perform a culturally approved version of Blackness, brownness, mixedness or spirituality.
There is no single African, Caribbean, Asian, mixed-heritage or diasporic experience.
We make room for complexity: for pride and ambivalence, knowledge and uncertainty, continuity and rupture.
Ancestry may be experienced through genealogy, family stories, food, music, land, ritual, spiritual relationship or the values carried through generations. It may also be encountered through absence—the unanswered question, the missing name or the tradition you know was interrupted.
You do not need complete knowledge of where you come from before you are entitled to belong.
Your belonging does not depend upon passing somebody else’s test of authenticity.
We are not only what has happened to us
Racism, colonialism, inequality and cultural loss affect our emotional and communal lives. Ubuntu does not pretend that these realities can be overcome through positive thinking or individual wellbeing practices.
We make room for honest conversation about power, injustice and the ways social conditions enter our bodies and relationships.
But we do not gather only around what has wounded us.
People of colour are more than racism’s effects.
Our lives also contain imagination, sensuality, spirituality, love, creativity, humour, resistance, tenderness and ordinary human joy.
Healing cannot mean becoming better at enduring oppression while remaining disconnected from everything that makes life meaningful.
It may also mean recovering the right to rest, experience pleasure, receive care, create beauty and imagine a life beyond continual survival.
Joy is not a distraction from liberation. It is part of what liberation is for.
Who Ubuntu is for
Ubuntu’s central community and healing spaces are created for Black, Brown, mixed-heritage and other people of colour.
This includes people with many different relationships to race, culture and community. You may be deeply rooted in a particular heritage, connected to several cultures or still trying to understand where you belong.
You do not need to have grown up in Liverpool or already know somebody within the community.
Ubuntu welcomes people across differences of age, class, gender, sexuality, disability, neurotype, faith and relationship to spirituality. Ubuntu is not specifically an LGBTQ+ organisation, but lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and gender-diverse people are fully part of our community. Homophobia, transphobia, sexism, ableism, colourism and other forms of dehumanisation are incompatible with the spaces we are trying to create.
Affinity matters because particular forms of rest and honesty can become possible when people are not required to explain the existence of racism, defend their experience or manage the discomfort of those who have not lived it.
Some public, cultural or collaborative Ubuntu events may be open to the wider community. Each event description will make clear who the gathering is intended for.
How we try to hold the space
No community can promise perfect safety or complete freedom from misunderstanding.
We can commit ourselves to creating conditions of care, choice and accountability.
Within Ubuntu spaces, we encourage people to:
- Speak from their own experience rather than for an entire community.
- Listen with curiosity instead of preparing a correction or response.
- Respect personal boundaries and bodily autonomy.
- Allow people to pass, remain quiet or participate in their own way.
- Avoid unsolicited advice, fixing or interpretation.
- Treat what others share with discretion and care.
- Recognise differences in power, privilege and experience.
- Challenge ideas without dehumanising people.
- Remain open to reflection when harm or misunderstanding occurs.
- Make room for repair without demanding instant forgiveness.
- Take responsibility for the effect of their behaviour as well as their intention.
- Help create a space in which quieter voices can also be heard.
You are always free to sit out an activity, take a break or ask for clarification.
We aim to consider access and neurodivergent needs wherever possible. If there is something that would help you participate more comfortably, you are welcome to let us know. We will be honest about what a particular venue or gathering can provide.
Community care does not mean limitless availability or the absence of boundaries.
It means treating one another’s humanity as something worthy of protection.
Healing in community is not therapy
Ubuntu gatherings can be emotionally meaningful, but they are not counselling, group therapy or crisis support.
Community gatherings also cannot offer the same level of confidentiality as a private therapeutic relationship. We ask participants not to repeat another person’s personal story outside the space, while remaining honest that absolute confidentiality cannot be guaranteed within a community group.
If something shared during a gathering brings up more than the space can safely hold, we may encourage you to seek appropriate individual or specialist support.
My counselling practice remains a separate service with its own therapeutic boundaries, confidentiality and agreements.
For people seeking explicitly spiritual one-to-one services, ritual or energy work, these are also offered separately through Legba’s Gate.
Ways to take part
There are several ways to connect with Ubuntu:
- Attend an Ubuntu Healing Circle.
- Join us for a social, nature gathering or community wellbeing day.
- Take part in a retreat or ceremony.
- Come to a talk, panel, festival or collaborative event.
- Join our community updates or WhatsApp space.
- Share a skill, idea or possibility for a future gathering.
- Invite Ubuntu to collaborate with a community group or organisation.
- Support the practical life of the community when opportunities arise.
There is no expectation that attending one event commits you to anything further.
You are welcome to come quietly, take time to get a sense of the community and decide what level of involvement feels right for you.
Collaboration and community partnerships
Ubuntu sometimes works alongside community groups, cultural organisations, wellbeing services and people developing values-aligned events in Liverpool and beyond.
Possible collaborations may include:
- Community wellbeing days.
- Healing or reflective circles.
- Cultural and spiritual gatherings.
- Racial-trauma and collective-care programmes.
- Retreats and restorative events.
- Panels and public conversations.
- Festivals and community celebrations.
- Staff or volunteer wellbeing spaces.
- Work exploring identity, belonging and community resilience.
We are interested in relationships that value lived experience, compensate work fairly, communicate honestly and allow the community genuine influence over what is created.
For formal organisational training, consultancy or professional reflective practice, please visit my Teaching, Training & Facilitation page.
Coming to your first gathering
It is natural to feel nervous about entering an established community for the first time.
You may wonder whether everybody already knows one another, whether you will be expected to speak or whether you are somehow the “right kind” of person to attend.
You do not need to arrive feeling confident.
You do not need to know anybody.
You do not need to be highly spiritual, politically knowledgeable or comfortable speaking in groups.
Read the event information, book if required and let us know about any access needs that may affect your participation.
Then come as you are.
Some people connect immediately. Others need time to observe, listen and allow trust to develop. Both are welcome.
Community is not created by forcing closeness. It grows through repeated experiences of care, honesty and presence.
There is a place for you in the circle
Perhaps you are looking for meaningful connection with other people of colour.
Perhaps you are tired of always being the one who holds everything together.
Perhaps you want to reconnect with culture, ancestry, creativity, spirituality or community life.
Perhaps you simply want somewhere to breathe, meet good people and feel more fully yourself.
You do not need a dramatic reason to come.
Ubuntu is still growing and becoming. Like every real community, it is unfinished.
What holds us together is not perfection. It is a shared willingness to practise another way of being with one another.
A way rooted in dignity.
A way that makes room for truth and tenderness.
A way that understands individual wellbeing and collective life as deeply connected.
I am because we are—and together, more becomes possible.
You do not have to carry everything alone. There is a place for you in the circle.