Keeping Faith in The Future with Dianne Danquah (The Equality Trust)

What do young activists want us to know about the issues that matter to them? What impact is systemic inequality having on their lives and communities? How do we all keep faith in the future, while also creating spaces to voice our fears and uncertainty?

In this episode, we speak to Dianne Danquah – a Young Equality Campaigner with The Equality Trust and one of the voices behind their Reconstructing the Social Contract project - who shares her journey into activism, what meaningful representation means to her, and how she finds a way to keep faith in the future when faith feels hard to find. 

You can find out more about the Young Equality Campaigners and watch the short film they created on Reconstructing the Social Contract here. 

Follow The Equality Trust on Instagram, Facebook and X (Formerly Twitter). 

Keeping Faith: A How-To Guide is part of Women’s Interfaith Network's 2024 Keeping Faith Programme. Read more about the programme here and be the first to hear about upcoming events and ways to get involved by signing up to our newsletter. Views expressed on this podcast are the speaker’s own and may not reflect the views of Women’s Interfaith Network.

Hosted by Maeve Carlin

Produced by Maeve Carlin and Adam Brichto

Edited by Adam Brichto

Executive Produced by Lady Gilda Levy

Theme music composed by Jamie Payne

Logo and Artwork designed by Jasey Finesilver

Support from Tara Corry

Transcript

Maeve Carlin: Welcome to Keeping Faith, a how to guide, a new podcast from Women’s Interfaith Network exploring how women keep faith in ourselves, in each other, in a cause, or in religious faith so you can learn how to keep faith too.

I’m your host Maeve Carlin and today we’re back with a powerful, unfiltered conversation with Dianne Danquah – one of the Young Equality Campaigners at The Equality Trust, who campaign and organise for a more equal society that works better for everyone. Dianne shares her journey into activism and why that activist label sometimes feels difficult to claim, she dives into her work with the Reconstructing the Social Contract project and how she keeps faith in the future while being open about the challenges we face. 

This podcast is part of Women’s Interfaith Network’s 20th Anniversary Keeping Faith programme, which continues to bring communities together across secular and religious divides, to explore how we keep faith in the things that matter most. You can find out more about the programme, including recent and upcoming events, via the links in our show-notes. 

In this conversation, Dianne speaks from her own experience as a young activist. She was generous enough to speak frankly and openly with us, and emphasises the importance of platforming young voices on the issuess that matter to them. We hope you listen in that same spirit, with an open mind. You’ll also notice my audio quality is a bit patchy in this episode, so do bear with us. But for now, let’s jump into our conversation with Dianne Danquah.

Maeve Carlin: Well, Dianne, welcome to the podcast. 

Dianne Danquah: Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. 

Maeve Carlin: We're so excited to have you. And you're a young equality campaigner with the Equality Trust, though I'm sure you do lots of other amazing work that you might want to share with us. 

Dianne Danquah: Yes. 

Maeve Carlin: And you're one of the voices behind the Reconstructing the Social Contract project.

Dianne Danquah: Yeah. 

Maeve Carlin: Could you tell me a bit more about your journey with the Equality Trust? How did you get involved? Did you already consider yourself an activist? And what motivated you to do this work? 

Dianne Danquah: Yeah, I love, I love that question, especially the, um, part about did I consider myself to be an activist? But I'll give a little journey or history of like myself.

So I studied Sociology with the specialism in race and global politics at the University of Warwick. I've always been involved in the social justice space, in that way. Um, but I kind of thought I wanted to be a teacher, work in education. I've always loved working with young people, but I wasn't really sure.

I think there's not enough or a lot of information on how to get into activism or campaigning or advocacy work. So that's always been a passion of mine and talking to friends or just in the social space, but then actually working with the organization, I decided like this year I wanted to really branch out and look.

So I was just scrolling on Instagram one day and there's this page called Youth Beyond Borders. So they have like an opportunities roundup like every week and I'm always looking on there. And then this one came up and I was like, oh my days. I need to apply for this, this sounds like something I want to do.

Especially the community reporting, because I love talking to people, asking questions, and just, yeah, I feel like, I guess we'll get into more about community reporting, but like, storytelling and hearing people's stories is such a powerful way of like, social change, so when I saw this I was like, I have to be a part of it.

So I applied, then I had a little interview with um, Rob, and someone else from the Equality Trust, and then yeah, they were like, they would love me to be part of the project, so I was so excited to be there. It started in May and it was meant to be like 10 weeks, where we would have training on community reporting. We would design the project, carry out the project, and then have all the other steps in community reporting. 

So yeah, I would say before that, did I consider myself to be an activist? Yeah, that was a really good question because maybe personally, like labels and stuff like that, I feel difficult claiming it. Maybe because like when you look at other activists or people we look up to, like maybe Angela Davis or yeah other people in those spaces, like I would say they're activists, but when you're younger and you haven't maybe done what they've done, written those books it's kind of hard to kind of call myself that. But I feel like this year I want to start claiming more of those kind of titles because I love writing, I love poetry but I wouldn't really say I'm a writer or poet but I should because I'm good at it, if that makes sense. So yeah, I think even doing that project gave me the confidence to my activism, my advocacy work, yeah.

Maeve Carlin: I love that, claiming the words. Speaking it into existence, you are an activist. And I think it's also that we don't put enough importance on grassroots work. It's like,the only kind of work that matters is, you know, did you bring a campaign to Downing Street? Well, real people are experiencing real issues across the country, not just at the gates of Downing Street. So, yeah, why should the only people that we get to call change makers or activists or people that we look up to be those people? 

Dianne Danquah: Exactly. Exactly. And I feel like as well, like when people do take campaigns to Downing Street or to Parliament or whatever, there's a level of performatism to that or redundancy in that because it's, it goes there. It's a big campaign, but what have they actually done with that? That's a big thing for me now. 

I guess we'll get more into it and stuff, but like democracy and apparently we live in a democracy, but yeah. Um, like, yeah, people taking these policies and stuff to Parliament, but even if they do try and implement it, who are the people that are actually being affected by it, is there actual impact happening?

Maeve Carlin: Yeah, so many things that I know we're going to get into. 

Dianne Danquah: Yeah. 

Maeve Carlin: But we'll link to the resources from the project in our show notes, but you all sort of start by saying that this Social Contract, the shared expectations and responsibilities between decision makers, institutions and the communities they serve, has been broken.

Dianne Danquah: Uh huh. 

Maeve Carlin: And I'd love to hear more about what that means to you. How do you see this broken social contract in your own life and community? 

Dianne Danquah: Yeah, I think that's a great question because I'd never heard of the term social contract before engaging with this project. So we kind of defined our own. Yeah, I guess it's in the film as well, I guess people watching.

But yeah, we defined what social contract meant for us collectively. And so that was a mixture of everyone's different experiences. But personally, I think one part of it that I tried to contribute in my definition of the social contract was kind of like the government saying that if young people do XYZ or do this journey, they would get XYZ.

So I guess back in the day, the boomers, they would go to work, they would do their nine to five and they could afford housing. They could afford to have extra money on the side. They could afford nutritionist food in that way. But now it's young people are, still have to work even harder but get less and that's a big one for me.

And then I guess funding as well and opportunities for young people to participate in politics or campaigning. When I spoke about democracy, it's like, we claim to be a democracy and people vote and stuff, but when people actually want to say something or bring their kind of real-life experiences, it's not implemented or it's not kind of spoken to in that way. Yeah.

Maeve Carlin: I mean, what you were saying about those promises that have been broken, you know, go to school, get good grades, you know, get a good job, and then you're set. None of that feels sort of reachable, tangible for us anymore, does it?

Dianne Danquah: It's kind of like, um, what do they say? The goalpost keeps moving, like each time, each generation. Like, so I'm 23 right now, but I have a younger brother, he's going to be 18. It's kind of like, it's bad for my generation, my year group, etc. But I'm just thinking about even the younger generations coming, it's like tuition fees are raising, all these different fundings are getting cut.

It's bad for us, but it's about keeping faith right. But like, I don't know how much faith I have in, you know, what the next generation is gonna meet when they get to my age. Yeah.

Maeve Carlin: Yeah, but that's why I think we need to be able to talk about it, honestly. If we can't say, this is what frightens me, this is what makes me angry, then 

Dianne Danquah: exactly 

Maeve Carlin: we can't talk about hope and faith and conviction and change.

Dianne Danquah: Exactly, yeah. 

Because I think in different spaces or whatever there is the onus on always keeping to the positive stuff or like talking about, oh, what we hope to do. But then also like you were saying the reality and that's why I love this project that I was part of. It was like speaking to young people, like hearing hope as well but also hearing the hopelessness is so important because that's the reality day to day. Young people getting up going to school, but not even knowing what the next steps are going to be or not knowing if they can afford tuition or maintenance and things like that when they go to university.

So yeah lots to think about. 

Maeve Carlin: And you were talking about the community reporting aspect, storytelling, speaking to people. And that's something that the project really captures is the power of storytelling and real meaningful dialogue as a starting point for change. Yeah. So, can you share a bit about what community reporting involves and what you think the impact is of telling our stories?

Dianne Danquah: Yes. So, community reporting is a digital storytelling method, um, and it focuses on peer to peer research. So, you have like snapshot interviews where it's like, It's kind of like me just asking you a question and you answering and gathering that but there's also dialogue interviews which is kind of like what we're doing right now I guess if you want to have something to compare it to. Yeah, it's just speaking about a topic or a few topics and just really getting what that person has to say about it, their lived experiences and giving them space to tell their story

And I think it's so powerful because there's, there's a few steps to it. So first there's story gathering where you go out into your community and you ask the questions and then there's story curating. So once you've got all that information and all that learnings and all their stories, you're able to really map what they said. How does that link to maybe another person you interviewed or the wider context of the project? And then there's the story mobilizing. So like how we created a short film, there's different methods you can Kind of take your learnings and create something, but we made a short film and I attended a few of the mobilization sessions. So that was us mapping who could be, um, the right people to kind of have a wider impact on the film. So I think that's, that kind of structure and that kind of progression of, um, community reporting is so powerful. 

But in general, in terms of stories, I'm a story person. In terms of like qualitative and quantitative research, like I was introduced to both during university. But I've always leaned to words and always leaned to…

Maeve Carlin: I'm with you. 

Dianne Danquah: Yeah. Exactly. I think that there is space for quants and we need stats because we just do, but there's stories behind the numbers, you know, and some people get reduced to quants and stats of like, “Oh, X amount of people can't afford heating”, for example, but like when you actually hear what they're going through. And the experiences of not being able to afford XYZ, I feel like that's so much more powerful. And I do believe that storytelling can lead to social change. 

Last year actually, I was really struggling with, believing in that, because even though I believe storytelling can create social change, it's just seeing the politicians hearing people's story, because a lot of people are in the storytelling movements and are sharing that and they see the value in it, but a lot of the times you hear the politicians hear it and they're like, they don't seemed to be moved by it 

I don't know, they need to find a conscience. It’s like, a lot of people are doing grassroots work to help people tell their stories and give people a platform to tell the stories. But I think also a lot of work needs to be done with people that can create change from hearing the stories.

Maeve Carlin: Yeah, it's, it's, it's that gulf, isn't it? Between the people creating policies and the people living them, living, you know, the impact of that legislation. 

Dianne Danquah: Exactly. Yeah. I would even say, like this is throwing it all the way back to when I was like, 11, 12, but in terms of storytelling even in a fiction sense, like I was a Jacqueline Wilson…

Maeve Carlin: Yes.

Yeah. Jacqueline Wilson, I was her number one fan and, and reading her books was actually how I figured out that this was going to be my path, like sociology and social justice and helping people because I was really drawn to the stories of the characters. And even though I knew they were, it wasn't real, I knew it was somebody's reality.

So even in that sense, just teaching other young people from different backgrounds about how other young people are experiencing things can really have change and really like mobilize people to, to do something. Yeah. 

Maeve Carlin: Yeah, just because something's fictional doesn't mean it isn't real. If you know what I mean.

Dianne Danquah: Exactly. By real life experiences. Yeah. Yeah. 

Maeve Carlin: Well, we've been talking about this sort of Westminster politics versus the grassroots. 

Dianne Danquah: Yeah. 

Maeve Carlin: So much of your work seems to be about shifting the center of power away from Westminster politics to grassroots communities and the people who are most impacted by these issues.

Dianne Danquah: Yeah. 

Maeve Carlin: Who were also often the first responders, the people supporting each other through them on the ground. So what do you think needs to change for more voices like yours to be heard and valued by policy-makers? 

Dianne Danquah: That's a good question. I think, I guess I'll kind of answer it in two parts. I feel like there needs to be a devaluing of those systems, if that makes sense, of the Parliament of Westminster. Because even though, yes, you know, on a political level they do have the power to change legislation and have the funding, I think a lot of people in the community need to first discover the power of their own voices and the power that they can have in their community because I feel like that's where real change starts. We can go into like protesting and rioting and all those things but I feel like the people need to understand the power that they have first before those in power, quote unquote, can value that, if that makes sense.

So I think, yes, we need to start giving each other those platforms and having those dialogues and those conversations. And then it's also about somebody with a grassroot mindset or somebody that's in the community that knows what it's like to grow up, I don't know, in Southeast London, having the opportunity to go into those spaces with people that don't understand what it's like to grow up in South East London or how young people feel today. 

So yeah, the first step is young people or whoever in the grassroots kind of mobilising themselves and speaking and creating those platforms for ourselves because I think we've waited a long time for those in power to give us platforms to use our voices. I think it is time to just start speaking as we're doing now and as lots of organisations are doing now. And then it's also about us finding a way to get in, but that also takes those in power recognising that we have something to say. And I know there's lots of organisations or initiatives out there, like, they have, I don't know if the Youth Parliament is still in play

Maeve Carlin: Yes, yeah, yeah.

Dianne Danquah: Yeah, like Young Mayors and all those different things, but also if I go back to, like, performatism, sometimes those initiatives are just performative. It's like, yeah, we are I think there's a new youth strategy being launched or something by the government or something. But it's like a lot of those things are just like “yeah we haven't met the quota of youth-led or youth-informed things” but it's actually allowing what young people said and did to actually have a visible impact in the community and that influences and encourages other young people to get involved.

Maeve Carlin: Of course, I'm sure, you know, all those initiatives are really well meaning and led by people who have their hearts absolutely in the right place, but it's also about kind of decentring the Westminster politics and being like, that is not more than or greater than or more impactful than alocal organization or, you know, a church mobilizing for their community or the local youth centre who's doing, you know, that is as 

Dianne Danquah: Exactly.

Maeve Carlin: Critical and political. 

Dianne Danquah: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, like what you're saying, the power dynamics and things. I think a lot of stuff goes back to funding as well and, and that's because we live in a capitalist world that values things that have money behind it. So I guess, yeah, the government or Westminster have funding and have kind of that platform already.

But like you said, I feel like, yeah, the real work is done in the local small things that aren't recognized by Westminster or the Parliament. 

Maeve Carlin: Yeah. And like you say, that starts with us saying, you know, like you were saying at the beginning, I am an activist. I will take up space. I will, you know, give myself that value and acknowledge the work I'm doing. 

Dianne Danquah: Yes, definitely. 

Maeve Carlin: Well. I've titled this episode, Keeping Faith in the Future. But, as we've touched on, and the conversations captured in the Reconstructing the Social Contract project highlight how that faith in the future often fluctuates and is shaken by our experiences with inequality and broken institutions.

Dianne Danquah: Yeah. 

Maeve Carlin: Whether it's hate speech in the media, funding cuts for local services, or worries about climate change, I think most of us listening will have struggled with this. 

Dianne Danquah: Mm hmm. 

Maeve Carlin: Can you share with us how you keep faith, even when it's hard? 

Dianne Danquah: Yeah. 

Maeve Carlin: And keep campaigning for a better, more equal future. 

Dianne Danquah: Yeah, that's so difficult.

I think I mentioned earlier about how last year was very, uh, a tough one in terms of having faith in, in the future. With a lot of things going on, the riots going on right now, it's like, that's, that's the big question. It's like, how can, how can people genuinely keep faith?

And I think there's always two levels to it, like collective faith and then individual faith as well. Um, I can start individually, I do believe in God and that's, that's a foundation for me. But I feel like even that, there's privilege in that, in the sense that growing up in a western world, it's easier to kind of have faith in oh, things will get better because there's X, Y, Z in place and I can hope and you can pray, you can do all these things and it's like, it's, and that's something I was struggling with last year as well with the faith in that sense, like, it's good for me, I can, I can have faith in that sense and believe things can get better and, and see things can get better by doing X, Y, Z, or doing this work or doing that work. But living in a completely different place in the global South, as they say, it's like you can have faith, but it's much harder for that kind of change to how do I put it, like, when, you can have faith but if you have a different belief system, or any belief system, or just faith in life in general, when you see the manifestation of that it's easier to keep on having faith in the future or keep on having faith in the change you want to see. But if you live in a place where it's like you're having faith you're having faith and nothing's changing, it's so easy to lose that.

So something that I kind of do hold on to and something that I kind of I'm always thinking of things in like a poetic sense and stuff but when I was thinking about activists from many years ago, the 60s or whatever, I was like we didn't see the tough times we didn't see them breaking down and crying because of the challenges they face. We only saw kind of their strength and what they, um, yeah, what they showed to the audience or what they wrote down. So that's kind of what I'm holding on to is like, all these great activists that we see, they definitely had moments of like,” I can't do this anymore. This is like, I give up, you know, I can't keep campaigning. Nothing's happening. No one's listening.” Yeah. I keep, I keep holding to that and also the strength of like, the people that didn't survive in many senses, like, they tried, they tried and, you know, not to be morbid, but like, they passed away without nothing happening, but it's like, if we stop now, all the work that they tried to do was in vain.

So I think holding on to that kind of vision of their better future that even if I, like going back to like, colonialism, slavery, things like that, it's like if I give up now, everything that they worked towards is kind of in vain. So that's how I kind of keep faith as well. 

And being part of projects like this and hearing stories, that's a main one, like, when I'm interviewing people here and there. It's like hearing their stories and hearing that, “yes, this happened, but, you know, I was able to get help here and there”, and even this interaction is helpful to them.

That really gives me faith in that. We can't stop now. The work is just beginning and it's like, yeah, even, and it's hard though. As you said, it's hard. It's like, especially for young people. It's like, what is left for us to kind of work towards? Like you see all these news and what's going on in America and all the wars going on. It's like, what's the point? Is there even going to be a world to campaign for in the next coming years? But we just have to keep on going. 

Maeve Carlin: Yeah, we can't, we can't stop now. Like you say.

Dianne Danquah: We can't stop now. We've come too far. 

Maeve Carlin: We've come too far. I, I think what you were saying about, you know, we keep faith together. We keep faith in these conversations or in coalitions or in our networks, our communities. We keep faith by talking about how hard it is to keep faith. 

Dianne Danquah: Exactly. And, and it's being real and being honest, and I guess that's what we were talking about at the start, it's like a lot of times we, are kind of being hopeful, and I guess that's my critique of some kind of churches or things like that. Because that's kind of, I grew up in the church and stuff. But like that's my critique or my question to them is like, there's always a sense of hope which is good but when you don't acknowledge the realness of what's going on, it's like you're living in the clouds. You can pray, you can do all that, but action needs to happen too. Um, but yeah, that's, that's my, my, my critique of certain kind of organizations in that way. 

But yeah, it's about action. It's about being honest with your neighbour or with whoever. It's like, it's the shared struggle. I have one of my favourite quotes that I, anytime I'm doing application or whatever, I always put it in, but it's by Angela Davis. And it's like, I won't remember it quote for quote, um, I can, I can find the actual quote somewhere and then maybe you can link it somewhere. But yeah, it's the idea of when you hear somebody else's story, it's the shared struggle and you realize that they could be thousands of miles apart but what we're fighting is actually the same thing.

And it's kind of having that shared kind of voice and that shared kind of acknowledgement that it’s manifesting in different ways, but the core, it's the same and that's what we need to fight. 

Maeve Carlin: Thank you so much, Diane. I'm so moved and uplifted by everything you've said. Thank you for keeping faith with me today.

Dianne Danquah: Thank you. No, thank you. I've enjoyed this conversation so much and yeah, I love the questions and yeah, it's given me a lot to think about, definitely.

Conclusion: We’re so grateful to Dianne for inspiring, moving and challenging us. You can find out more about the Equality Trust, the Young Equality Campaigners and their Reconstructing the Social Contract project in our shownotes. We’ve got more uplifting conversations coming up in the next few months as we approach the end of our podcast series, so watch this space. I’ll end with the quote Dianne shared with us from Angela Davis: “we cannot truly tell what we consider to be our own histories without knowing the other stories. And often we discover that those other stories are actually our own stories” 

Thank you for listening to this episode of Keeping Faith: A How To Guide. Subscribe now on your podcast app to be the first to hear about our upcoming episodes, and please leave a review or share with a friend to help more people find us. To find out more about the podcast, the 2024 Keeping Faith Programme or to get involved with the Women’s Interfaith Network, you can follow the links in our episode notes or go to wominet.org.uk. Until next time, Keep Faith!

Keeping Faith: A How-To Guide was created by Women’s Interfaith Network. The podcast is co-produced by me, Maeve Carlin, and Adam Brichto. Our executive producer is Lady Gilda Levy. Theme music was composed by Jamie Payne and our logo was designed by Jasey Finesilver. Additional Support from Tara Corry.