Holding Space in Hostile Times: Reflections from the Lived Experience Solidarity Space
Reflection from Mohamed Omar & Tarana Wafi
“It feels like we are being blamed for everything that is going wrong in this country. It’s exhausting and frightening.”
Hostility is rising but so is our courage. In the face of renewed and racist far-right hostility, we continue to hold steady: resilient, determined, caring. It is this very strength we set out to honour when we created the Lived Experience Solidarity Space within our Insight to Action programme, a place to reflect, share, strategise, and stand together. In times like these, the agency, leadership, and perspectives of people with lived experience are essential for shaping responses, drawing on their unique insights rather than positioning them as passive recipients or people to be saved.
The urgency of this work has never been clearer. Just recently, the UK has witnessed a massive “Unite the Kingdom” march and anti-immigration rallies organised by far-right groups, drawing crowds chanting xenophobic, racist, anti-refugee slogans . At the same time, amplified anti-refugee and anti-Muslim rhetoric has been rife locally, nationally and internationally, normalising scapegoating and stoking division.
Worryingly, for many racialised communities, people seeking asylum, and migrants, this hostility is not abstract, it is lived every day. It shows up in neighbourhoods, in housing, in the way people are spoken to (or ignored), in schools, supermarkets and online. It is constant. It ranges from harassment to outright threats. We have seen and heard plenty of examples of this from communities.
“I worry every time I go to the shop with my kids and the looks, the comments, the whispers. It’s constant.”
“Local youths gather outside the housing where asylum seekers live, shouting abuse and sometimes throwing things.”
Our Insight Hub has tracked this escalation closely. In 2023, over 80% of organisations expressed deep concern about far-right threats; 91% reported that their service users felt unsafe. This year, nearly half of organisations report direct threats or safety fears — forced event cancellations, moving services online, even setting up safe rooms. These are not inconveniences. They are survival strategies.
Against this backdrop, creating a solidarity and strategising space felt not only valuable but essential. We worked hard to ensure it was a secure space, physically and emotionally, so that everyone could contribute openly and safely.
What emerged was powerful. People joining us from across the UK shared painful experiences: harassment in public spaces, threats connected to housing, children being bullied at school. Alongside fear and frustration, there was also resilience, courage, and creativity to address this:
- Joy as resistance. Many spoke about how essential it is to create spaces for music, dance, storytelling, and culture, to remember who we are and to sustain ourselves through connection and celebration.
- Practical safety and solidarity. Participants shared strategies like buddy systems, digital-safety protocols, peer networks, and rapid responses to threats.
- Pushing back visibly. We explored how to challenge hostile narratives, amplify lived experience voices (in places of how we change narrative), and make acts of solidarity visible and unignorable.
What we can do next together
In our conversations, three clear calls to action emerged. These are steps we can take right now to push back against hate and create lasting change:
- Build stronger solidarity networks within lived experience communities.
We must connect, support one another, and ensure that people with lived experience are at the heart of shaping solutions and leading responses. - Work more closely together as a sector.
Organisations must collaborate to share resources, training, and safeguarding practices and use our collective voice to amplify lived experience voices and challenge hate. - Demand action from the public sector.
Local authorities, schools, and police must respond consistently to hate incidents, ensure safe housing for those targeted by hostility, and invest in anti-racism education to prevent future harm.
These are practical, concrete steps we can all rally behind. Change won’t come from one organisation or one protest alone, it will come from sustained collective action.
The insights from this session will shape the next Insight Hub Bulletin, ensuring the wisdom shared becomes action across our sector. But beyond data and plans, what we will carry forward is the atmosphere of solidarity.
Even when the far right tries to intimidate us, even when harmful narratives dominate headlines, we see courage and resistance shining through. Communities are organising, protecting, creating and refusing to be silenced or erased.
Why these spaces matter and why we must all show up
Solidarity Spaces are more than meetings; they are acts of resistance.
- Language matters. We must be explicit: the experiences faced by communities are not abstract “challenges,” but blatant racism and hostility. Naming this truth is the first step in countering hateful narratives.
- These spaces show that even the smallest acts of kindness, visibility, and care can challenge hate. They remind us that silence is never neutral, inaction allows hostility to deepen and spread.
- They invite everyone to take ownership: to bring voices, experiences, and ideas so that safety, belonging, and collective strength are built together.
- Collaboration across the sector and beyond is essential, ensuring that spaces shaped by lived and authentic experiences remain at the heart of resistance and response.
We will continue to hold these solidarity spaces. We believe they are not optional but essential. In these spaces, we find connection, strategy, and strength, the very tools we need to counter racism and division.