Unlearning Leadership

Unlearning Leadership is a project by artist and psychologist Dr Dzifa Afonu, as they explore how models of leadership could be reconceptualised from a decolonial perspective. Dzifa examines the colonial and patriarchal views of what it means to be a good leader in social change work, taking a deeply embodied and personal journey in dialogue with leaders in the UK and South Africa. 

This project reflects on topics of leadership through various media, including a series of personal letters written by Dzifa to their daughter. The letters dream into a world where their daughter will more easily navigate a wholehearted and joy-filled experience of leadership. The complexities of leadership are explored through a short film, featuring a dialogue with Wasi Daniju (Artist – Photographer – Counsellor – UK). 

Unlearning Leadership seeks to inspire dialogues among many of the unsung leaders. The people who due to experiences of marginalisation or for other reasons have discomfort with really seeing themselves as leaders. This work asks how we can envision new possibilities and alternatives to our relationship to leadership in social change and justice work.

Unlearning Leadership is about questioning the ways we have learned that leaders should be tough, independent and isolated. This work is inspired by black liberation and the unschooling movement, to ask questions and unravel the ways that many of us still navigate around colonial and patriarchal views of what good leadership looks like. Unlearning Leadership seeks to imagine leadership and social change work from a more resourced, joy-filled and connected perspective.

Explore the project further in the two videos below:

A film screening and discussion with Dzifa Afonu and Sara Alsaraf, exploring Dzifa’s creative work into how we might re-conceptualise our models of leadership and develop new models that resist hegemonic conceptualisations around leadership and power.

A conversation between Dzifa and Che-vanni Davids, founder of The Reimagined Learning Centre, about how leadership shows up in this space: the paradoxes, learnings and unlearnings around what it means to lead and be a facilitator for people of all ages also stepping into their own leadership.

Dzifa Afonu, Che-vanni Davids, Sara Alsaraf