What do We Mean By ‘Make Space for Difference’?

Read the story behind our mission and how it drives everything we do at Other Box.

It came to us during an online meeting. Roshni, my former Other Box co-founder, had been listening to an episode of Brene Brown’s Unlocking Us podcast. The episode featured US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy as a guest, and they discussed his research on loneliness and connection. 

The link between loneliness and the diversity, equity and inclusion work we do at Other Box might not be obvious straight away. But after listening to this podcast, Roshni was clear: we’re living in a world that seems hyper-connected through technology, but in fact is leading us to be highly disconnected, from each other and from ourselves, in our day to day lives. 

When we’re disconnected in this way, it leads to polarisation. Not only do we fail to accept difference, but we demonise and alienate people who have seemingly different views or experiences of the world. We feel attacked in their presence. This means we’re constantly living in a fight-flight-freeze-fawn stress response, afraid of saying the wrong thing and always second-guessing ourselves. 

At the same time, those of us from marginalised backgrounds are also in fight-flight-freeze-fawn because we have to deal with the often unintentional but painful daily slights, known as ‘microaggressions’, which highlight our lack of belonging in the spaces we move through, whether that’s the workplace, public spaces, educational institutions, or online. 

Roshni and I discussed all this when she said: ‘We exist to make space for difference!’ Although she has now moved on to new adventures, these words remain as our mission. 

Making Space for Difference is about building the capacity, on an individual, organisational and societal level, to hold space for each other and hear each other before jumping to conclusions about someone’s character or credibility. 

It’s about having the tools and knowledge to detach ourselves from the media stereotypes we’ve been fed from a young age and connect with people on a human level rather than being driven by our unconscious biases.

It’s about understanding that we all have work to do, to unravel the conditioning within the white-supremacist-cis-hetero-ableist-patriarchy, that has led so many different people and identities to be historically marginalised and even erased.

The American professor, poet and activist Audre Lorde once wrote:

“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize (sic), accept, and celebrate those differences.”

Recognise. Accept. Celebrate. That’s what Making Space for Difference is about.

Through our educational courses, creative work, and jobs board, we help people recognise, accept, and celebrate identities and experiences that are different from their own, whether that’s through the lens of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, disability, socioeconomic status, and beyond. 

In courses like Diversity Dictionary, we guide people to tune into their natural emotional intelligence and understand that the feeling of being ‘attacked’ may just be rooted in the shame of having to be corrected. We teach people to listen actively, not just to other people but to themselves.

With Other Box Studio, we enable brands to create spaces where people can tell their own stories on their own terms, with all the nuance, beauty and richness of their lived experience, rather than being stereotyped and typecast by storytellers from privileged backgrounds.

Making Space for Difference is about making space for compassion, empathy and understanding, in a world that is determined to separate and divide us.