Prompts for People

grassroots group study with Nsisong Udosen

Nsisong Udosen: I’m Nsisong Udosen. I’m a UX consultant based in New York City, but I’m originally from Ohio. 

Raya Marie Hazell: Okay lovely. So what first brought you to Collective Action School (CAS)? 

Nsisong: I’ve spent my—still somewhat brief—entire career in the tech industry or in tech pockets within other companies. Outside of work, I was interested in community organizing and driving social change. But I’d never really put those two things together, and I was really excited about the Collective Action School as a unique space to really bridge those. 

Raya: I felt that. I’m curious, how did that feel in the experience, or now after some time to digest? How do you feel like your experience went with those intentions? 

Nsisong: I’m really, really grateful that I had the chance to be part of it. I found out about CAS around the first cohort, and I remember looking at the syllabus online and thinking it was really neat, but just feeling a little bit too nascent to fully interact with the space. So I didn’t even apply for the first cohort. But second time around I was like, “oh, my goodness, this could really be my time!” It was just really exciting to be there. 

I went in with a beginner’s mind and I was really happy to be able to read and discuss and ask questions in community because I had attempted to read some of the authors that were on the syllabus before but just ended up not being able to fully understand it on my own. So it was valuable having such a wonderful cohort. 

Raya: I agree. After some time in the industry, and seeing some things upfront and personal, being able to discuss with people in the cohort who were senior was really nice. It felt like we took everyone’s vantage point and experience and dug deep on particular issues and approaches together. 

I really appreciated this question they asked us when we were applying, and so I’m curious, who did you bring in with you to the Collective Action School space? 

Nsisong: I think I defined my community in that question. I think back to it as people who are being under-looked or under-served. And I guess the background context behind that is growing up in the rural suburban Ohio environment as a Black woman who was interested in tech. There wasn’t really a defined or easy pathway for me, and I think about folks in that community really often still, especially now that again, through the guidance of mentors and through really strong communities, I’ve been able to reach where I am. But I think constantly about advocating for folks who are still trying to find their way. That was a community I had in my heart coming in. 

Raya: Yeah, I feel like a lot of us were coming from but also bringing in those marginalized communities when we’re talking about what we were building. I appreciate you bringing that perspective into this space. It allowed us all to learn from everyone’s rooted experience as well as where we were all aiming to take our work. 

Can you give a quick intro into what your project was, or is, and where its origins lie? 

Nsisong: I was really inspired by what I experienced in CAS—the sheer power of creating a space for people to come and discuss, especially during times where so much is unclear. So given the huge buzz around AI earlier this year, my project was a workshop series called “Prompts for People.” They were workshops that were focused on breaking the narrative of technology being a necessary ingredient for human connection, and reminding people that there’s life that thrives outside of it. 

So during CAS I kicked off one workshop called “Generative You,” where the objective was being able to explain, as a day-to-day person, how generative AI works—the human influence behind it—to help people unpack some of the ethical concerns around it. And also to have this conversation as a counter to the panic of “oh, is this going to replace us? What happens to our jobs?” The goal was to create a breath of fresh air where people get to think about the irreplaceability of human emotion and expression, and I used poetry as a vehicle to do that. It was also a space where people got a chance to speak creatively and to write in real time—even if they didn’t necessarily see themselves as poets or artists. Giving people a chance to dive deep into that identity, then at the end, having the skills and resources to talk about AI in their circles and to be able to take what they learned about it forward. 

I did one session. It was a remote, with people across the country that I met through work or through school. It got really positive feedback. So that was great. That was the first foundation for the project. 

Raya: That’s incredible. Do you think you’ll do another iteration? 

Nsisong: Yes, later in the year I had another workshop called “The Power of Presence” and that was focused on giving people at tech companies practical strategies for actively listening and giving comfort and solace to people that were facing emotional distress, which can be kind of hard to do at work. I held that session for about 15 people on my team, and it was really, really impactful. People really appreciated having it. 

I guess the future of the project is continuing to scale and continuing to address different topics, using that format, and also continuing to use poetry and different forms of art to help people express things that they might not have the language to normally. 

Raya: That’s really beautiful. Was this format of leading small group workshops and this way of teaching but also learning together something that you’ve done before? Was this project a first foray into it? 

Nsisong: I’d never done anything exactly like it before. I am a longtime attendee of poetry workshops, but I never facilitated my own. I guess nestling little tech lessons in there was a little bit different, but one thing I took away from CAS was the power and also the bravery that comes with grassroots movements. Sometimes that means teaching yourself so you can teach others and being willing to facilitate these kinds of smaller spaces. So, I leaned into the strength of the role models of folks in our cohort and of speakers that came in. 

I feel like there were so many people that said, “I just decided one day that this needs to exist, and so it did.” That was mind blowing for me, and really helped me get started here. 

Raya: That’s really incredible, and I commend you for taking on these workshops and taking on the facilitator role. I love that you’re continuing to do it and let us know when the next one is! 

I think CAS was definitely something that added to this, but I have felt really motivated by group learning. I’ve been a part of a book club for the last year and it’s been a really important learning space, particularly a political learning space. I believe this kind of grassroots way of intimate group study is really valuable. But it can be a lot to be the facilitator, so I really commend the work you’re doing. I’m curious what challenges you’ve encountered and how has it felt to work through them? 

Nsisong: It was the fear of not having done anything like it before. Also, even though I’ve been out of undergrad for three years, the concept of doing projects outside of a workspace and outside of academic space was a new thing for me. The momentum of seeing everyone else and also the momentum having to put together project helped me move along. 

I feel like I had to do research to make sure that as a facilitator, I wasn’t hogging the mic and was making space, because at the end of the day, the workshop isn’t really about me, it’s about everyone taking part and feeling like they are part of a community. Training myself around that was important, and also training around the topics that I was speaking on—being well-versed, being able to answer questions, being able to go into the articles that we had read in CAS. I was leaning on my time as a student in poetry workshops and thinking about, “okay, if I’m going to reverse this model, what would that look like? What would it mean? How can I provide feedback that’s uplifting but also honest?” There were a lot of pedagogical questions that I went through. 

Raya: I hear you and appreciate you taking the time to question and research to understand those balances and how to create norms in shared space. 

I’m curious to learn more about your poetry practice in general. How did you come to poetry and how does poetry typically relate to your interest in technology or organizing, if it does at all? 

Nsisong: I started writing poetry when I was pretty young, maybe 10 or 11. I’d been introduced to Maya Angelou’s “I Love the Look of Words” in class. It was one of the first poems I had ever read. As a Black girl growing up in small-town Ohio, being introduced to poetry as a medium was life-changing. For me, it opened up a world where I could re-negotiate the boundaries of language, and as someone who struggled with finding the terms to describe myself and the world around me, I found a beautiful amount of freedom in this. That moment unlocked a sense of spaciousness that I’ve been able to turn into, especially during times of uncertainty. I started from there and then through high school I got more involved in writing poems and submitting them in competitions. In college, I didn’t do as much writing but during the pandemic I had more time. So it’s just always been something that I’ve kind of worked on throughout the course of my life. 

During COVID lockdown, I started thinking more about the way that I could use poetry as a lens to examine topics. I started a project—it’s still ongoing—where I would take pictures of discarded gloves. I’ve been doing that...I guess it’s been like three years! Whenever I would see skirted gloves, thinking about the materiality of that loss—the things that we leave behind, the things we carry with us. For some reason, when I see a glove on the sidewalk that all jumps out to me. I take photos of these gloves and then I write little poems about the stories around them. That has also made me think about using poetry as a tool to think about climate justice or sustainability. That’s something I’ve been exploring as a potential next workshop series topic. 

I think the AI workshop was a good way to combine the two of them, technology and art. I’m trying to remember what prompt I gave people. I think it was people writing about what creativity felt like for them, reflecting on times where they felt like they were their truest selves. The prompts were more about what it means to be human. 

Raya: Do you publish this glove series? 

Nsisong: It’s kind of just for me, especially post-graduating, it’s just for my own fun. But I do want to actually think about what I want to share and in what medium. 

Raya: I understand that. Documenting and publishing is something I can be uncertain about. I’m not sure how I want to approach it, but I think it’s such a beautiful idea of the discarded gloves. I can only imagine the power of collecting them over three years. 

Anything else you want to add about where your project is now and how you’re thinking about it?

Nsisong: The update is that I started grad school this year! I’m pursuing a Master’s in Strategic Design and Management at Parsons. As part of that I’m an Impact Entrepreneurship Fellow. My venture is thinking about, again, what it means to build community and create spaces where we can have discussions. That’s still an evolving practice. I’ve spent the past couple of months thinking about the container in which that may live, especially in New York City, but I’m excited to dive more into curriculum type things next year. 

Very, very, very long term, I think a lot of the tools that were originally built to connect us have become really polarizing. So being involved in the effort to create more spaces for healing and reconciliation is my long-term goal. 

Raya: Congrats on the program. That’s super exciting. I’m excited to see how this practice will grow and evolve as you practice making these intimate spaces through a mix of art and technology. 

And what’s your wildest dream for where this project would go? 

Nsisong: I think this is the tech person in me, but scaling it would be awesome. I’ve been able to reach 10s of people at this point. But maybe it’s not necessarily me leading it. It needs to be more decentralized, but on a national scale, on a global scale. Having these, like you said, grassroots group study type model for a variety of topics, having that widely accessible to people, as a default, would be kind of my dream. 

Raya: Yes, I love that dream for you and for us....