How Can I Be Well in Community? Interview with Birungi Kawooya
Exploring textiles, Afro-somatic practice, and neurodivergent care: a conversation with artist and facilitator Birungi Kawooya on wellbeing, embodiment, and community.
Birungi and I talk about how she weaves together art and research in her practice, and how textile work has allowed her to reconnect with her Ugandan heritage and identity. We also get excited about our upcoming programme, Soft Ground, at SET Social Peckham, where four women and non-binary artists will facilitate textile workshops for neurodivergent participants. We explore how neurodivergent women navigate sensory experiences within an ever-normative system, how grounding in the senses can help reclaim bodily autonomy and confidence, and why mindfulness is political.
Sylvia Keck-Soler: How are you doing, Birungi?
Birungi Kawooya: I’m still planning what 2026 is going to look like. I’ve decided to design my own playshop1 programme and to return to my own art-making towards the end of the year, alongside research for it. I’m also thinking about next year, and it feels surprisingly relaxing. Like I have time, and don’t need to do everything at once. That said, I do have a commission with Imperial Health Charity that I want to start and finish in the next few weeks. The commission is based on a placement programme I developed for the Nubian Life Resource Centre, the Black elders’ community centre I was working with last year. It’s going to reflect the joy of that space. I’ve never had work installed in a hospital before, so that feels new for me.
SK: You also identify as a wellbeing researcher and an artist.
BK: Yes, exactly. Last year, I worked on a programme with the Black Women Kindness Initiative. I delivered mindfulness programmes and playshops, and I also evaluated one of their programmes. My impact report is actually coming out in a couple of weeks. But research is taking a bit of a pause for me, as I want to return to playshop programming.
SK: I’m really interested in the way you blend research and practice, and how research informs the way you create. To me, they feel like similar processes of association — thinking, sensing, and making with your hands. Do you see it that way? How does research inform your work generally?
BK: I’d say my wellbeing and liberation research grounds all of my work. My main question is: how can I be well in community? That question originally came from a place of burnout, not realising how much I’d overworked myself. I wondered, how can I unlearn internalised capitalism and patriarchal norms? I conceive and deliver Mindful African playshops to share how we can embed sensory play and imagination in our lives. I love bringing people into that space and seeing how they discover their own creativity and regain their sensory perception, so that when times are tough and we’re bombarded with information, we learn to centre ourselves in our bodies and support each other.
My research also helps me think about what I want to see. It’s a bit like rehearsing. I want to make an artwork I want to feel and participate in. That’s how thinking and art-making intertwine for me.
Right now, I’m developing ideas around linking dance, nature, and feminism - learning from and reinterpreting the ways instructions from nature are encoded in many African dances. That’s my next major research focus. I’ve started making visual artworks, and the next step is the research itself: spending time with dance practitioners and the farmers.
SK: Is this going to be based in the UK?
BK: I can do some of the research from the UK, and I have a lot of dance practitioner friends and mentors I can speak to in London. But I really want to be in Uganda and connect with people who have done similar work within their own cultures. I was recently listening to a great podcast about textiles, where a woman based in Hawai‘i spoke about a dance in her culture that teaches people how to walk up a mountain and observe what has been growing. You walk up to the top, then come back down — and only then do you begin picking, because you need to understand how much there is so you don’t over-harvest. That knowledge is encoded in the dance itself, in the rising and falling movements.
I love how you can relate to others through creation and movement. It’s communal, not academic, not hidden away in a book or an intimidating building. It’s for everyone to learn from, enjoy, and embody. I remember learning about a dance that the Bakonzo tribe do in Uganda, by the Rwenzori Mountains, where they celebrate the coffee harvest before picking it. Harvesting coffee at the top of a mountain is strenuous work, so the celebration comes first. It gives them the energy to do the labour that follows. I’m really inspired by these practices, and I keep asking myself: how can I learn from them and implement them with the people and communities I live with?
SK: I was also wondering whether these themes of nature, textiles, and tradition have been present throughout your life. I’m curious about how you started making artworks and doing research, whether you’ve always been interested in community, and how your description of your work has evolved. How did you become interested in textile-making and in exploring different forms of heritage around the world?
BK: I had an English friend who was having a child with a Kenyan partner. I’m Ugandan, so we’re both East African, and they wanted their child to have something that reminded them of their East African heritage. I wanted to give something meaningful, but I wanted it to come from my own personal story. Having been born in Britain, away from my extended family, I felt a sense of absence and a desire to bridge that distance, to feel more connected to them. And that’s what I was able to get through working with textiles. These were materials I already had at home; I didn’t set out to buy anything new. They’re materials everyone has access to.
Textile materials are also among our earliest sensory memories. Collage felt very instinctive to me. It’s an accessible practice, especially as I didn’t go to art school. It’s something I was felt able to pick up because what I wanted to see through art-making was representations of a confident version of myself. I wanted to make art that showed me Black women being celebrated for who they are, which felt counter to how I was feeling while working in the City, in very white spaces that weren’t as welcoming as they should have been.
SK: You used to work in the City?
BK: Yes, this is my second career! I worked in the City from graduation until about five years ago, in marketing and business development for accounting firms and financial consultancies. Very male, very white.
SK: Very different from what you’re doing now.
BK: Yes, exactly, haha. When I first started making work while I was still working in the City, I was creating these figures with black skin, sharply contrasting with the white paper I would use. I would also utilise textiles that reflected me, colourful African prints, on the bodies of these women, almost frozen in a white space, dancing. And as I grew more confident in my artistic language and faced my desires about what I wanted to see, the shapes began to change. The figures got bigger, and I started filling in the background so it was more colourful. It felt like coming to life. That led me to spend more time in Uganda, where my earliest memories are of being a toddler surrounded by green, playing with my cousins. The work became a kind of passport or guide back to that time, before I had any racial identity. So those are my earliest memories of feeling safe.
It has been through being raised as a girl that I’ve experienced a lot of harm, which is why, through my art, my installations, my play shops, I work to provide repair for the people who need it, particularly Black women.
“I wanted to make art that showed me Black women being celebrated for who they are, which felt counter to how I was feeling while working in the City, in very white spaces that weren’t as welcoming as they should have been.”
SK: Do you also find it stimulating to source the textiles you use? What’s the process of looking for the different pieces in the collage?
BK: I love material culture and patterns - I think we are phenomenal human beings, dazzled by patterns. So I choose whatever I’m attracted to. I want to touch, to feel. I wanted to be a designer when I was younger. This is perhaps a stepping stone, because I definitely feel an urge to create some kind of costume incorporating bark cloth and other materials to embody a version of myself that I’m becoming. Textiles are really instinctive. I pick colours, shapes, and patterns I’m drawn to, such as adire batiks and dyes, and woven materials like kikoy.
I want to give people lots of opportunities to be dazzled by African design and storytelling, because these materials tell us something. And while I might not speak my West African language fluently, there are other ways to communicate, like through visual language. I love giving people the chance to enjoy these materials in a way that’s different from simply wearing them.
These materials are also natural. There’s also bark cloth, which is a regenerative plant fibre. I think we need to work with natural materials; they’re so much better for us than polyesters, which are costly both to us and to the earth.
SK: Do you see your practice as socially engaged, if that’s something you identify with at all? I’m asking it in the context of Looking Forward, our curatorial studio focused on socially engaged projects.
BK: I do consider my practice to be socially engaged. When I first started making work, I was feeling depressed, anxious, and oppressed by systems that seek to isolate and extract from Black women, and that create disability through harm. My work is therefore reparative. I’m creating spaces of healing where it’s okay to be hurt, and where it’s healing to be together. We don’t need to be perfect to make art. As humans, we are already born artists, and art can heal us. And I think that if I’m serving somebody, I’m also helping myself. So I think of my practice as socially engaged because I try to practise this mindset and to solve our problems together. No individual has all the answers, but we can gather. And I think there’s a lot of strength in that.
SK: Everyone’s different. I found it really reparative, as you say, to gather around creation, to make things together. In these settings, we recognise that everyone is different, and with a programme such as Soft Ground, which brings together different kinds of people, that feels especially important. Neurodivergence is such a broad term; it encompasses many differences. There’s also a medical aspect to it, diagnosis and so on, which can be intimidating or scary. If you’re told you have ADHD or that you’re autistic, it can feel like being pushed out of the system. But gathering around these terms and sharing a bit of textile together will hopefully be healing. And with you in the space, it can only be wonderful.
BK: Absolutely, and there’s only stigma around these terms because we live in a system that compares us to straight, abled, middle-class male bodies. Anyone who deviates from that is made to feel like there’s something wrong with them. As I’ve come to terms with my condition and the way I interact with the world, I’ve realised that what can feel like a burden, like being so sensitive, is also about choosing the kinds of people and structures where I can thrive, or choosing not to be in certain spaces. When I’m with neurodivergent and disabled people, we create some of the most caring, inclusive, and healing structures.
SK: Talking about neurodivergence and creating alternative healing spaces, I also wanted to ask - could you tell me a bit about your work with ADHD Babes?
BK: Yes, I did a couple of playshops with them. ADHD Babes is a fantastic Black-women-founded space dedicated to Black women and non-binary folks with ADHD, whether diagnosed or undiagnosed. The playshops we ran focused on creating something self-soothing - objects you could stim with, play around with, and return to for support. I also facilitated a playshop around wayward weaving. It helped us practise taking small steps, one at a time, rather than feeling like everything has to be all or nothing, which is a place I often find myself slipping into.
SK: A task can feel really overwhelming. Especially if you work from home, it’s important to train your brain to focus on the small steps you can take, rather than seeing the whole thing as something massive that you have to do all at once. I have ADHD as well, so maybe that’s part of it.
BK: Yes, and it’s good to talk about it and be together! It’s good to body-double. And everyone has these materials at home, but might not do anything with them on their own. Amazing things can happen in these workshops: support, advice, and encouragement are there, and people cheer each other on.
SK: How did you find grappling with what can be quite intense issues, like neurodivergence, mental health, and social exclusion? Mental health isn’t linear, and it takes time to really get to know people, so I imagine it must be challenging to work with these themes through just a couple of workshops. Was the programme with ADHD Babes over a long period of time?
BK: I did a couple of sessions with them, and it’s been really helpful to look back and think about the kind of support I’d need to develop longer-term programmes. Toward the end of last year, I also evaluated eight mindful art sessions for Black Women Kindness as part of a Creative Minds programme. I facilitated sixteen playshops at the Nubian Life Resource Centre for Imperial Health Charity as well. But ADHD Babes are some of the kindest, most supportive people I’ve ever met. I can’t wait to invite them to Soft Ground, and to open that space up to other neurodivergent folks too.
SK: We need to hold space for neurodivergent people and just create caring, free spaces together. I’m also really happy about the venue, which is very welcoming and accessible: SET Social Peckham. It’s a bit like a community centre; it used to be a church that was reinvested in with the local community. They have a custodianship model, where they take care of the space rent-free and host a wide range of events. It’s open every day, and there’s a small bar area. Soft Ground will take place in the Red Bar. The lighting will be reddish, and it’s a very intimate space, which is what we wanted to go for.
BK: Oh, I love that. I’m really excited about this programme, and I’m lucky enough to be doing four playshops with you. I’ve been thinking about how each one can be grounded in a different sense, each playshop focusing on a particular sensory experience. There’ll be an African element to this, whether that’s through essential oils and materials. I still need to think through each sense in more detail, but I can’t wait to gather materials from different corners of Africa so we can play together.
SK: Can you tell me a bit about how you came up with this idea?
BK: Through my experiences of depression and burnout, which altered my ability to be in my body. I remember that when I was a teenager, I would jump every time the school bell rang, even though I knew it rang every 35 minutes, but because my body was on edge. During my most recent burnout, I started paying close attention to how I was able to come back into my senses. I began to hold space to focus on one sense at a time, allowing people to breathe, to smell, and to rest their attention there.
Touch is probably one of my earliest creative outputs, like the urge to touch textiles and cut them up. It’s a deeply grounding practice, especially alongside my beautiful Ugandan palm over-mats, which I’ll bring for anyone who wants to lie down, feel the support of the ground, and be dazzled by the patterns.
Basically, I realised that anything I was drawn to was a good thing. If I noticed myself smelling rosemary, that meant something - I was there, coming back into my body. It helped me regain bodily autonomy and soothe my nervous system. I want to share that with people because it’s accessible and really needed. If we’re not able to sense, we’re not able to have much agency over our choices. So many of our decisions are automatic. And while it’s important that some things are automatic, like breathing, or not needing directions every time we walk to the station, we also need moments where we slow down, make choices carefully, and really pay attention.
SK: In daily life, sometimes you don’t notice your senses at all, and you slip into automatic mode, which can also be a way of coping with trauma, I guess. It’s important to have spaces where you can breathe and notice the small things about your body and what surrounds you.
BK: Yes, but I’m glad I’ve come to this place. I’ve reached a point where I can notice when new shoots are coming up, or baby birds in the garden, the seasons, and the environment around me. I think that’s really important - not just because it’s enjoyable or superficial, but because it allows me to make more informed choices if I notice the small things. There are big decisions that need to be informed. About the people we align with, the people we work with, the people we vote for, and where we spend our money and our time. We have to practise making choices, and that starts with noticing. That’s why mindfulness is so powerful, I think.
SK: And how did you first notice that? Did art, or making art, help you in any way? Or did it come from first entering a more mindful mode, and then thinking about art as a way to express that? Or was it the other way around? How are the two connected in your life?
BK: I make art to help me figure out life. I can use art in a very practical way, and I think that’s also how it was originally invented, as a communicative tool. Making art empowers me to practise agency, especially after being disempowered when I wanted to study art and was told, ‘It’s not for you.’ Art as mindfulness helps me understand what I want and make choices around that.
When I first started making work, I was in environments where I was told I wasn’t supposed to be. I was supposed to have a good job in the City. I was supposed to work twice as hard as my white peers. I was supposed to ignore the bullying I was expected to endure. But that’s how I was raised from a very young age. My parents arrived in 1970, the year of the Equality Act. So you can imagine the level of inequality they faced, given that they were recruited to work in the NHS, one of the world’s largest organisations, which is run on underpaid migrant labour from the former empire, who were groomed into a system that told them: it doesn’t matter how hard you work, you’ll never be equal.
I had to break out of that through small, consistent choices. Do I choose to keep accepting poor treatment? Do I choose to keep participating? I was able to say: this is what I want to experience, this is how I feel.
That’s how I got here, by making small artworks that gave me enough confidence to be around dancers, and eventually to learn to dance myself. I realised that if I could move my body the way I wanted to, I wasn’t going to keep accepting disrespect from underqualified men who didn’t deserve to be there.
SK: And when did you start using art in that way? Did it come from childhood, or later in your life?
BK: I was always using art as a child. The earliest things I remember making were costumes for dancers. I thought, oh my god, the costumes look amazing! That’s probably why I became interested in textiles — because people make judgments about others based on how they’re dressed.
Also, what is considered ‘African’ isn’t universally respected, which is why I research and use these materials. It’s incredible to work with natural, hand-dyed or hand-painted materials, or a regenerative plant fibre that my grandparents would have worn. They had a whole forest of trees that gave them what they needed, living in harmony with nature. I’m blessed that this knowledge exists in my culture today, and I can reinterpret it and reuse the materials. That way, I feel like I’m becoming a better citizen by engaging with what is natural and what is respect.
Birungi Kawooya is a British-Ugandan wellbeing and liberation artist, researcher and creative facilitator whose practice is grounded in Black feminisms, Afro-somatic movement, and community care. Working with natural fibres, Ugandan batik, sculpture, and sound, she creates installations that explore rest, repair, and resistance, especially for Black women and gender-expansive people. Through her Mindful African Art playshops and installations, Birungi transforms creative play into a site of research, inviting participants to imagine liberation and co-create futures rooted in tenderness, embodiment, and joy. She has conducted research with Race On The Agenda, Healing Justice London, and Makerere Institute of Social Research to nurture conditions for collective care and liberation. Her work has been shown at Science Gallery London, KLA Art ’24, The New Art Gallery Walsall, The Portico Library, and Hastings Contemporary. She has also created public artworks for Kensington & Chelsea Art Week and The World Reimagined. Her next artwork was commissioned by Imperial Health Charity and will be installed at Charing Cross Hospital in April 2026.
Sylvia Keck-Soler is Outreach Curator at Looking Forward, where she is curating the programme Soft Ground.
A Birungi Kawooya Playshop is a gently facilitated creative space for healing and self-exploration. There are no fixed outcomes or right ways to create. Participants are invited to slow down, follow intuition, and engage imagination freely, experiencing art as restorative, mindful, and rooted in care rather than productivity.
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