Laiqa Miriam is a Kashmiri-East Londoner, with over 7 years of experience working in social justice informed creative spaces. She is a researcher, designer, facilitator, and integrative therapist in training at the renowned Minster Centre. She works at the intersection of visual arts, mental health, and social justice; spending her time with communities on the ground, working from a strategic bird’s eye view, or occasionally bridging these two perspectives.
Laiqa has a plethora of diverse experience across industries; from transnational FMCGs to the third sector, and everything in between. Across all her roles, she draws from her academic background in Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality, and her work typically focuses on improving the lives of marginalised communities by:
- Building research that tackles barriers by developing, organising, and implementing ideas, practices, people, and resources in service of collective liberation.
- Storytelling design that improves representation by sharing community stories, culture, and histories through art, media, and movement.
- Healing participatory engagement that tends to intergenerational and current traumas caused by oppressive systems, policy, and practice.*
(*Roles guided by Deepa Iyer's Building Movement Project. SM, © 2020 Deepa Iyer. All rights reserved. All prior licenses revoked.)
Projects
- London SleepsThe Museum of London may be closed on Christmas Day, but London's streets are always open. 'London Sleeps', stars Mohamed Mohamed, a British-Somali poet from south London, who moved to London when he was a child to flee civil war in Somalia. The Museum of London commissioned a film depicting Mohamed’s annual journey as he cycles to a central London mosque to pray.
Work history
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Young & Co: Programme CoordinatorDaryl & Co
London, United KingdomFreelance
Participatory engagement consultancy to develop a new community programme with Daryl & Co, a disabled-led inclusive youth theatre. Co-ordination of the initial phase of the programme to develop key partnerships with cultural organisation, build feasibility plan and strategy to approach funders, and create a sustainable relationship with young Disabled people to influence creative policy and praxis within the organisation.
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Advisory Board MemberThe Young Foundation
London, United KingdomPart Time
The Young Foundation is a non-profit research institution that specialises in social innovation to tackle structural inequality in the UK. The advisory board is supported by the National Citizen Service (NCS), over a two year long agenda to make social action and civic engagement more accessible across diverse communities in the UK.
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Skills
- Project Management
- UX Design
- Social Inclusion
- Accessibility
- Design Research
- Community Development
- Art Therapy
- Research Writing
- Communication Design
Education
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Postgraduate DiplomaThe Minster Centre
London, United Kingdom
An intensive development of counselling skills and a deeper understanding of the theoretical frameworks and concepts underpinning different counselling approaches, leading to an integration of these into a personalised counselling practice.
The course will cover humanistic, existential, psychodynamic and body work approaches to counselling. As well as being grounded in the traditional approaches to psychotherapy and counselling, the course will pull from experience and expertise in contemporary understandings, such as neurobiology, relational and embodied work.
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Post Graduate Studies in Integrative Psychotherapy and CounsellingThe Minster Centre
- London, United Kingdom
A critical foundation into the field of counselling and psychotherapy from an integrative standpoint, from the UKCP accredited Minster Centre. Blending together key scholarships from the likes of Freud's Psychodynamic practice, Carl Roger's Humanistic principles, and other modalities like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Psychoanalysis and Personal centred therapy.
Incorporating theory from Neuroscience, Body and Transpersonal Psychotherapy, as well as responding to key social and ethical issues. The therapeutic training draws from a relational, and experiential perspective, embedding Race equality, Cultural studies, and Feminist principles into the core of learning.
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Awards
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PCA x Terra Foundation Research Project of 2018Terra Foundation for American Art Europe
Awarded the PCA x Terra Foundation Research Project to undertake research and presentation exploring the history of American Art. Final thesis entitled "The Black & White American Dream." A study into re-establishing the image of Women of Colour in Art & Society.