Psychological safety is the kind of safety one needs to feel safe enough to exist without the worry of being wrong - when there is no fear of how wrong or right you are, there is room for asking critical questions, trying & failing so you can try again, making mistakes, pointing out things that don’t make sense, allowing yourself to be more that one thing (duality), being present and infinite more things.

Ultimately, this kind of safety makes room, full stop.

This has been the basis of my research since the start of the year. I have been on a bit of a tour, speaking through the concept and proposing that psychological safety is crucial for the preservation of black people in traditionally oppresive spaces like universities (👀). I started the ‘tour’ speaking at CSM’s teaching & learning conference in July, then went to the University of Bolton in September to present it, then shared it at RCL (October & November) at an Academic Staff Development (ASD) session.

This week, I brought my final year BA Illustration students on a site visit to the Garden Museum to explore psychological safety, rather than explore it in our usual space at the Camberwell Campus.

The Garden Museum is divine - if you haven’t been yet…go. A gallery dedicated to gardens right between Vauxhall Bridge and Tate Britain. You’ll love it.

The plan for this workshop was for students to explore the ‘Lost Gardens of London’ exhibition in the morning, then spend the afternoon understanding what psychological safety might mean for them in order to create their own ‘garden of safety’. The question they were given is: ‘what do you need to feel safe to make?’

Whilst creating the prompts for this task (above), I realise that many of the questions could translate to other spaces. I think we should all be asking ourselves how psychologically safe we feel in different environments, and the questions I have posed below could be a starting point to help us understand how safe we feel in the environments we find ourselves in.

As I continue to explore this concept, the plan is to write it up and submit it to a peer-reviewed journal for feedback & refinement, then consider expanding on it with some primary research. THEN, the most exciting part is I am hoping to make some sort of audit tool for us each to empirically measure how psychologically safe a space is, with guided suggestions on what might help, specifically baring people of colour in mind. The most exciting ideas are the ones where you have no idea what the final outcome might be - I have never made an audit tool, but there is a lot of insight to be pulled from psychological theory and research methods which should make it easier.

So, below is a list of questions you should ask yourself in order to consider how safe a space might be for you:

What is this space?
Who is ‘meant’ to visit this space?
How do people feel when they enter this space?
How do they feel when they leave this space?
Why do people leave* this space? *first, define ‘leave’
What isn’t in this space, but should be?
What is in this space, but shouldn’t be?
Why was this space created?
What do people need to know about this space?
Who wouldn’t feel safe in this space?

Some questions may be relevant to the environment you are in, some might not be. The term ‘space’ could be applied to infinite contexts (I’m curious to know your answer to question 1!).

Take what you need, leave what you don’t, and share if there is anything that prompted an interesting response in you.