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FRAN: Hello everyone, this is Fran Turauskis and you are listening to a quick update from On The Outside

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Now you may have noticed or you may not have noticed that On The Outside has been a bit quiet in your podcast feed.  As a lot of you know On The Outside is a project that I do in my spare time and let’s just say I haven’t had very much spare time for the last couple of months. If you’d like to know a little bit more about what I have been doing, I’d suggest go and have a look at my Instagram page @frantic.tea and that’s ‘tea’ like ‘spill the tea’. I put a post out yesterday which does have a little retrospective of my 2022, so if you want to know about why the feed has been quiet, that gives you a bit of an idea.

NOw I was gonna come on to the microphone and speak to you today with an apology for being so quiet on the podcast feed. But then I came across a quote, which really resonated with me. And I say it’s a quote but it’s actually the title of a book by Tricia Hersey: Rest Is Resistance.And the idea of the book is that “far too many of us have claimed productivity as the cornerstone of success. Rest, in its simplest form, becomes an act of resistance and a reclaiming of power because it disrupts and pushes back against capitalism and white supremacy.” Now this is obviously relating to antiracism, but as you know On The Outside is an intersectional podcast and we are talking about issues that can take quite a lot of energy and capacity from myself and those that come onto the panel. Sometimes speaking about these things can get me fired up and give me more energy to try and change the things that we think need changing. But sometimes I need to rest as well. And that’s the same for everyone that comes onto the show as well, particularly the panelists that give their time more than once and come onto the show regularly. 

So On The Outside has been in rest mode, but it will be coming back with more episodes, more conversations, more news updates and more conversation starters for how we can make the UK outdoors more welcoming for everyone. I’m not going to make promises for when those conversations will start again because I want to make sure that I do them correctly and make them accessible. But what I can promises is that you are going to start seeing episodes on this feed again and those are going to be As We Rest episodes, essentially crossovers from other shows in the Tremula Network and other shows from the outdoors that are talking about things that are happening in the UK at the moment that I think you might like to hear about. 

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So keep on the feed, make sure you are following the show, both here in your podcast app and on social media as well. But for now, I’m going to go and have a bit of a rest and for everyone that is listening to this, thank you for waiting for me.