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Tariq Bashir
Dialogue Facilitator - Yorkshire/UK 
I’m from London and have lived in Yorkshire for eighteen years. My family are Muslim Punjabi, my parents are each in their own way extraordinary and I am the middle one of five brothers. My wife is Yorkshire Kashmiri and looks like it. She and I, our son, our daughter-in-law and wonderful two year old granddaughter live together.
I’ve done a a number of different jobs and I used to cook a lot. For about five years I was a mental health advocate, working in psychiatric wards and mental health units, trying to make sure people in those places were being heard. That work made me think a lot about power that some people have over others, about basic human rights, what institutions can do to people and things we all need such as being listened to and kindness. I fell in to being a dialogue facilitator about fifteen years ago and I like it. For the last nine years I have worked for an organisation called ‘Who Is Your Neighbour?’ which holds conversations in which people can speak about things like immigration and about people who are different than they are. We work in South Yorkshire and most of the conversations we hold are with groups of white people in places that are not well off. |