This workshop aims to collectively visualize the invisible work running within institutions, communities, families, spaces and groups; to analyze the material condition of invisibility of those activities; and, finally, to rethink what are the value and values that those activities bring to the whole context.
Ps. The workshop can be done as is, however it is warmly suggested to have a follow-up collective moment to organize the  workshop.
Ask the participants to introduce themselves and to speak about a workplace[^workplace] they are part of (participants shouldn’t speak for longer than 3 minutes each).
Split participants into groups of 3-4 people and ask each of them to choose a workplace they are part of. Ask each group to analyze together their respective workplaces by looking at different jobs involved in maintaining the workers in those workplaces and the facilities of the workplace. Ask groups to list each job in the workplace on a post-it. Guide groups to reflect when a job is visible and direct and when it is not. For instance, ask questions such as: “what form of invisible jobs are there in that workplace (i.e. cleaners, software maintainers, cookers)?”; “what jobs have the best wages?”.
Place several 1.MAP-01 (link) at the centre of the room and ask each group to report back the jobs they have identified by putting the post-its within the four areas on the map: visible, invisible, waged, unwaged. Facilitate a collective discussion around each of the maps in order to reveal those aspects that remain hidden behind visible tasks and activities. At the end, take a photo of all of the maps.
Read collectively Federici's “Wages against Housework” pamphlet, alternating the reader with each paragraph (20 paragraph). Ask people to stop after each paragraph to see if there are words that have to be explained. If there are, stop and collectively discuss them for not more than 5 minutes each.
After the collective reading, go back to the maps (link) at the centre of the room and instruct the participants that they have the option to move one post-it on one of the maps. Invite them to explain the reasons for their choice. For instance, why do they want a task to be more or less visible and more or less waged? Repeat this process until the group has no further changes to make. Take a final photo of all the transformed maps.
Ask participants how they feel about the workshop and invite them to discuss their own institutions, communities, families, spaces and groups based on their first analysis. Send them the two photos of the maps.
[^workplace]: workplace here denotes as a place where a person is involved in some type of work: office, cultural centre, social centre, home, and so on.
- Federici, Silvia. Wages Against Housework. Falling Wall Press [for] the Power of Women Collective, 1975.
- Manual Labours. ‘The Building as Body’. Accessed 8 February 2020. https://www.manuallabours.co.uk/labour/commissions/the-building-as-a-body/.
- Skeggs, Bev. ‘Values beyond Value? Is Anything beyond the Logic of Capital?’ The British Journal of Sociology 65, no. 1 (2014): 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12072.
- Mezzadri, Alessandra. ‘On the Value of Social Reproduction’, n.d., 9.
