Before: Designing temporal conditions

Institutional urgency demands rapid responses and constant availability, while bureaucratic slowness absorbs energy through procedures, approvals, and waiting; both dynamics tend to privilege those already resourced. A safe(r) space treats time as political and starts by asking whose rhythms and constraints are being centred, especially for people living with care responsibilities, precarious work, trauma, or chronic exhaustion.

Case: La Nuestra

La Nuestra, a feminist and sovereign social network that will function as a living archive of women’s testimonies about sexual violence, is being developed in phases under Acción Comadres, with initial crowdfunding focused on migrating, anonymising, and cataloguing thousands of testimonies before building the full platform. This phased approach recognises that building a safer digital space requires time for groundwork: cleaning and anonymising data, designing security and governance, and co‑creating structures with those most affected, rather than rushing to launch on an institutional timeline. Facilitators and organisers might then consider: 

• Naming how urgency and delay show up in their context, and who is most at risk of exclusion because of them.

• Planning for asynchronous participation (e.g. contribution windows rather than single deadlines) so people can join when they are ready, not only when institutions are ready.

• Allocating explicit time and resources for groundwork (safety protocols, consent processes, translation, anonymisation) as core design work, not “extra” tasks.