Our Values
Heartland Kinbaku believes in promoting values based rope community. That means in addition to our love of rope, we want to unite around shared values that help us all be better rope artists, better partners and friends, and better humans.
Our Values:
Integrity:
We believe in working to embody our values in all aspects of life. We strive to do what is right, not what is easy.
Equity:
We recognize that society is unjust, and that influences whether and how people from marginalized backgrounds can participate in the kink and rope community. We seek to meet community members where they are and allocate resources to maximize fair outcomes.
Personal Responsibility:
We seek to foster a culture that creates space for conflicts to be navigated and resolved in a healthy manner. We expect every person to take reasonable responsibility for their actions, and to approach conflict in a constructive, graceful, and compassionate manner.
Accessibility:
We recognize the many ways that rope communities and education can be inaccessible. HK will work to make it possible to participate in our offerings for all individuals who desire to do so, so long as they can align themselves with our community standards.
Inclusion:
We work to create a learning environment where each individual feels welcome and empowered. We seek to foster a space where people can be respected as their authentic selves.
Compassion:
We work to approach people we interact with in a way that validates and acknowledges their individual experiences. We desire to navigate situations in a way that leaves everyone feeling seen, heard, and cared for, regardless of the outcome.
Professionalism:
We seek to elevate rope practice and teaching to the highest professional standards in the world. We maintain ongoing continuing education and mentorship with the best international masters, and continue to evolve our curriculum and teaching methods to achieve the best educational outcomes.
We hope to live by these values to the very best of our abilities and we hope our students will try to do the same. If you have questions or concerns about any of the above, feel free to talk to us and share your thoughts! We are always evolving and learning and love to hear feedback and discuss these important issues.
We acknowledge that these words mean different things to different people. It is not possible to write a set of policies, values, or laws that will be universally interpreted the same way. We are always willing to hear feedback and take others' perspectives and needs into consideration. With this school, though, we are working to build a community that aligns with our vision. Consequently, we reserve the right to interpret and apply our values and policies according to our judgment and discretion.
In order to maintain the studio as a sustainable place for us to work and live in community, we occasionally have to make judgment calls regarding whether an individual's current behavior and expectations are in alignment with our community standards and what we can sustainably engage with. We do our best to be as fair and generous as possible. When an individual's behavior repeatedly fails to align with our values and policies, and they are not prepared to make the adjustments and perform repair work, we reserve the right to remove them from our space to protect the well being of the community and our teaching staff. Should this be necessary, we are always open to reengaging with these individuals in the future at such time as they feel prepared to do this work.
Credit: These values are significantly adapted from the values established by the new steering committee of NARIX in Fall 2018. SweetZephyr served as a steering committee member and collaborated on generating these. They are adapted for HK with permission from the committee.