Rivers of Solidarity: Expressive Arts for Social Transformation Certificate

Growing Social Justice through Arts in Community

The Rivers of Solidarity: Expressive Arts for Social Transformation Certificate will engage participants in reflection, personal practice, and action on issues of identity, relationship, and social transformation. We will explore ways culture, race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability weave through systems of power, oppression, and privilege, as well as ways to engage in social action towards liberation and equity. Participants will be invited to deepen their awareness, understanding, capacity, and skills, working with the lived embodiment of systems and their transformation.

A diverse group of teachers will support participants to explore identity and self in-relation, journeying towards braver and safer creative spaces. Together we will grow capacity to weather the storms of change relationally, deepen our embodied skillfulness to generate solidarity, and weave social justice practices in the midst of all that is turbulent. This is collaborative, creative heART work. We will explore structural and systemic layers, as well as the relational and personal internalized aspects of oppression and change. We will cultivate inquiry into resistance, rebellion, and revolution from a place of love and creativity. In this work we need each other: this is the practice of creative solidarity.

All participants and faculty will be supported to experience their own brilliance and magic in order to step deeply into their own power in ways that enhance and support others’ full becoming. As Warriors and Grandmothers, Poets and Artists, Dancers and Dreamers, Educators, Helpers, and Healers, we envision a world without racism or any form of violence: a world of harmonious relations where we care for each other and Mother Earth. We aim to hold sacred space for new beginnings. Come dream with us and practice loving, inclusive ways of being in the world together through the incomparable power and nuance of the arts.

Pre-Certificate Drop-In Offerings

Reckoning: How our Ancestral Legacies Shape our Collective Liberation

Facilitated by Phoenix Song and Juli Rees

Sunday, February 27th

12 - 4 pm CST

Some of our deepest wisdom comes from our ancestral lands and lineages along with our life experiences. In this workshop with movement, art making, writing, and sharing, you will deepen your connection with your ancestral legacies and reflect on the unique strengths and challenges you bring to collective justice and liberation work.

The Threads We Weave: A History of Our Resistance to Oppression

Facilitated by Amanda K Gross and Sheba Gittens

Saturday, March 26th

12 - 4 pm CST

In this afternoon workshop, we will create an intersectional historical weaving of stories of resistance to oppression. Using intermodal and multidisciplinary approaches, we will integrate movement, breath, storytelling, self-reflection, and fiber art to build a shared foundational analysis for understanding intersectional oppression, movements of resistance, and our personal relationships to ancestral legacies and collective liberation.

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Meet Your Rivers of Solidarity Facilitators

Mylinda Baits

Sheba Gittens

Tereza Gomes

Fyre Jean Graveline

Amanda K Gross

Katriona Ilsedóttir

Shabrae Jackson

Virginia Jahyu

Lucy Lu

Vimalasara Mason-John

Ruby Peterson

Juli Rees

Phoenix Song