Autumn's Current Projects
The Allied Media Conference 2012 - The Healing Justice Practice Space
The Allied Media Conference, held every summer in Detroit, unites the worlds of media and communications, technology, education and social justice. From this unique intersection, some of the most innovative community organizing models emerge each year. The AMC cultivates strategies for a more just and creative world. We come together to share tools and tactics for transforming our communities through media-based organizing. The Allied Media Conference is the only conference I have ever attended where I felt that we were truly building the world we wished to see in that space. It is a visionary gathering, and it is organized in a truly participatory way! This year I am co-organizing the Healing Justice Practice Space.
The Healing Justice Practice Space is an all-gender, all-bodied, inclusive and accessible space for practicing and receiving healing. We will offer the AMC community massage therapy, energy work, community acupuncture, herbal therapy, counseling, first aid, art therapy, dance, yoga, and more! The HJPS will also provide skill-sharing, creative documentation of our process, and 101 workshops on health and healing justice and its intersections with media-based organizing. Together we will build an in-house and online Resource Center to hold the incredible wealth of information and strategies developed by fierce healers and activists around the country. Our work uplifts and politicizes the role of health and healing in our movements as a critical part of the world we are building. We recognize that medicine is media, that how we heal ourselves is directly related to how we engage in individual and collective transformation. www.alliedmedia.org
The Common Fire Foundation presents...The Communities Curriculum
For the last 10 years, Common Fire has supported intentional communities through direct engagement. As interest in creating Common Fire communities grows across the country, we have identified a need for a more robust and expansive program of support for holistic community formation. This year, Common Fire is developing a multi-day training called "The Communities Curriculum," with the intention of bringing the workshop to new communities in formation across the country and internationally. The Communities Curriculum will support groups in expanding their understanding of our vision of neighborhood-scale communities, and deepening their commitment to racial and economic healing through intentional community building. We will offer all workshop participants an exploratory and educational space in which to dream and build their own versions of this vision within their local community.
Common Fire helps create intentional communities that manifest in the here and now the more just and sustainable world we all deserve. At Common Fire we believe the world needs a fundamental shift in how people see the world and live in the world. We support this cultural transformation by helping create intentional communities where people are committed to leading lives that are joyful, just, and sustainable, from the ground up and the inside out, and to their communities being catalysts for change in the broader society. Common Fire is 100% volunteer-led by its Board of Directors, which I joined in the Spring of 2011. www.commonfire.org