as the crow flies design

What does this have to do with social change? The body is a metaphor that is used as a blueprint for our most powerful political and cultural institutions - we have heads of state, arms of the military, birth of the nation.  Visual storytellers who understand how our bodies function and how power plays out in our intimate lives know how to visualize power in the collective body, and what can be done to leverage that power, heal culture, and shift oppression.  

Visual storytelling as a social art invites a collaborative, dialogic process in which we facilitate deeper collective understanding about the living systems of cultures.  The social art of Somatic Scribing supports the collective body in visualizing itself and shows us how to make homeopathic adjustments towards systemic balance, flow states, authenticity, integrity, harmony.  In a movement context, we might understand the work of cultural, political and economic wellness making as moves towards prison abolition, climate justice, solidarity economies, reproductive justice, and more.  In an ever-increasing culture of inflammation, urgency, hypervigilance and overpolicing, this moment calls for visual storytellers who have the skills to intervene in the “solutions” that reinscribe the very things that are making our cultures sick in the first place. 

WHO IS THIS COURSE FOR?

Artists, cultural workers, scribes, graphic recorders, facilitators, teachers, counselors, parents and space holders of all kinds who:

• Want to apply decolonial practices to to the way they listen and reflect group transformation

• Are seeking to widen their somatics practice to include the Cultural Soma

• Desire more intimacy with the wisdom of their ancestral lineages

• Crave play space to experiment with visual storytelling as a method for shifting oppression

This course aims to be accountable to:

• The land

• pachamama/pachamante

• Our ancestors, well and unwell

• Our own bodies (not that accountability guarantees your safety or comfort)

• Impacted descendants of epistemicide 

*where accountability is the caring attention towards our impact on the web of relations that makes us possible

The Foundations Course is open to people of all backgrounds from across the world. It is hosted by and will center the voices of the Bodies of Culture that make up the global majority.

In addition, registering for the Foundations Course automatically enrolls you for the Fall workshops:

Draw the Feeling — 9/22

Patterns in Nature — 10/13

Shape of the Story — 11/10

SESSION FLOW

The flow of each session will start with a somatic grounding, followed by a short presentation and open time to practice, offer feedback, and reflect on our learning.  Each session will focus on a different rhythm of the body: birth, breath, rest, digestion, eros, and death.  

All sessions will be recorded.  While we will invite cohort connections and community building on and off zoom for the duration of the course, it will be possible to have a meaningful experience by watching recordings at your own pace.  No prior artistic or somatic experience is necessary, although participants will be asked to maintain daily embodiment practices throughout the course.  

Acceptance to the Foundations Course automatically enrolls you in the upcoming Fall Somatic Scribing workshops: Draw the Feeling, Patterns in Nature and Shape of the Story. 

In between our monthly workshop, participants will also have the option to choose from a variety of additional resources including somatic practices, guided visioning prompts, readings/podcasts, and some sacred study. 

RESOURCE FLOW

The course fees are based on calculations of the course team’s cost of labor for the organizing and coordinating of the course, valued at meeting our basic needs including work schedules that allow for rest and wellness.  As queer, BIPOC and disabled people living within underfunded communities, each of us are also in a practice of redistributing a portion of our income as reparations, mutual aid, and other acts within the solidarity economy.  

Contributing $600 for participation would cover our costs.  We offer the following sliding scale for you to sit with and assess where you, your ancestors, and your current financial situation land: 

$0 for Black, Indigenous and People of Color who consider this work to be reclaiming ancestral lifeways stolen by colonization, enslavement & genocide.  This is not a scholarship.  We believe descendants and survivors of these legacies should never have to pay to access what is rightfully theirs.

$300 - $600 for folks from the global South, people from historically disenfranchised communities, low income/working class folks, people with less access to wealth (savings, investments, inheritance).  

$600 - $1000  for folks from the global North, folks who identify as middle or upper class, people who have access to savings, investments, or inheritance. 

$1000 - 2000 for people who have benefitted from wealth extraction and would like to participate in the cultural healing practice of wealth redistribution, you might consider contributing generously at this level to support us in hosting cohort members reclaiming ancestral lifeways.  

We will be delighted to discuss with accepted participants how to make resource exchange accessible, including payment plans.  We will not base acceptance to the course on your stated financial contribution.

Feedback from 2021 Lab Participants: