Embracing Cultural Work
Threads of Justice Collective will be promoting cultural work in a number of workshops and events this year. We are hoping you will join us in embracing how cultural work adds relevance and authenticity to our justice and inclusion efforts.
What is cultural work?
Have you ever tried to imagine the very earliest human beings and asked the question, “how/why/who was the first person to sing?”. Or have you ever seen the petroglyph etchings of first people and wondered, “what were they thinking, feeling, expressing here?”
It makes sense that from the very beginning of human existence, we were moved to express ourselves, to sing for joy and for sorrow; to “mark” our stories onto rocks. All people carry an innate urge to convey our feelings and experiences. We yearn to tell the story of who we are, what we need, how we suffer, when we celebrate. Those expressions can come in many forms.
Sadly, in the evolution of humanity, many of these creative expressions have been translated into “art”....and only a very small segment of the population are designated as “artists”. Children learn at a young age through feedback from adults that they can sing, draw, paint, write, dance, etc. It has become another one of those binary systems of categorizing people as artists or not artists. Many of us stop singing, stop dancing, stop painting. Stop telling our stories. Stop doing our cultural work.
At Threads of Justice Collective, we believe that cultural work and cultural organizing are central elements of liberatory education and anti-oppression work. It is everybody's work. In our use of cultural work, we are drawing on the ideas of Paolo Friere, Augusto Boal, and the Highlander Educational Center along with our own emerging experiences. In our workshops or gatherings you may find us inviting you to sing, dance, collage, make murals, work with clay, do theater and imaging, or write poetry. These invitations are two fold:
To inspire the expression of your own story: who you are, how you resist oppression, how you grieve your experience of, or participation in oppression, share your struggles, and your work in healing
To build community with others: share energy that can shift people, power and ideas, recognize the potential and power of unity, amplify access in all spaces for all people
“Eating around a table with beloveds, playing or practicing music, or creating from what is around us….all of these are practices and expressions that make room for healing.” [Highlander Center]
Look in the upcoming events section of the TOJC website for opportunities to join us in embracing cultural work.
