Introducing the 2022-23 Cohort
The current Seeding Conscious Co-Creation cohort is made up of an amazing collection of people practicing the conscious use of power for greater liberation and equity in a variety of areas of interest and identities.
Learn more below.
Armela Waters
Armela is creating a safe, brave, and inspiring space for an authentic exchange of stories, ideas, and perspectives inviting moms and their families living in New Haven County: immigrant moms of different ethnic backgrounds, new moms moving from other states, and current and long-time residents. This community of practice will center the value of our diversity, the richness of our cultures, the love for all of our kids, and the pursuit of liberation, joy, and a better life for all.
Brandon Hutchinson, Sister, Let’s Let Go
Brandon is creating a community she’s currently calling Sister, Let’s Let Go. “It’s a container for Black women to enter, heal through writing, resting, art making and breath, and return closer to their own true selves. Sister, Let’s Let Go is for those who believe in the power of their own healing–even if they are unsure of how to get there. It’s for those women who are at full-out war–or sometimes in battle intermittently–with their own selves.”
Briah Luckey, Liberation Spark Practice
Liberation Spark Practice (L.S.P.) is a call to white women “helping professionals” to understand and shift their relationship with white supremacy. It’s an invitation to move energy and cultivate capacity through embodied practice and art making while learning from the teachings of QPOC liberation leaders. The format and curriculum of this group is born from Briah’s personal journey and is her effort to take on the emotional labor of teaching white women to shift their focus inward and towards nondominant visionary voices and teachings. In this community of practice participants will learn hard and growth promoting truths, process thorough visual journaling, break silence, witness and be witnessed, move, be still, and be sparked by liberatory visions of revolution.
L.S.P. is also the acronym for learning support program, which is an accurate name for this practice because if you are a white woman you may well not have learned any of this before.
Denise Page
Denise Page and Merrie Harrison, Indaba
Denise and Merrie are moving into their second year with Indaba, a community of practice “for residents of Greater Madison; the shoreline contiguous communities and any and all who are willing to make the travel commitment.” Indaba seeks to “awaken a veracious desire in our growing collective to create meaningful social change that offers services, support and opportunities to every member of the communities where we work, live, play and pray. Our Vision is a community that acknowledges white privilege, is actively engaged in dismantling racism and works towards equal access to quality of life and shared power.”
Merrie Harrison
JoAnne Wilcox
JoAnne Wilcox and Stephen Mikolike
JoAnne and Stephen are forming a community of practice made up of folks who have been on an alternative path for education, and their families. “We intend to bring together people who are experiencing the complexities of raising children in New Haven in tough circumstances and providing for them an opportunity to feel welcome, listened to, while co-creating a space of healing and learning.”
Stephen Mikolike
Loren Jefferson
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Loren is building a community for BIPOC creative business owners “who are liberated, free thinking, and accountable business owners and creatives of color.” She is cultivating a space to “help heal from trauma and change relationships with finance and money.” She wants her community to know they are worthy of success and co-create the practices and tools to be successful.
Lorena Fernandez
Kinship in Mental Health is a community of practice bringing together humans engaged in personal and professional mental health work. They are exploring what it means to practice indigenous ways of being and relating to one another and how this supports mental health for ourselves and our communities. They envision returning to a more natural, harmonious, and sustainable way of being human in the world as a means to promote mental health. Furthermore, the topics they explore in their practice include spirituality, decolonization, the kinship/indigenous worldview, and holistic wellness.
Nadine Nelson, Master Cooks Corps
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Nadine brings together “food knowledge with community organizing skills, using cuisine as a catalyst to facilitate the engagement of art to heal the mind, body and soul of New Haven residents. Master Cooks Corps seeks to fill the void in food education by showcasing the assets of the community to lead the healing of itself.”
Nika Zarazvand and Vanesa Suarez
Nika and Vanesa’s community of practice focuses on envisioning a world where women and children live safe and free from violence. “We know it is possible to create intentional communities that center their values and urgency around upholding and preserving life. We are anchored in the teachings of indigenous Zapatista women who have fought relentlessly for decades for their sovereignty and to dismantle patriarchy within themselves and throughout their community.” Together, Nika and Vanesa bring their backgrounds in textile, photography, graphic design, writing, and storytelling to create spaces through art in which we can gather and collectively envision self autonomy and freedom for women & girls—recalling the traditions of women documenting their memories in embroidery, clothing, poetry, song, photos, designs and so much more.
Ruby Gonzalez Hernandez, Fair-Side
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Ruby is developing a community of practice for visual artists, particularly marginalized artists, of the greater New Haven area currently titled Fair-Side. “Its purpose is to hold a space for visual artists to gather and help maintain accountability in each other’s respective goals, receive feedback on work, and hear of possibilities in how to approach roadblocks in our respective practices, whether that be resources, connections, learning skills from each other based on our own experiences.”
Seyi Adeyinka, Nurture
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Nurture is a community of practice for Black women mental health professionals to connect with their ancestral lineages, explore embodied spirituality, and be in soulful community. Our inquiry will be centered on the question, “How do we create space to be our authentic selves and support others to do so?” We will use creative exploration and embodiment exercises to reflect on how we navigate oppression in the mental health field and move toward a path of liberation not only for ourselves but for our clients and patients.
Varun Khattar Sharma, People's Saturday School
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Varun is offering a praxis group for radical educators in Connecticut interested in increasing health, autonomy, and cooperation in the workplace and in our lives. This is a project of the People’s Saturday School, an abolitionist popular education collective varun co-founded in 2020.
Karolina, The Dandelion Collective
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Karolina is creating a community of practice for sex workers in Connecticut who are longing for connection, solidarity, and permission to show up in their wholeness. Tentatively named The Dandelion Collective, the space will offer a needed alternative to non-profit and agency programs for sex workers that are often rooted in objectification and saviorism. Karolina envisions a space where people across the spectrum of sex work can play, rest, and build authentic and loving relationships.
