CEIO’s Seeding Conscious Co-Creation (SCC) program supports, both the forming of new and the development of existing communities of practice that seek to center conscious use of power (conscious co-creation), well-being and liberation as individuals and within the larger community.
​
View the Pilot Cohort Communities of Practice below.
SCC 2020-21 Pilot Cohort
Sarah Tracy-Wanck "TW"
ASPIRING ABOLITIONISTS:
White Educators Contending with Conscious Use of Power
MISSION
This community of practice is a space for white educators to deepen our consciousness of power dynamics in schools. We seek to strengthen our ability to shift that power to our students, as well as use our power to interrupt racial violence and fight for education for liberation. This space is also meant to be part of an organizing strategy through which we are equipping ourselves to show up fully as co-conspirators alongside radical educators of color, while also activating this work among larger networks of white educators.
VISION
We envision an education system in which young people thrive in mind, body, and spirit, and lead the way in creating liberatory communities. The role of white educators is to consciously contend with our use of power while co-conspiring with youth and radical educators of color to realize this vision.
Nataliya Braginsky
MENDING MINYAN
MISSION
Radical relationship building through joy based Jewish rituals to fuel organizing for liberation
Chelsea Granger,
Caroline Scanlan, Mikveh Warshaw
KURUDI WATU
(Return of the People)
MISSION
Empowering new generations of New Haven community-based arts leaders to create a self-sustaining, BIPOC-centered cultural ecosystem .
​
VISION
We envision a New Haven cultural ecosystem in which BIPOC artists and arts leaders are thriving working in their own communities and beyond.
IfeMichelle Gardin,
Shamain McAllister, Briana Williams
ALIGNED TO THRIVE
MISSION
The Aligned to Thrive Project is a healing space for Queer People of Color to heal, love, learn, and play while building a community on our journeys back to Self.
VISION
The Aligned to Thrive Project will provide its virtual community with weekly offerings that provide Queer People of Color with a virtual space to heal. Offerings will include a book club, yoga classes, fitness classes, and weekly guest facilitators who will teach meditation, breathwork, and other healing modalities.
Celina Whitmore
.jpg)
Johnny Shively
IMAGINING ABOLITION​
MISSION
This project brings together local abolitionists to imagine a future for New Haven without prisons or police. In the process, we will build the knowledge, ideas and relationships we need to bring this future into being.
VISION
This project operates from three core understandings. First, that our existing criminal punishment system is fundamentally racist, oppressive, and ineffective at improving our collective safety. Second, that imagining and building a new future for society -- one where every person has what they need to be safe -- is just as important as tearing down existing systems. Third, that this is challenging and lifelong work, the fruit of which we may not enjoy in our individual lifetimes.
With these core tenants in mind, this project aims to nourish the soil between individuals seeking to commit themselves to lifelong abolitionist work. To do this, we will spend time strengthening our ability to imagine alternate futures, educating ourselves on current and past abolition work, and mapping pathways to change. At the end of this project, we will have cultivated the knowledge, ideas and relationships that make collective action feel both accessible and irresistible.
RingShout:NewHaven
MISSION
Reclaiming sacred ritual as a source point of our humanity, community, & liberation.
VISION
We are unearthing, reclaiming, and creating pillars of necessary ritual for New Haven to doula the death of racism, patriarchy, misogyny, and the violation of our beloved Earth by increasing our collective frequency of liberation in loving stewardship of Earth and our humanity.
Jasmine Honegan
RISING ROOTED: ​Bloodroot Healing Circles
​
MISSION
Rising Rooted is a space for the practice of coming home to ourselves, connecting us to the power, wisdom and truth of our bodies for the purpose of personal and collective liberation.
VISION
The vision of Bloodroot is to remember what our bodies already know which is that we are all sacred, we are all whole, and we are all interconnected. We believe that what is remembered in ourselves is then remembered in our communities and extended out to the culture.
Rachel Liu
Jamille Rancourt, Nichole Roxas, Alice Shen
SEEDS AND SPROUTS
MISSION
We are a circle of community members who have personal, familial, and work experience with the carceral mental health system. We envision liberatory mental health support which centers the needs of BIPOC. We believe that healing is a birthright, an ongoing process of mending, as well as building power, resilience, and resistance.
VISION
We envision spaces and supports which are co-created in community. We envision saying YES to human relationships and healing amidst oppression. Through our liberation circles, we will imagine together what an alternative way of caring for each other, outside of the carceral mental health system, looks like in New Haven.
We are imagining a post-psychiatric world.
YES to… relationships with communities of care (shelters, food banks), your circle of people (pods), peer support, a place to rest, self-definition, basic needs met, alternative/non-traditional healing modalities, building relationships with each other, joy, consent, healing. Centering BIPOC.
NO to… institutionalization, involuntary anything (hospitalization, commitment, restraints, medication, conservatorship), labeling, police, cancelling people, shame "
STR8OUTTAEDEN
​
MISSION
STR8OUTTEDEN's mission is to demonstrate individual and collective power through that which is natural, by holding space for authentic expressions of leadership, dynamic accountability + and action within the structure of village.
VISION
We envision a community where surrender allows for that which is authentic to our truest self (who "I am") and invites possibility. We envision a people growing in community which allows for dynamic accountability and invites the stability of roots. We envision a movement where declaration (language as a reality) allows for action and invites power.
Jhoní Ada
Seeding Conscious Co-creation Support Guides
Slate Ballard
Seeding Conscious Co-Creation Leader
Seeding Conscious Co-Creation is under the guidance of the Seeding Conscious Co-Creation Leader.
​"I am incredibly humbled and excited to be stepping into this role as co-creator/cultivator of Seeding Conscious Co-Creation. I see the invitation to show up in fullness with our seeds in hand, ready to till the soil, as both necessary and sacred in these times. I am deeply honored to be in the position of cultivating space for a new set of Vision Holders to cocreate greater liberation, belonging, wellbeing, and joy in our communities and in ourselves." - Slate
​
Slate Ballard (he/him) is a creative and collaborative community cultivator, father to 3 uniquely special humans and partner to one magically beautiful person.
For over 20 years, Slate has been cultivating communities, whether spiritual, vocational, or artistic, that are grounded in creativity, cocreation, and belonging. In 2010 he was named Small Business Person of the Year by New Haven Business Magazine for his work as co-founder of The Grove, an award-winning coworking space and community. In 2018 he co-founded The State House, a multi-purpose performance and event space in downtown New Haven. Slate was a National Arts Strategy Creative Communities New England Fellow in 2019. As a communications and creative consultant, Slate has worked with dozens of organizations and businesses throughout Connecticut. He holds a B.S. from Southern Connecticut State University with a focus on management, organizational communications, and psychology.
Slate continues to work as a Capacity Building and Training Partner with CEIO to guide and hold organizations in practices of greater liberation and equity. He also continues to work at bringing a creative, collaborative, and heart-centered spirit to his work as a communications and creative generalist.
Contact Slate at slate@ceio.org on all things Seeding Conscious Co-creation!