Sophie Macklin is a queer anarchist mystic living on Tongva land, near the Los Angeles river. She’s lived in California for 13 years, and comes from Canterbury, England, on the banks of the River Stour. She practices polytheism, antifascism, devotion to an animate world, and anarchist living. She seeks to play her part in destroying colonialism and capitalism, betraying whiteness and abolishing supremacy culture, reclaiming the commons, and coming into the rapturous communion with the land, ourselves and each other that she believes we were created for. She teaches and plays in topics related to anarchism, mysticism, radical history, communication with the human and more than human world, anti-capitalism, antifascism, reclaiming the commons, disability emergence, and exploring different ways of knowing.
Sage Crump is a culture strategist, artist and facilitator who expands and deepens the work of cultural workers, and arts organizations in social justice organizing. Sage is a member of Complex Movements, a Detroit-based artist collective whose interdisciplinary work supports local and translocal visionary organizing. She is principal and co-founder with artist muthi reed of The Kinfolks Effect (TKE) Studio. TKE studios is an incubation space for multimedia interdisciplinary artwork that examines the movement of Blackness through time and space. She is the Program Specialist for Leveraging A Network for Equity ( LANE) at the National Performance Network and holds the position of Chief Architect at the Emergent Strategies Ideation institute.
Resources Conversations in Maine https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/conversations-in-maine Following the Detroit Rebellion of 1967, four veteran activists, Grace Lee and Jimmy Boggs, and Lyman and Freddy Paine, came together to rethink revolution and social change. Posting tough, thought-provoking questions, the recorded dialogue among these four friends ultimately serves as a call to all citizens to work together and think deeply about the kind of future we can create.
Sydnie L. Mosley is an artist-activist and educator who produces experiential dance works with her collective SLMDances. Through choreographic work, the collective works in communities to organize for gender and racial justice. Her evening length dances The Window Sex Project and BodyBusiness address sexual harassment in public spaces and the economics of NYC dance, respectively. Sydnie was recognized by NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio for using her talents in dance to fuel social change. Sydnie is part of the Bessie Award winning cast of the skeleton architecture, the future of our worlds, curated by Eva Yaa Asantewaa. Sydnie danced with Christal Brown’s INSPIRIT and continues to appear as a guest artist for Brooklyn Ballet. An advocate for the dance field, Sydnie sits on the Advisory Committee to Dance/NYC. She applies her diverse know-how as a visionary strategist, producer, and more in the arts and culture field as a consultant and coach. She has collaborated with PURPOSE Productions, 651ARTS, Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative, Well Read Black Girl and Hollaback!.
For more info and to donate: slmdances.com Twitter + Instagram: @slmdances + @sydmosley facebook.com/sydnielmosleydances
Episode 9: Kim A. Pevia February 18, 2021
Kim Pevia is an experienced life strategist, an engaging keynote speaker, and a skilled workshop facilitator. Her workshops are experiential and transformational. She specializes in identifying the issues that keep us stuck and addresses them by developing a personalized toolbox to help us hurdle over them. Her favorite work is done in circles. Her favorite topics include Emotional intelligence, Gifts of Conflict, Impacts of Historical Trauma, Cultural Healing, Innocuous Nature of Fear, most of which she includes in Race, Equity, and Inclusion work. Born and educated in Baltimore, MD she currently lives in Robeson County, NC where her roots run deep as a member of the Lumbee Tribe.
She serves on many local, state, and national boards that support community activism and local economy through arts, food, culture, and tourism. She recently served as Chair of the Board of Alternate Roots. In 2015 she founded Artist Market-Pembroke, providing retail opportunities for local and regional artists in southeast North Carolina. Her love of community and films is expressed as the curator of the annual Lumbee Film Festival (along with Cucalorus) and the quarterly CommUnity Cinema (in partnership with Working Films). She expresses her creativity as a writer and workshop/training facilitator.
Please send your gratitude offerings to: Lumbee Film Festival Please donate to this link and put “Lumbee Film Festival” in the note –> http://www.cucalorus.org/support/donate/
Episode 8: Carlton Turner February 4, 2021
Carlton Turner is an artist, agriculturalist, researcher and founder of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture). Sipp Culture uses food and story to support rural community, cultural, and economic development in his hometown of Utica, Mississippi where he lives with his wife Brandi and three children. Learn more at: http://sippculture.com/
Episode 7: adrienne maree brown talks Centered Community, Saving Ourselves & Orgasmic “Yes” January 21, 2021
adrienne maree brown is the author of Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and the co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements. She is the cohost of the How to Survive the End of the World and Octavia’s Parables podcasts. adrienne is rooted in Detroit.
Episode 6: Emanuel H. Brown talks Land, Acceptance & Sitting with Oneself January 7, 2021
Emanuel H. Brown (he/him) is a Black Caribbean Trans Masculine Non-Binary person living at the at the intersections of race, gender and sexuality. As an Embodied Freedom Practitioner, Emanuel began working with invisible leaders (BIPOC, Queer/Trans, and Immigrants) looking to create new strategies for liberation and freedom using healing/arts/spiritual (HEARTS) Justice. His integrative approach gained the attention of numerous institutions, and movement spaces and he was invited as a consultant, facilitator, and moderator by Impact Hub Oakland, African American Policy Forum, Move to End Violence, Harvard Law School, Yale University, Allied Media Conference, and National Sexual Assault Conference. Emanuel currently serves Executive Director and Steward of Acorn Center for Restoration and Freedom, and host for BLKTrans*+ Whole on IG Live. You can find out more about Emanuel’s freedomwork at www.acorncenter4freedom.com or on IG @blackevolution215 and @acorncenter4freedom.
Episode 5: 2020 Recap with Special Guest Laurel Butler December 17, 2020
I kick off this episode drawing together some of the themes and threads emerging among the WTBI conversations to date. Then my glitteriffic spirit sibling Laurel Butler joins to respond to viewers’ questions about dreaming and visioning, and we close with some singing.
Episode 4: Ebony Noelle Golden talks Liberation, the Unknown & Everyday Ritual December 3, 2020
Ebony Noelle Golden is an artist, scholar, and culture strategist from Houston, TX and currently based in Harlem. She devises site-specific ceremonies, live art installations, creative collaborations, and arts experiments that explore and radically imagine viable strategies for collective black liberation. In 2020, Ebony launched Jupiter Performance Studio (JPS) which serves as a hub for the study of diasporic black performance traditions. JPS is integral to the development of a five-part theatrical ceremony that will be developed and produced over the next three years with partners in Harlem, Brooklyn, Durham, and Ashfield, Massachusetts. In 2009, Ebony founded Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative, a culture consultancy and arts accelerator, that devises systems, strategies, solutions for and with education, arts, culture, and community groups globally. Golden’s current projects include: Jubilee 11213 (in partnership with Weeksville Heritage Center and generously supported by Creative Capital, Coalition of Theaters of Color, and Black Spatial Relics), free/conjure/black, and In The Name Of (commissioned by Apollo Theatre and generously supported by Double Edge Theatre, Toshi Reagon, Network of Ensemble Theatres and Hi-Arts). Instagram: @ebonynoellegolden || Twitter: @bettysdaughter1 || bettysdaughterarts.com Donations to Spirit House –> https://www.spirithouse-nc.org/
Episode 3: Elizabeth Méndez Berry on Flow, Stretching & Possibility November 19, 2020
Elizabeth Méndez Berry is Vice President and Executive Editor of One World. Before joining One World, she invested in the arts, journalism and freedom of speech in roles at the Ford Foundation and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. She co-founded several philanthropic initiatives, including Critical Minded, which supports cultural critics of color. A former critic and journalist, she started her career at Vibe Magazine; in his book Decoded, Jay-Z cited one of her essays as an inspiration for his song “Public Service Announcement.” And her Spanish-language oped on street harassment helped spark the country’s first ever city council hearing on street harassment. She is on the boards of A Long Walk Home in Chicago and Critical Minded, a national initiative to support cultural critics of color. Twitter: mendezberry || Instagram: emendezberry || Website: elizabethmendezberry.com
A Doris Duke Performing Artist, Sharon is a writer that creates ritual/jazz theatre. A 2020-2023 Playwrights’ Center Core Member and New Dramatists alumnae, Sharon has received support from Creative Capital, MAP Fund and the National Performance Network. An Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center Initiative’s Choreographic Fellowship program, Sharon has been in residence at: Brown University’s MFA Playwriting Program; University of Iowa’s MFA Playwrights Program; The Theatre School at DePaul University; allgo, A Texas Statewide QPOC organization; and Northwestern’s Department of Performance Studies. Widely published, Sharon is Host of the Who Yo People Is podcast series. https://www.facebook.com/SBridgforth1 *** https://www.sharonbridgforth.com *** https://www.whoyopeopleis.com
Ron Ragin 