|
|
|
|
|
It's Studio Time!
|
CREATIVE COMMUNITY WORKSHOPS
|
|
2nd & 4th Sundays Ongoing 1-4 pm pacific
|
Come and spend some free-form creative time at Braided Bridge. Explore new skills, launch a project, or continue your work within a creative community. Kim or Michelle will be on hand to teach or support projects, new learning, and community as needed. Michelle has experience teaching art at Stanford and San Jose State, and Kim has led many students in creative time at the studio over the years.
The Vandercook letterpress, Griffin etching press, and other equipment are available for printmaking and bookmaking. The studio is also suitable for various drawing and painting techniques and collage. Michelle's skills as an experienced paper maker and textile artist can be tapped. Our Internet connection is available for media projects. Does your creative work take some other form? Come anyway and show us! Bring ideas or just explore!
|
|
There is no fee. The workshop is offered through the gift economy. Please support us in ways that feel right for you, whether financial, participatory, or both. You can contribute financially by donating through Zeffy. Donations help to keep the studio open and assist people living on the streets and land in Alameda County. If a contribution doesn't work for you right now, bring yourself. Your presence is our gift!
|
|
|
|
The Art, Spirit, and Justice of Remembering
In the next mailing, we will share with you more about the work of one of our community members, Christine, who is the founder of Faces Not Forgotten. Faces Not Forgotten remembers children from across the United States who have been killed by gun violence, by arranging with artists to make a hand-painted portrait of each child. The image is reproduced one of many quilts, which are displayed in exhibitions and at gun violence prevention events. The original portrait is given to the family.
There are many ways that art is used in the service of justice. One of them is remembering and grieving those we've lost. Buddhist activist, author, and deep ecologist Joanna Macy developed The Work that Reconnects as a pathway to participate in the healing of the world. This pathway follows a spiral journey that moves through four stages: Coming from gratitude, Honoring our pain, Seeing with new eyes, and Going forth.
|
|
When we use art to honor our pain, we can place our created expression in the context of this spiral, using the art to foster reconnection through a shared sense of loss. When this sharing touches people from broken apart groups, it opens a pathway to new seeing, as lives of people who had been broken away from each other are invited to touch again. We can then invite going forth, in a more collected state than before, with changed intention and action.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Popup Legal Clinic for Unhoused People
Homebridge Connect is supporting our member Dee in organizing a free popup legal clinic for unhoused people in Oakland. Dee is also the vice president of the San Francisco chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. She is tapping our connections through the guild, through outreach work, through Wood St. Commons, and other groups to gather together lawyers, law students, and outreach volunteers. The support will focus on property claims for destroyed belongings (law requires valuables to be stored where they can be retrieved but they seldom are) and reasonable accommodations requests (because a large percentage of people facing sweeps or he prospect of living in a temporary housing or shelter have disabilities which are rarely accounted for). There will also be attorneys specializing in helping people reconnect with public defenders if needed. Food, clothing, haircuts, and a street-writing workshop with Roofless Radio will also be offered.
|
|
Join us in supporting the legal clinic! You can volunteer to serve food, bring a potluck dish to share, or contributing financially. There are also some supplies we're still working to gather including folding tables, folding chairs, hot spots, a printer with scanner, and a generator
|
|
|
|
|
Active Love: A Change in Operating System
Guiding Principles 6-7
|
6. Creativity Expresses Love and Freedom
|
Creativity is the generative expression of love, and allows one to live from the freedom of one’s being. Creative energy is stronger than resistance. It can form a vision and a path for change to be possible. Art is a collective creative interaction in which the stories and beliefs people have about themselves are expressed. Art can change the story, vision, and myth of the collective society.
|
Living and being in community through the law of love is a practice, not a rulebook. Working through trauma, difficult emotions, and conflict are a natural part of growth. Acceptance of limitations, mistakes and imperfect outcomes is a component of justice to self and others.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Studio Use, Joining In, Supporting
Studio rental time is available. Reply to this email to make arrangements. If you'd like to join our work, reply to this email to let us know. If you'd like to contribute financially to keeping this work going, you can use the button below. We are a 501c3 organization and are deeply grateful for your support.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Recipients of this new mailing include past donors and workshop participants, members of Braided Bridge, participants of Homebridge Connect, people familiar with the starting of Braided Bridge, and a couple of close friends. If you are on this list and didn't want to be, please do feel welcome to unsubscribe and accept my sincere apologies. –Kim
|
|
|
|
|
|
|