intersection: FOOD. BODY. LAND. HEALTH. ART.

This summer I got to really drop into my exploration of the intersection of many of my interests… FOOD. BODY. LAND. HEALTH. ART. I returned to the Young Artists At Work (YAAW) program at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), to kick off their summer programing. I was excited to construct and lead a workshop I called “Investigating Self Care & A Social Art Practice”. I used this as an opportunity to play inside of the relationship between personal health, communal health and creativity. I spent a full day with the youth of the YAAW program digging into the connection between their physical, mental and emotional health and their socially-relevant arts practices.

I am deeply interested in and committed to the belief that self care is a means of radical activism.

Through yoga, meditation, creative movement and healthy food offerings (from my peeps at Blue House Farm!), we related the ways in which we engage our bodies to the ways in which we live in the world as activists and how we make our best art. I was really interested in offering the youth tools to develop an awareness of their own needs and to tend to those needs, all in an effort to live great lives and make great work.

The whole process was super stimulating! Well, there are definitely some aspects of the curricular design that I’d rethink if I led this workshop again. But I learned a lot about my process and my interests. I am beginning to develop a language and some tools for how all of these worlds live together, and I am excited to see how this impacts my future practice!