The Story We Be

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
body land ether:
Experiments & Training in Land-Based, Embodied, Creativity-Centred Organizing Practice

*Dates: April 22 & 23, May 20 & 21, June 10 & 11
*Time: Workshops will run 2pm – 6pm each day
*Location: Camosun Bog (Wheelchair accessible) & TBA
*Teaching Team: T’uy’tanat-Cease Wyss & mia susan amir
*Registration fee: $300.00 – $500.00, sliding scale based on income level
*Bursaries, scholarships, & payment plans available!
*Questions can be sent to storywebe[at]gmail[dot]com
*Applications due April 7th! Check link for application details!

A bog takes 5,000 years to develop into a resilient ecosystem. In a bog, it is the slow decay of dead plant matter that forms the basis of growth and life. The intricate and necessary relationships between past, present, and future that exist within the bog ecosystem give us much inspiration when thinking about what sustained, embodied, relational, creative, visionary, strategic, and bold, organizing and politicized arts practices can look like. Through body land ether we seek to explore just this!

body land ether is a 3-month training and experimentation series being presented by The Story We Be. This program is intended for community organizers, land and water defenders, politicized artists, and cultural workers/organizers living on the unceded and occupied territories of the x?m?θk??y??m, s?wxw_ ú7mesh, and Tsleil—Waututh. Through land-based immersion at Camosun Bog and indoor interdisciplinary training/experimentation, we will explore the following questions:

- How can the land where we live, create, and organize inform how we live, create and organize; exploring our communities of creation and resistance as ecosystems.

-How are our relationships to the territories where we live, create, and organize configured/impacted by ongoing colonization? What does it mean to be an accomplice to political change in this context, based on our positionality?

-What motivates us to protect what is sacred? And how do we weave our political beliefs into our personal relationships to culture and ceremony, in order to affect the positive changes we seek?

-How does developing embodied practice:
*support our self-determination;
*strengthen our ability to respond to intuition and innate impulse;
*embolden our capacity to organize and create in coordination with others?

-How does creative-political praxis enable the widening of our movements, and deepen the impact of our strategies?

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Each training weekend will include:
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One day of land-based immersion at Camosun Bog
We will commit this time to being immersed in the environment, and in an esoteric manner. We are going to allow our spirits/our minds/our blood to find safety and comfort in the outdoors, to become deeply acquainted with the forest, the bog, and the energies that co-exist between the human and natural world. We will breath fresh air and take a break from the toxicity that urban spaces inflict on our minds/bodies/spirits. We will reconnect ourselves to our personal pasts and seek to restart our paths towards our futures through cultural interactions in the natural world. We will learn how to listen.

One day of indoor interdisciplinary training/experimentation
We will explore learnings made on the land, and engage with assigned creative and theoretical materials to deepen embodied creative-political praxis and organizing strategies. These explorations will be in direct relationship to the creative work and/or organizing that participants are currently engaged in, in their communities. The above-listed questions will frame our explorations.

We will work individually, in partners, in small groups, and as a large group. Our pedagogy will be grounded in emergent practice, experiential learning practice, and will centre mutual learning. We will use tools drawn from Theatre of the Oppressed, Authentic Movement, creative writing, community mapping, visual storytelling, and more. Our teaching practice and group process will be rooted in and informed by our commitments to racial, economic, disability, gender, and environmental justice. Exercises will centre access to support a variety of learning styles and ways of participating.

Check link for full details.

body land ether: Training in Land-Based, Embodied, Creative Organizing - APPLY BY APRIL 7 *Image description: Moss, rocks & roots at Camosun Bog, in saturated greens, blues & black.The Story We Be is excited to announce: body land ether Experiments & Training in Land-Based, Embodied, Creativity-Centred Organizing PracticeAPPLY HERE BY 11:59PM APRIL 7TH

Dear Community! Access is a human right. Currently, d/Deaf artists do not have ongoing access to creative opportunities in the Vancouver theatre community. Work is beginning to address this exclusion, but in the meantime, there are artists whose creative drive shouldn’t be denied. The Story We Be is partnering with Theatre Terrific, (to)Town Collective, and PTC in the launch of this crowdfunding campaign; what we see as an initial step to creating meaningful access, and to building an inclusive theatre community! Join us in this effort! Contribute today, and please spread the word!

Landon Krentz, Davey Samuel Calderon, Heidi Taylor

Click here to support Access 4 d/Deaf Artists in Theatre by Davey Calderon The New(to)Town Collective, PTC, The Story We Be, and Theatre Terrific, are currently reckoning with a disconnect between our stated commitments to accessible practice, and our respective funding capacities to carry these commitments out. Our organizations were recently approached by d/Deaf artis...

UPDATE: This course has been cancelled by Langara College. A workshop addressing the same content will be run directly through The Story We Be in March. Look out for forthcoming details.

***Short Workshop Description (check link for the full details)***
This 8-week memoir workshop, appropriate for writers at all levels, will focus on the difficult work of world-building in memoir. We will use the body, memory (including bio and ancestral), the environment, the archive, and the imagination, to engage in an immersive exploration of the worlds and characters that inhabit your stories. We will uncover the secret languages, curious bodies, distinctive landscapes, nuanced dynamics, and emotional truths that shape your characters’ lives. We will develop radical intimacy with the questions that guide your work. We will read, and write, and experiment, and play, a lot!

Further, we will explore the act of memoir - in the form of prose, the lyric essay, and works that defy genre - as a potent creative tool for self-determination, cultural transformation, and political change. We will explore writing at the level of ethics and aesthetics. We will do this because the role of the writer has never been more important as with increasing urgency we require new narratives to help us heal, and to ignite the collective imaginary in response to the sociopolitical, cultural, economic, and ecological crises we face. Never before, have our stories been a more vital resource.

Stirring the Embers, Fanning the Flames: 8-week SWB Memoir Workshop at Langara College! Register by Feb. 10th! Image description: Black background with red, orange, and yellow embers raining down the page in various degrees of focus

Dear Community,

Announcing The Story We Be's next round of Stirring the Embers, Fanning the Flames: an 8-week memoir workshop happening at Langara College, Vancouver, BC, unceded and occupied xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh territories!

Register by October 7th!!!

Stirring the Embers, Fanning the Flames: 8-week SWB Memoir Workshop at Langara College! Register by Oct. 7th! *REGISTER BY NOON, OCT. 7th*Day: Thursdays, starting Oct. 13th (8 Workshops)Time: 6:30pm – 9:30pmLocation: Langara College, Main Campus, Vancouver, BC, Unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh territoriesRegistration Fee: $265.00Please contact us if the fee will be a barrier to your pa...

Right on time: How Writers Can Join the Fight Against Police Violence from the The Dark Noise Collective.

How Writers Can Join the Fight Against Police Violence The Dark Noise Collective PENS UP | How Writers Can Join the Fight Against Police Violence The purpose of this document is to connect writers to local, grassroots organizations that are engaged in active campaigns to fight police violence and increase police accountability. As writers, we are ...

ANNOUNCING:
Don't Let Me Be Lonely, Reading Group (Online)
April 18th, 5pm - 8pm PST

Dear Community,

On April 18th, from 5pm - 8pm PST, join an intimate group of writers who have participated in programming offered by The Story We Be to explore Claudia Rankine's incredible work, Don't Let Me Be Lonely.

To participate, RSVP to storywebe[at]gmail[dot]com by April 11th. You will at that time receive a PDF version of the text, and the WebEx invite.

To prepare:
- Read the book
- Collect some insights/reflections/questions about Rankine's craft strategies and other elements of the work
- Generate a creative response to the work. This can look like anything: a piece of writing in any genre, an image/series of images, a song, a gestural interpretation, etc.

Donations via PayPal or bank transfer to help cover the WebEx cost will be welcomed but not expected.

Enormous Congratulations to the Winter 2016 cohort who just completed THE HEAT, THE HEART: Advanced Prose Workshop on World Building and Revision, and the POIESIS: Cross-Genre Generative Writing Workshop!

These writers, who converged from across Turtle Island, brought their absolute everything to the work; embodying and modeling the deepest respect for their role as writers; arriving to practice in a way that matched the sacredness of craft; which ultimately meant the most depthful, compassionate, visionary, and honest investigation of their humanity, our collective humanity, and the urgent stories they are making necessary space for. The world is made by stories, and it will be changed by their stories!

Watch out for an exciting upcoming online event and publication featuring their work.

Sonia Guiñansaca on Instagram: “"Today, we honor the “grand dame of science fiction” - Octavia... “"Today, we honor the “grand dame of science fiction” - Octavia E. Butler. Born in Pasadena, California, Octavia started writing books and essays in the…”

"Writing is brave. Writers put their vulnerable parts into permanency. Writing takes history into its own hands. Writing fuels futures.

Writing mirrors the misrepresented. In a world that supports single narratives, writing wrecks the notions in place. Writing challenges convention, releases assumed realities. It births reflection, makes us contemplate what we don’t question otherwise. Writing is not for its own sake. It’s for ours. Writers wrestle with the lion of language for us, fight to make us understand what we struggle to see, like describing an undiscovered color."

Writing Is A Valid Contribution To The Revolution — Listen To My Story “The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the…

Congratulations to past and present SWB participating writer, Laurel Albina, for winning Briarpatch's 2016 Writing in the Margins Contest for Poetry!

Energy Series: Surface Mining – Briarpatch Magazine Winner of the 2016 Writing in the Margins contest for poetry.

Start the week write:

20 Young Writers Of Color Share Their Favorite Poems "The vulnerability and realness I've witnessed within the poetry world is unlike any other medium in my mind."

4 spots remaining! Registration closes Friday Feb. 5th, 12-noon!

STIRRING THE EMBERS, FANNING THE FLAMES
An 8-Week Memoir Workshop

Day: Tuesdays starting February 9th
Time: 6:30pm – 9:30pm
Location: Langara College, Main Campus
Registration Fee: $258.00
CRN: 50508
Register by noon, February 5th: http://langara.ca/continuing-studies/registration/index.html

Description:

Examine the questions and explore the motivations that lie behind the desire to write memoir. Writing will be generated though a variety of interdisciplinary exercises. We will also explore techniques for bringing together a collection of stories.

We will consider:
- Story selection
- The question of “Truth”
- Writing beyond binaries
- The ethics of writing and sharing stories that involve and implicate ourselves and others
- Meaning making
- Memoir as an inherently political and politicized act

We will practice and hone our skills in:
- Excavating memory
- Development of context
- Character development
- Point of View
- Imagery
- Metaphor
- Place
- Landscape
- Revision

Memoir Workshop at Langara College We are excited to announce that SWB Creative Director mia susan amir will be teaching at Langara College, Vancouver during the Spring 2016 Semester. This class will embody SWB’s commitment to an ex...