This workshop is grounded in the assumption that overcoming racism looks like coming together, embracing love and connection and rejecting hate. Hate and fear are the basis and fuel for racism. How can you hate or fear someone if you know, understand and develop care for them? In this session, we want to talk about our truths and expand our ways of knowing and understanding to include a more collective honesty about this country. We will use multiple forms of art and discussion-based circles to excavate our personal and communal truths, to challenge the dominant narratives and how they live in our own lives, and to collaboratively envision a future that includes and embraces all of our truths. It’s about facing your own truth: what you’ve been taught, what you’ve come to know through your own reality and lived experience, and what others’ lived experience can teach you, as well as envisioning a future that honors and includes all of those truths.

We will use discussion-based circles, partner activities, community building activities, and small groups for conversation and knowledge harvesting. We will also use multiple forms of art to engage participants including writing prompts, poster making, sculpture work, and scene work. We will be intentionally incorporating health and wellness breathing tools throughout the session as well, making space for participants to honor and tell their truths.