Programming Themes

Programs in this series prompt attendees to consider the layered relationships between humans and the land over time. These programs will include invocations to land as teacher and memory-holder and credible witness throughout time, with acknowledgment that it is incumbent upon us as humans to learn how to understand the cues, languages, and clues offered to us. Through embodied practice, storytelling, and experiences, these events explore how we might better understand the world and our relationships to it through the land. Events in the series adopt an Indigenous worldview of Land, to include all the beings that comprise it. We’ll consider topics such as memory and identity, trauma and healing, growth and repair, as they draw us into community with the lands and people.

As we confront the myriad conditions for catastrophe that surround us, we can also rely on imagination, collaboration, and creativity to chart different courses. Building on the works of Octavia Butler, Ross Gay, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Beronda Montgomery, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, and more, we open spaces for emergence of new ideas and considerations. Beyond binary frameworks of freedom and oppression or those perpetuated by scarcity mindsets, these invocations envision liberation and abundance beyond familiar domains. We consider abundance and growth, not as quantifiable, but as vehicles for connection, awareness, consideration, and capacity, acknowledging that unknowable and many possibilities can take root in collective wisdom.

Through these events and initiatives, The Commons presents creative, scholarly, exploratory, and investigative ideas that highlight reciprocal ways of knowing. Through a nontraditional worldview, this series aims to combine forms of knowledge (traditional, scientific, technical, creative, visual, narrative, etc.) In this series, The Commons and collaborative partners will explore known and possible ways to understand the role humans play as individuals and as a species, challenge us to consider new and more perspectives, and listen for voices we are less attuned to hearing. // Photo of Kaitlin Reed by Laura Kingston

Through programs in this series, programs charge us to consider our individual and collective responsibilities to the planet. Programs in this series feature artists, storytellers, climate scientists, and many others who have thought deeply about reciprocity and identifying individual gifts for service.