Community Labs
laboratories for communal strategies.
Our Labs are playgrounds for collaborative exploration and inquiry, weaving resources that cultivate practices for collective care within communities.
Community Labs are either initiated by practitioners or convened by institutions or community leaders. The creative process is centered on the hopes and strengths within the context and follows a line of inquiry focused on an area chosen by the community.
Encrucijadas
The Encrucijadas lab (meaning “Crossroads”) is exploring meaningful ways to support frontline workers, volunteers, and leaders who are accompanying refugees and migrants at the border in trauma-informed psychosocial arts-based interventions. These leaders are creating circles of care for connection and health in the liminal space.
Group leaders explore how to provide space for safety and stabilization through the arts, group work, reflections, breath-work, and movement activities that are connected to psycho-education best practices. The project focuses on building skills for emotional regulation, calming, social connection, increased self-awareness, safety, and hope; key components for restoring social and behavioral functioning after trauma and increasing resiliency.
Encrucijadas was designed by Umbral, a Mexican based group that was launched in 2018. This Community Lab is based on a popular education model and integrates the feedback and experiences of Mexican leaders on the border to help shape the project. It is currently being piloted at the Southern border in Tapachula and the Northern border in Tijuana. Find out more in how we are building tapestries of care with communities on the move in Mexico.
“I could take the exercises and use them when I needed to feel calmer, like before going to sleep. I don’t have so many difficult thoughts now”.
— A young women staying at a shelter who participated in an Encrucijadas group.
Mapping Inspiration through the Arts.
Geographies of Hope
Geography of Hope is an art collective that works to create space for communities of change agents to come together to practice the art of sustaining hope. The goal is to nourish existing relationships and develop new alliances between those working at the intersection of peacebuilding and the expressive arts. Together we are mapping hope in our context.
Emerging Labs
Collective Tapestry is currently exploring the following emerging questions in the forthcoming labs:
Rhythms of resistance for sustainable social action.
Community Based Participatory Action & Arts-Based Research
