Co-Dreaming Care through Ritual: Creative and Intuitive Possibilities

As the pervasiveness of colonialism comes to the forefront of our consciousness, we are faced with the opportunity to alchemize our shared pain, grief, and rage into new avenues for individual and collective healing. The impacts of oppressive systems manifest as mental health challenges, health and economic disparities, complex trauma, poverty, housing insecurity, and more. Such nuanced experiences warrant nuanced solutions that transcend existing medical and social service systems – which all too often pathologize and criminalize the very valid reactions to trauma and violence. More than ever, we need liberatory approaches to care that stretch beyond the limitations of individualized and institutionalized wellness, center the power of healing in relationship, and embody the power of collective and ancestral wisdom.

This last class will invite participants to dream new ethics and practices of care, with the intention of co-creating futures that nourish relationships and creativity. Grounded in radical imagination and with a shared vision for collective liberation, faculty will guide moments of activating possibility to design and move towards the worlds we long to create. Through somatic reflection, storytelling, and ritual, participants will be invited to expand their intuitive wisdoms, and plant seeds for different care and relating practices for themselves and their communities.

• Locate the tensions between the boundedness of the “ethics” and rules of the mental health/wellness industry
• Engage personal and collective desires and longings towards more creative possibilities in care-oriented, communal relating
• Practice envisioning what care could look or feel like beyond professionalized roles, in recognition of wisdoms and responsibilities rooted in various identities, social power, community roles, and ancestral lineages
• Create rituals that deepen our relationships to care, solidarity, and intimacy in order to shape a more embodied, spirited praxis

Denise Shanté Brown (she/her) is a holistic design strategist, creative co-conspirator and intuitive writer. She designs liberatory experiences where people can nurture their dreams for care, healing and justice into existence. With over 10 years of creative social practice and visionary rigor, she guides the process of transformation across movements and is devoted to (re)imagining ways to build, write, and embody the lives we long for. Known for being a facilitator of the magical and meaningful, she’s also a published writer of words, previous Steering Committee Member and current Care Pod Lead with the Design Justice Network, Weaver at the Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry, and the Founding Director of Black Womxn Flourish.

Ji-Youn Kim (they/she) is a queer, currently non-disabled Corean immigrant and settler, joy-seeker, liberatory dreamer, psych survivor, justice-oriented therapist ish, and ongoing creation of community, based in what is colonially known as Vancouver, Canada. They work in private/alternative practice in relationships with predominantly Sick & Disabled QTBIPOC client community members with the orientation of therapy-ish as a space to practice embodied liberatory practices in the spirit of collective liberation. Her therapeutic work and political praxis are shaped by Indigenous sovereignty, queer Black feminism, abolition, Transformative Justice, and Disability Justice.

Registration includes the 3-hour class session, an optional 90-minute discussion group one week after the live class (Sunday, August 11, 2024 from 12-1:30 pm EST), and access to IDHA’s School for Transformative Mental Health on Mighty Networks (our virtual learning community where you’ll have the opportunity to engage with other students and your faculty).

Email us at [email protected]

Event Venue

Online