Crafting New Children’s Stories
Ecological Family Histories and Children's Stories
At the Beginning of the Anthropocene
Saturday Oct 5, 2024, Hudson, NY
We need new stories.
How do we prepare our children for a world that is changing - especially through climate change - so fast?
That the shore lines of today might well not be what they will have in 20 years?
How can we show what is really going on… in ways that incite creativity, belonging, and continued engagement?
How do we tell the stories of how we got here - stories of horrible things that happened to and by and at the hands of our children’s ancestors?
Join us for the first-of-its-kind
in-person workshop
Saturday October 5, 2024
Hudson, NY (exact location given at registration)
Join us for a time of crafting a-new.
Anna Mudd and Sara Jolena Wolcott, pictured here (a selfie!) at the Parliament of World Religions in 2023. The two women have been friends for two decades, and have been asking these questions in different ways for about ten years. We are excited to have you join us as we expand the circle of inquiry!
This workshop combines learning, sharing, and illustrative creativity.
Anna and Sara Jolena will share their experiences in re-working different stories. We will support you in beginning the process of creating your own stories for children in your family or community.
Please come ready to get creative! This is a highly interactive and creative workshop that includes sharing stories, discussing your own personal illustrative style, drawing together, and thinking through what it might be like for you to keep working on these projects after our time together!
Some artistic material (watercolor, acrylic, pens, pencils, paper) will be provided - please feel free to bring your own as well. You might also want to bring your favorite children's story, or family photos that you might want to work with, and clothes you don't mind getting paint on!
No illustration experience is necessary!
Parents, grandparents, godparents, aunties/uncles, and people who are curious about and want to creatively engaging with children's stories, including those who are child-free, are welcome to attend!
Some snacks and beverages will be provided - please feel free to bring some of your favorites as well.
Sliding scale: $35-$125.
Duration: 3 hours (2 pm - 5 pm ET)
Location: In person: Hudson, NY. Exact location will be emailed after registration.
If you can't come to this gathering, but are interested in future gatherings (both online and offline), please join this list....
How do you prepare your young child for a world that is slowly going underwater?
How do we simultaneously provide children with a deep sense of rootedness and grounding as they grow in an unraveling world, and give them the tools to see that unraveling and re-making as a source of profound necessary creativity?
To be the tree, rooted; and the water, flowing. Simultaneously.
For those children who come from privileged families, how do we tell stories about our own families and our ancestors in ways that do not hide the painful fact that their ancestors were, most definitely part of the problem?
The birth of my son Robin, which so utterly re-orientated my world, turning my nights into walking days and my days into sleeping nights, initiated us into the journey of asking these questions.
Through Sequoia Samanvaya’s re-membering, re-enchanting and anticipating classes we practiced looking backwards and forwards, coupled with the twin creative works of practical skill building and imagination. To imagine what has not yet been, to re-visit and re-shape stories that we’ve been told about how our world came to be, and to re-enliven a world filled with non-human entities that we have been taught to understand as objects, commodities, and resources. To understand this original de-enchantment as part of the legacies of slavery, conceptions of nature as a machine to be mastered and exploited, and the colonization of indigenous land. As Sara Jolena says, our origin stories about who we are and where we come from need to change even as our planet is itself changing.
These are the questions of myth and legend: who are you, given where our world is now, and where we come from?
Adults have a myriad of literature to turn to. But where can children - and their parents - turn?
“Every adventure requires a first step.
Alice in Wonderland / Lewis Carroll
About your guides:
Sara Jolena Wolcott
Sara Jolena Wolcott, M.Div. Wolcott is a healer, witchy minister, Legacy Advisor, and a ceremonialist. She is the founder of Sequoia Samanvaya and the hostess of the ReMembering and ReEnchanting Podcast. She has a particular passion for drawing dragons, swirls, and crafting fantastic stories. She obtained her M.Div from Union Theological Seminary in NYC. She lives alongside the Mohicanattuk, aka the River that Runs both Ways, the Hudson River, in the Hudson Valley, NY, with her partner.
Anna Mudd
Anna Mudd responsible for overall program coordination of the RPL and for co-leading Religious Literacy and the Professions' work with educators. Received her B.A. in Religion from Haverford College and earned a Master of Theological Studies degree from Harvard Divinity School. Anna has taught 5th–8th-grade social studies and comparative religion in Dorchester, MA, and completed her student teaching in 8th-grade social studies in Arlington, MA, while at Harvard. For four years, she served as the Curriculum Coordinator at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies. She also worked at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University developing digital curricular projects. She has been drawing, illustrating, and working with zines for nearly 20 years.
Ecological Family Histories and Children's Stories at the beginning of the Anthropocene: a creative, artistic in person workshop
Saturday, October 6, 2 pm - 5pm ET
Guided by:
Rev Sara Jolena Wolcott & Anna Mudd
