Intermediary Scapes
A community-engaged process of art-making using an embodied social justice framework to cultivate restorative, anti-oppressive spaces for every BODY.
WHO:
Project Design and organizer: KJ Dye, she/they
Facilitation Team:
Sarah Bodony, she/her
Thaliyah Cools-Lartigue, she/her
Maddie Denman, she/her
Maddie Morrison, she/her
Willow Mollenkopf, she/her
WHAT:
Throughout today's interactive walking tour, you will be invited into the process. By placing emphasis on an active process-oriented structure, intermediary guides will offer strategies for you to broaden the way you create personal meaning and connection during today’s journey. The invitation to participate in the intermediary-scapes between sites will act as a “tether” if you will between yourself and our community. The integration of lived experiences in the intermediary-scapes offers opportunities to model social justice facilitation and pedagogy that embody the values of interdependence, shared power, and reciprocity, as well as facilitate the goals of unveiling and dismantling oppressive structures and organizing for action using Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed framework.
Specifically today you will experience practices of community building that include discussion, collaboration, listening, mindfulness exercises, and resources that tie what you learn and experience here to action personally and socially in the outside Columbus community.
WHY:
Social Justice Education focuses on understanding the social structures and power dynamics that result in some social groups having privilege, status, access, while other groups are denied access. Embodied social justice focuses on individual and collective action to eliminate oppression” (Adams, Bell, Griffin 2017). Therefore, "true social justice has come to be understood as the development of a community that allowed for those who had traditionally been marginalized the ability to prosper without having to forfeit their cultural heritage” (Landerman 2013,7)
The ability to recognize differences between and among people’s lived experiences (McLaren 43) leads us to believe in an “equity-mindset,” a desire for justice and fairness that’s attentive to the specific identities, histories, and needs of students, or participants within a specific context, rather than assuming that everyone in the classroom is the same. Instructors and facilitators informed by social justice pedagogy address identities and voices that are erased, silenced, absent, or otherwise excluded.
It is important that effective social justice education facilitation is more than applying techniques. "It is a way of being in our day to day lives that is grounded in an understanding of the history and legacy of exclusion, discrimination, and oppression and a vision for systemic social change” (Landerman 2013, 19).
HOW DO I TAKE ACTION?
November is both Native American Heritage Month and Trans Awareness Month (November 2oth)
Donate
The Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio (NAICCO) is devoted to preserving and restoring balance in the lives of American Indian and Alaska Native youth and families living in and around Ohio through culture, wellness, community, and education.
For those who are familiar with the mission work and vision of NAICCO, it is no secret that the biggest goal for our agency and community is to generate enough revenue to purchase a significant portion of land that our Native people in Ohio can call home
Thank you for spending this time with us. In order for this experience to be effective, it is important for you to take some time to reflect on your sphere of influence.
How you manifest in everyday life affects the people you encounter. Reflect on where you were when you entered this space, where you are now and what is shifting for you internally; and how you can spread this knowledge externally as you engage with people you encounter.
