SCARBOROUGH ARTS PRESENTS: COMMUNITY+ Connects: Online, Satelite Program with Workman Arts
Sustainable Resistance for BIPOC Folx: Therapeutic Writing Workshops to Build Community for Surviving White Supremacy Registration with Krystal Kavita Jagoo
Every Sunday: Sundays - Sundays: July 10th, 17th, 24th, 31st, and August 7th, 1-3pm
*Please note these workshops are scheduled for EST time.
About the workshop:
This workshop series consists of 9 therapeutic writing workshops for BIPOC participants of all genders, ages, and abilities. This workshop series seeks to create space for BIPOC participants to foster a sense of futuristic possibility for improving and maintaining mental health with resistance when often up against collective societal gaslighting daily from rigged systems, rooted in whiteness. This workshop will lead participants in discussions and support around how to keep going when our very existence disrupts the status quo. The work done in this workshop will be grounded in anti-oppressive practice, and the goal of the workshops is for attendees to leave each of these sessions with a sense of futuristic possibility for how they can improve and maintain mental health with resistance.
Each session of this series of workshops will engage BIPOC folx with immersive readings from brilliant BIPOC authors, accompanied by therapeutic writing, reflection, and sharing to promote mental health, including such types of writing as letters, poetry, and hermit crab essays to allow for creative expansion, should participants be apprehensive to engage in writing prompts as a group. Since white supremacy can leave BIPOC folx feeling powerless, the series of interactive therapeutic writing workshops will harness the benefits of narrative therapy approaches, whereby participants are encouraged to author their own stories of survival with sustainable practices to maintain BIPOC resistance alongside psychoeducation regarding the impact of daily oppression on mental health. Facilitation strategies will be eclectic in response to the needs and interests of participants, including reflective exercises, writing prompts, narrative storytelling, etc.
About Krystal:
Krystal Kavita Jagoo is a social worker, artist, and educator who prioritizes equity in all of her efforts. Her passion for lifelong development and community service is demonstrated by her past time on the board of directors at the Capitol Centre, and ongoing work serving on a Project Advisory Committee on Women's Sexual Health for the Association for South Asian AIDS Prevention. She has taught "Justice and the Poor: Issues of Race, Class, and Gender" at Nipissing University, and looks forward to teaching the Writing for Social Change youth writing course at the Loft Literary Center. Her articles have been featured in Huffington Post, Healthline, Prism, and Canadaland, among other publications. Her essay, "Inclusive Reproductive Justice," was published in Volume 2 of the Reproductive Justice Briefing Book: A Primer on Reproductive Justice and Social Change. Her visual art, "University Ableism Bingo" was featured in Pandemic: A Feminist Response, and the zine, CRIP COLLAB. Her memoir essay, "A Slow Death in Academia" was published in Radical: An Unapologetic Anthology by Women & Gender Nonconforming Storytellers of Color.
*Please note this workshop series is only open for registration for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and Person of Colour) identified individuals.
*As this workshop is made possible via Zoom, participants from across Scarborough, the GTA, and world-wide are welcome to join.
*Sign-up for this workshop series is ongoing and on a drop-in basis. If you are unable to make a workshop, documents and briefs from the previous workshop will be made available to you upon request via a shared Google File or via email.