Fellowships take the form of retreats and workshops that center around a storytelling practice. Each fellowship explores a theme in alignment with the harvests of that season. Participants, you are connected with a cohort of 10-20 similarly minded explorers, learning aspects of storytelling relevant to their work and creating a collaborative piece of work that is shaped by the learning they’ve done together.
Seed Harvest
As the leaves fall off the trees and the plants go to seed, we ask ourselves to analyze our relationship with birth and death. This fellowship is meant for those who are in conversation with the end and the beginning of life. I’m looking to partner with end of life facilities, death and birth doulas, and palliative care practitioners to learn a practice of listening and preserving the stories of our elders at the final stage of their life.
Materials Harvest
In a time of the year where maintenance and nourishment become driving forces, this fellowship is for burgeoning entrepreneurs. Understanding that all new creations must be implemented by the people who they serve, I ask future creators to listen to the problems we are faced with before they solve them. The storytelling focus of this workshop is centered around telling the story of a product as a solution, but this starts with understanding how to use story craft to harvest the stories of your community first.
Underground Harvest
In the frozen earth people have often found a place to preserve the stories we will need for the future. This fellowship is for historians and activists who are trying to tell the stories that have gone untold. I’m looking to partner with organizations looking to gain fluency in the language of myth and folktale to harvest the important stories of this historical moment and preserve them for future generations.
Water Harvest
This fellowship takes place as the flowers begin to bloom. This fellowship is for climate scientists, river protectors, members of the fishing community, and others focused on giving life to the lifegiving force of freshwater. Using the preservation techniques of podcasting, this fellowship tries to hold the stories of our winding water pathways together.
Sea Harvest
This fellowship is meant for kelp and oyster farmers, sea fisherpeople, ocean scientists, and people who work with the ocean and is meant to explore the toll that rising and warming sea levels have on this planet. Taking cues from a 7th generation thought process, I support these ocean explorers in exploring their own stories and how to preserve this moment as a historical pivot point with lessons we can learn to live on this blue planet. I use story preservation as an avenue to create an archive meant for our ancestors to understand what we are feeling in this moment of history.
Fruit Harvest
As summer enters fall, plants fill themselves with fruit. This fellowship is a time to reflect on the stories that have taken place on the land. I try to partner with a local community center, or library, or meetinghouse to put on a storytelling show that features local people telling the history of the community they are a part of. I use a historical digging technique called reverse-chronology to create a story of the land through the people who’ve lived on it.