Come join us as we kick-off a series of events centered around stories and community conversation and healing.
Sankofa Seasons is a project facilitated by Allen Turner (designer, storyteller, performer) about gathering stories from our past to help us move forward and heal from our struggles and trauma.
Stories are powerful medicine. They can help us to laugh, cry, or find a way forward. They can also become obstacles that disrupt our sense of self, where we belong, and can stop us in our tracks if we get stuck with a story that is unhealthy for us. One way or another, they often carry something for us to learn about our world, ourselves, or both.
For a couple of months the AIC has been curating various storytelling events where we told traditional stories and thought about their meanings in our life. We will be pivoting to explore the power of personal stories and how they affect our perception of the world around us and the struggles we have to navigate.
We will begin with a project called Sankofa Seasons. Sankofa is a Ghanaian idea that means “Go back and get it” that speaks of the need to learn from the past to inform the future. The seasons part of it borrows from the idea of the Winter Count and acknowledging that we need to take stock of who’s here, and their wellbeing, after we have pushed through a hard time.
We’d love to have you with us as we work to pull some of our personal stories out of the darkness and into the light where we can examine them and turn them into medicine for ourselves and each other.We anticipate that there may be some heavy topics discussed. Our goal is to move them into a place where they can become uplifting and not toxic or painful. That doesn’t mean we’re trying to make everything positive. More so it’s about trying to acknowledge the weight of some things and figuring out how to move with them and grow so they take up less space inside of us.
We will do some story sharing and create some artifacts and processes that will become part of community and personal toolboxes for helping us to catch our breath and figure out how we move forward in a healthy way.
Introduction:
We introduce the facilitators and the big ideas of the session, how we will proceed, and our processes and protocols. When we are done we gather into a circle to begin the next activity.
Activity 01: First story (Invoking our names)
We gather in a circle to do personal introductions. In addition to a name we create movements that represent parts of us that are unseen and share that and what it represents. Once we’ve been through everyone we disperse to table.
Activity 02: Second story
Meditation: We find places to sit in community and write. We begin with brief guided meditation, in dimmed light or darkness, to get everyone present. In front of each participant is a bundle of sage and tobacco and a tea light. At the end of the meditation participants are invited to announce that they are ready to begin the work by stating that they are here and turning on the tea light before them.
Activity 03: Third Story: Listening to our child
Participants are invited to think of their childhood and recall a story that sums up their experience of being a young child (not a teen) and their relationship to community. They take a moment to write down a few sentences and create a small pictogram to represent that moment in their life. They are also invited to identify how that experience continues to affect how they engage with the world. After everyone has had some time to write we ask for share out and affirmations and naming of our stories.
Closing:
Having looked at the world through the eyes of our inner child, we close with instructions to listen to someone else’s child story and bring them back to the circle. We review the collection of stories and symbols people created and ask participants to talk about what they’ve learned about themselves and each other in this session. We invite participants to recognize that this is a rekindled light that they can sit with and listen to. To represent this light we invite them to participate in the candle making workshop.
