Saturday APR 11, 2015: REGENERATIVE PRACTICES

Regenerative Practices: How can we make the arts more sustainable? What can we do as individuals to renew our energy and passion? What can we do as a network to support each other? What can we do as leaders of programs and organizations to encourage a healthier arts ecosystem?

Guest Speakers

Morning Session – MamaSita’s Tiny Tea House is an art, food, and storytelling project that speaks the language of cooking. In this workshop, we’ll collaboratively make fresh masala chai while connecting personal and public histories. Why chai? The artists’ Japanese Colombian and Indian grandparents lived together briefly in Orange County in the 1970s brewing as many understandings as misunderstandings over hot cups of tea. Through these family stories, MamaSita began to consider the opportunity of food in building and supporting communities. Her ongoing project now spans the US and Mexico through the handcrafted teacups of artisan Ines Leal and the dignicraft collective.

Facilitator – Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator born and raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles to Indian and Japanese Colombian parents. Her work focuses on food as a strategy to connect personal and public histories. After receiving her B.A. in Studio Art from Scripps College, Sita moved to the Bay Area where she holds an M.F.A. in interdisciplinary art and an M.A. in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts. She is currently a lecturer at UC Merced in the Global Arts Studies Program and has taught at RayKo Photo Center. Sita has collaborated with organizations such as Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, The San Jose Museum of Art, The Institute for Art and Olfaction, the Montalvo Arts Center, 826 Valencia, Stanford University, and the Future Food House in Rotterdam. An advocate for Asian American arts, she has been the art features editor for Hyphen magazine, a writer for Art Practical, and a board member at Kearny Street Workshop. You can find her work at sitabhaumik.com.

Sharon Price, Associate Director of Programs, Rockwood Leadership Institute

Sharon is Rockwood’s Associate Director of Programs. Her purpose at Rockwood is to support the personal growth and well-being of transformative leaders in order to build a unified progressive movement. She oversees several Yearlong and Fellowship programs, including the Cross-Movement Yearlong, special programs with SEIU, and the Fellowship for Human Rights and National Security Reform Leaders. Previously, she worked in international conservation building networks of local environmental leaders. Before that, she studied Religion and Anthropology in Washington, D.C. and Kathmandu, Nepal. Sharon is certified as an Integral Coach® through New Ventures West.

Kirthi Nath, Filmaker and Mindfulness facilitator

Kirthi Nath is an award-winning filmmaker who believes that ordinary people ripple extraordinary change. Kirthi is the creative director and lead filmmaker at Cinemagical Media, a media production company that focus on creating films and workshops that support individuals, communities and companies to ‘be the cause that creates the effect’.  In addition to filmmaking, Kirthi teaches (in person and online) courses and delivers talks that focus on Creative Presence, Spiritually, Mindfulness and the Practice of Good. In 2014 she was a Made Grantee and taught a 4-session online course about Modern Day Mindfulness at Work. Kirthi has practiced meditation, been on numerous silent retreats and immersed into informal and formal Buddhist and Yogi studies since 2001.  To learn more about Kirthi visit her at LinkedIn

Ramekon O’Arwisters, Artist

Ramekon O’Arwisters lives and works in San Francisco, California and was a recipient of a 2002 Artadia Award and he is a 2014 Eureka Fellow, awarded by the Fleishhacker Foundation, San Francisco. He has exhibited at the Luggage Store, San Francisco, California and Kato Gallery, Tokyo, Japan. His numerous group exhibitions include Past Forward: African Spirituality in Contemporary Black Art at the African American Art & Cultural Complex (AAACC), San Francisco, California and Decoding Identity: I Do It For My People, Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), San Francisco, California. O’Arwisters was honored with his second San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant in 2011.

He has been actively involved in residences and guest lectures at Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Vermont Studio Center, and Sonoma State University. His works are included in the public collections of the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture at Duke University and the Haley Charitable Foundation, Point Richmond, California. He is currently working on an exhibition about art and spirituality, Sugar In Our Blood: The Spirit of Black and Queer Identity, for a one-person exhibition at the African American Art and Culture Center (AAACC) in June 2013.

O’Arwisters is curator of photography and video art at SFO Museum.

Rebecca Ratzkin, Senior Consultant, WolfBrown

Rebecca Ratzkin is a Senior Consultant at WolfBrown, a national arts research and planning consultancy. Since 2005, she has helped non-profit organizations, foundations and public agencies in the arts sector to better understand how audiences engage and experience arts and culture, create effective strategies for engaging and building stronger relationships to existing and potential audiences, add addressing environmental and institutional change. Her interests and skills focus on bridging theory with practical and achievable solutions, and seeing opportunity in the midst of the deepest challenges. In her work with WolfBrown, she has led donor and customer segmentation studies, managed general populations studies of arts participation, and led capacity building initiatives around research methods and analysis. Rebecca is deeply involved in WolfBrown’s work on intrinsic impact – measuring how the arts experience affects audiences’ emotionally, intellectually and socially – and is committed to empowering arts organizations lo conduct and apply research independently. She has a Master’s in Urban Planning from UCLA, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Oberlin College with a BA in art history.
Rebecca started practicing Iyengar yoga in 1998 at the Iyengar Yoga Institute of Los Angeles and was immediately hooked. Always able to touch her touch her hands to her toes, Rebecca found an unknown strength and stability from both the physical and mental practice. Since moving to San Francisco in fall 2005, Rebecca found her NorCal Iyengar community at IYISF (Iyengar Yoga Institute of SF), first through their Teacher Training program, and then through the numerous friendships and mentors she has met through the years. Rebecca taught alignment-based Hatha yoga both privately and at Yoga Garden SF since 2008, but has been taking a break from teaching for the past two years. She is currently the Board President of the Iyengar Yoga Association of Northern California, and is dedicated to strengthening the Iyengar yoga community’s voice across the region.

Readings

Required Reading:

Music to My Ears by Akaya Windwood
The Busy Trap by Tim Kreider
Three ways to prevent burnout by Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek
The Anxiety of Generosity and the Abundance of the Commons by Polly Carl
The Scarcity Matrix by David Dower

If you’d like to read further:

Work + Home + Community + Self by Stewart D. Friedman
Why We Walk by Adam Gopnik
From Fired up to burnout by Britt Bravo

Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time By Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy

How to Meditate a guide to formal sitting practice By Tara Brach

Group Notes