A Wild Love for the World Workshop

World renowned artist and scholar Lydia Violet Harutoonian will be joining us in Fairbanks, Alaska to offer two unique events, facilitating community healing and rooting us in our wild love for the world. Hosted at Calypso Farms and organized by Aurora Bowers, we will hold both a Saturday workshop and a Sunday concert/community singing “salon.” Please register for each event separately if you wish to attend both. More information follows for both events. About the workshop: Keeping our hearts and minds open and energized towards healing climate change and community traumas can be both a fulfilling and exhausting path. News and experiences of daily hardships, compounding with our current global pandemic, can have both subtle and profound emotional impact, making it vital to nourish our nervous systems, minds, and relationships to help us have energy for the task at hand. In this full-day workshop, Lydia Violet Harutoonian will offer somatic tools, songs, and group exercises/teachings from Joanna Macy's "Work That Reconnects," a body of work developed specifically to tend to our pain for the world. The “Work That Reconnects” is a dynamic body of group-work developed by Joanna Macy, a scholar and respected elder in systems theory, deep ecology, and Buddhism as well as 50+ years of international activism. Together we'll experience these tools and group exercises that we can rest into and organize with, in our desires to be effective allies to both planet and people. In addition to Joanna’s work, Lydia will also weave in trauma-informed somatic practices that help reset and regulate our nervous systems. Singing in a council of friends is one of the most healthful, encouraging, and nourishing things that we know. Having spent the last decade traveling internationally and exchanging community-enriching songs in her organizing, Lydia loves sharing her song bounty with groups. These songs stem from traditions that have been and continue to resource the human spirit for generations. We will experience both the teachings of Joanna Macy, somatic practices, and the power of music to resource us as we face both the peril and promise of our time. About: Lydia Violet Harutoonian, M.A., has studied dedicatedly with deep ecology elder and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy for the past 12 years, learning how we can metabolize climate despair, eco-anxiety, and community traumas into energy for resilience, action, and community healing. She runs The School for The Great Turning, an on and offline school dedicated to creating access to education that will empower humanity's life-sustaining legacy. www.schoolforthegreatturning.com Lydia is also an accomplished Iranian-American multi-instrumentalist and singer, weaving together Southern blues, American roots, and Iranian folk music traditions. She has collaborated with world-renowned artists Climbing PoeTree, Rising Appalachia, and Lyla June. ? www.lydiafiddle.com ? Covid Considerations: We are sensitive to the current grave situation with Covid in Alaska and across the country. We believe that this kind of work is important, however, and can and should be undertaken in a safe manner. Therefore, we have instituted a number of covid safety protocols that we are serious about enforcing: -We will require proof of vaccination. Please bring your vaccination card or a picture of it. You may also email a picture of it ahead of time to arwbowers@gmail.com. -We will be doing rapid testing the morning of the workshop. The cost for the rapid test is included in your registration fee. -We will be practicing social distancing and will have extra masks and hand sanitizer available for use. -We will wear masks during most of the activities. There will be some activities which benefit from seeing one another’s faces, and at those moments, we will allow masks to be removed. Otherwise, we’ll keep our masks on unless we’re far away from the group. -Please bring a bag lunch and a coffee mug. Coffee and tea will be provided, but food will not. -We will have a cap of 30 people total. We reserve the right to cancel the workshop at any time if Covid numbers are too high locally or if the hospitals become overwhelmed. If this happens, registration fees will be refunded in full. Weather considerations: September in Fairbanks can be chilly, but we know that Fairbanksans know how to keep warm and persevere in undertaking our favorite outdoor activities! We will be using a large tent in the case of rain, and will also have propane heaters. If you have an additional outdoor propane heater that you want to bring - the more the merrier! We also encourage you to bring all your warm clothes! This may not be as cold as standing outside to watch the North American sled dog races in January, but we will prepare to be cold nonetheless, since there will be a lot of sitting still. Feel free to bring all your winter clothes, cozy blankets, or anything else you need to keep you warm and toasty! In partnership with: Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition Interfaith Working Group Cost: $120 - helps to cover someone at the scholarship rate $100 - basic registration fee which covers the cost of the course $60 - scholarship rate Please contact us if you need a scholarship beyond the $60 tier. We want to make this accessible to all, and will turn no one away for lack of ability to pay. If you are paying in person, please reserve your spot by emailing Aurora Bowers at arwbowers@gmail.com. Contact: Aurora Bowers - (907) 347-9206 - arwbowers@gmail.com Note: ADDITIONALLY - For workshop attendees (or those who have a negative covid test within 72 hours of the event) on Sunday, you are invited for an afternoon of song, soul, and sanctuary, also hosted by Iranian-American singer/multi-instrumentalist Lydia Violet. Through community singing and musical performance, Lydia hopes to offer a salon to shore up our spirits in the precious moment on Planet Earth. Lydia Violet brings with her wisdoms from her near decade of dedicated study with Joanna Macy, as well as a bounty of songs stemming from her studies of Southern Roots music for resilience. This is a separate event, and tickets can be purchased separately here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/music-as-medicine-salon-tickets-167930559825 Date: Sunday, Sept 5 Time: 2-4 pm Location: Calypso Farm and Ecology Center Cost: $20