Black Writers Healing Conference: Writing to Transform Trauma

More Than a Single Story is so grateful for the faith and trust you put in our small organization with your support for this huge project! We have been busy pulling our team together for visioning, planning, and action. Here is our working process so far:

December

* We coalesced our Planning team: Carolyn Holbrook, Arleta Little, Erin Sharkey, and Rekhet Si-Asar, who will meet together throughout the project to provide advice and keep planning and implementation on track.
* We completed a contract with MHC for meeting space, food service, and overnight rooms and set a date for the conference: the weekend of June 2-3-4, starting on Friday night with dinner and a keynote speaker, facilitating workshops Saturday and Sunday, and presenting a closing event on Sunday afternoon.
* We selected teaching artists. Workshops will be facilitated by two teaching artists - one writer, and one artist in another discipline to broaden creative approaches to healing from trauma. Since we are a literary organization, we selected four writers and asked them to select a collaborator they wanted to work with. The teams are: writer Erin Sharkey with photographer Tia Simone Gardner, writer Douglas Kearney and sound designer Dameun Strange, writer Shannon Gibney with visual artist Lesley Barlow, and writer Junauda Petrus with Afro-Caribbean dancer Andrea Potter.
* We contracted with Resmaa Manaken, author of My Grandmother's Hands, as our keynote speaker in conversation with two of our teaching artists: Erin Sharkey and Douglas Kearney.
* We contracted with two Project Manager Apprentices who will share duties. MTASS has a commitment to bring along the next generation, and our Apprentices are two recent Black college grads.
* We contracted with an experienced Program Manager Mentor, Marion Gomez, to support our apprentices with an outline of typical project management responsibilities, and to provide concrete tools and the advice of experience to help them learn, grow, and get the job done.
January
We held the first of our two Facilitator Team retreats with teaching artists at The Fields at Rootsprings. Erin Sharkey, one of the owners of Rootsprings and an experienced retreat facilitator, provided leadership for this day of planning. Together, we planned the format and content of the workshops and the flow of the weekend. This team formalized a title for the conference: Writing to Transform Trauma: A Weekend Intensive for Black Writers and Artists

February
Our Planning Team worked with our Apprentices to develop an application form for artists interested in participating, and a communications plan to get the information out to the community. Artistic Director Carolyn Holbrook and one of our Project Manager Apprentices also met with MHC Event Center staff to coalesce plans for use of the space.

March
We have tweaked our budget as we developed more concrete information on needs and costs, and we may make additional changes if necessary. However, the core of our plan for this exciting event remains the same.We launched the application invitations through our website, through eblasts, and on social media. We also invited members of our Planning Team to nominate potential applicants, to whom we sent invitations to apply. See our website for a detailed description of the event, bios of the artist facilitators, and the application: https://morethanasinglestory.com/event-series/writing-to-transform-trau…

April - May
Our Planning Team has continued to meet and oversee project evolution, and our Project Management Apprentices have worked with Marion Gomez to learn and keep the work moving forward. We designed and distributed applications for writers interested in participating in the event. We held the second of our two Facilitator Team Retreats with teaching artists at MHC, led by Erin Sharkey. At this retreat, the team reviewed all applications and we sent notices inviting participants. Altogether, we exceeded our goal of 30 participants - with 34 total!

June
We hosted the conference and it was an amazing success! At this writing, we are still collecting evaluations and comments, and we will hold a team meeting to debrief and celebrate. We will provide an update in our final report in July.

; We are picking up here from our Interim Reports, which outlined the planning phase and our two Facilitator Team Retreats.

In June 2023, we launched our first-ever weekend intensive, Writing to Transform Trauma, in response to the tumultuous climate following the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd. In times of great stress, artists go to their creativity to heal, and dozens of artists have asked for support to transform that healing process into creating new work and re-engaging with audiences.

Over 2-1/2 days at the MN Humanities Center we hosted 34 emerging and experienced writers in experiential workshops facilitated by four collaborative teams of writers, visual artists, musician, and movement artists - experiencing multiple forms to expand approaches and unstickbarriers in generating new work.

Facilitator teams were:
* Erin Sharkey, writer, educator, and graphic designer - with Tia-Simone Gardner, artist, educator, photography, and moving-image artist;
* Junauda Petrus, writer, filmmaker, and performance artist - with Andrea Potter, movement therapy and dance artist;
* Douglas Kearney, poet, essayist, and librettist - with Dameun Strange, sound artist, multi-instrumentalist, and electro-acoustic composer; and
* Shannon Gibney, writer, educator - with Leslie Barlow, visual artist, educator.

The event opened on Friday evening with dinner and a talk by each of the facilitating artists to introduce themselves and their work to the participants. Resmaa Manakem, author, therapist, and healer, presented our Keynote Conversation, Emerging Already, Sustaining Now.He presented in conversation with two Writing to Transform Trauma facilitators, Erin Sharkey and Douglas Kearney.

Saturday and Sunday mornings both opened with a healing activity, one presented by Mankwe Ndosi, culture worker and musician; and the other presented by Ayo Clemon, who works in healing justice, relational transformation, and somatics.

Each day included multiple morning and afternoon workshops, with a mid-day break for personal time and writing. Saturday closed with dinner and an open mic. And on Sunday afternoon, we presented a Closing Circle event that featured work by the facilitating artists. Emmy-winning actor and vocalist T. Mychael Rambo opened the presentation with Song of the Moment,a group-created song that expressed our feelings in that moment. The event culminated on Sunday afternoon with How will we keep going with what we experienced this weekend?,'a healing activity facilitated by writer and culture worker Arleta Little.

At the close, we asked each of the participating writers to complete a short survey/response to their experiences and thoughts about the workshop. They were overwhelmingly positive! When asked if they would like to take part in a similar opportunity in the future, 100% responded Yes!We outline some of their other comments below in the Community Benefit section.