About

We all bring unique insight and intelligence to the world. Practices of listening can deepen our capacity to respond flexibly to new challenges.

We are facing a global pandemic rooted in the larger crises of poverty and other injustices. Sharing our stories can help us connect and process sudden realities as we seek to address the most pressing issues in our world today. It is both timely and timeless.

Healing requires community towards the larger goal of dismantling systemic oppressions at the core of many of our mental health crises. If I lose my housing or other basic means of survival, that impacts my mental health. And right now, many grassroots groups are leading frontlines of response as trusted networks from communities themselves.

Healing Through Story: A Toolkit on Grassroots Approaches contains:

• Methods to listen and reflect on our own biases 

• Instructions on facilitating a group 

• Interviews with 11 grassroots groups in Los Angeles County on how we heal

The exercises in the toolkit can be done in-person, by video conference or even by phone. They offer structures of listening like story circles, a method developed by John O’Neal of Junebug Productions and by Roadside Theater, as well as other practices of shared listening, facilitation and unlearning implicit biases. 

Who is it for?

It’s for people interested in community-driven solutions. It is for educators, facilitators, artists, organizers or others interested in building community power towards shared goals. It’s also for people who want to make meetings more interesting.

What is Facilitation?

Facilitation is a process of guiding a group to identify and move towards shared goals. Arts-based facilitation uses creative expression as part of the process. Facilitation can integrate creativity, community, political education, healing and organizing. In doing so, facilitation can not only be a microcosm for democracy in action, it can be revolutionary.

When we facilitate and hold space with others, our leadership can amplify not only our strengths but also our struggles. Because we are immersed in a world full of biases, it’s impossible to not absorb them ourselves. Getting to understand our strengths, struggles and biases as well as how our identities and experiences shape us can be incredibly informative to expanding our ability to lead or guide others. Our fears and defenses which may operate in the background show up more when we are stressed. It’s both healing and useful to build our own practices of self-reflection. Personally, I have relied on practices of shared listening and story circles for years to build my own capacity to listen across difference.

Background

From April 2019 to April 2020 I worked as the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture’s Creative Strategist Artist-in-Residence (CS-AIR) at the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health (DMH). It was the institution’s first position of its kind. In alignment with their 2020-2030 strategic plan, I conducted a listening tour of some of the many grassroots groups in Los Angeles County engaged in arts and organizing. My goals were three-fold:

• Map where grassroots networks function as trusted wellness centers

• Understand community-based approaches to healing that address systemic inequality

• Identify ways DMH can support community-informed models of mental health care

It’s by no means a comprehensive list but rather a point of departure. Feel free to contact me if you have ideas, suggestions or just want to connect!

Listening and storytelling are at the heart of my theater work. As part of the larger field of civic practice, the skills of artists can apply not just to creating art but to “collaboration and co-design with community partners and local residents around a community-defined aspiration, challenge or vision” (CPCP). The CS-AIR residency was an opportunity to highlight arts-based practices and the leadership of directly-impacted communities towards the larger goal of equitable policy and social transformation.

Gratitude to those who agreed to be interviewed

• Jacqueline Alexander-Sykes, St. Elmo Village

• Joel Garcia, Meztli Projects

• Daisy Gonzalez, Garment Worker Center

• Jeremiah Gordon & Kenneth Spencer, Los Angeles Black Worker Center

• Guadalupe Chávez & Melanie Griffin, Dignity and Power Now

• Pharaoh Mitchell, The Community Action League

• Jen Hofer & Alexia Veytia, Antena Los Ángeles

• Luis J. Rodriguez & Trini Rodriguez, Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore

• Sophanarot Sam, Southeast Asian Community Alliance

• Manuel Villanueva, Restaurant Opportunities Center—Los Angeles

• Sarah Williams, Women’s Center for Creative Work

Credits

I’m an Indian heritage actress, playwright, cultural worker* and a member of the Actor’s Equity Association, Alternate ROOTS, the Dramatists Guild, Network of Ensemble Theaters, the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival and the University of the Poor. B.A., Bryn Mawr College; M.F.A. in Performance, University of Maryland at College Park. Check out my website.

*cultural worker refers to people who produce arts and cultural work as a “catalyst, guide, mirror and facilitator of social change, seeking implicit and explicit solutions to collective and individual problems. This individual accepts the intellectual challenge of analyzing the world for the purpose of changing it (Cone, 1986).”

Thanks to Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health Connectors Angel Baker, Mimi McKay and Keris Jän Myrick for their partnership and vision in this project. Thanks to Robin Garcia, Kimberly Glann, Pauline Kamiyama and Elaine Waldman whose guidance and support was instrumental to the residency. Thank you to: the 2019-2020 Creative Strategist Artist-in-Residence Cohort (Deborah Aschheim, Clement Hanami, Olga Koumoundouros, Sandra de la Loza and Alan Nakagawa), Camila Alvarado, Julio Alvarado, Michael Centeno, Sandra Chang, Kate DeCiccio, Daniel Estrada, Hilda Eke, Natalie Godinez, Tracy Gregory, Alexa Kim, De’Andrea Lottier-Ross, Leda Maliga, Bernice Mascher, Betty Marín, Soraya Medina, Pinki Mehta, Kumar Menon, Kevin Muir, Brian Navarro, Marissa Nuncio, Mirtala Parada-Ward, Dr. Jorge Partida Del Toro, Lamia El Sadek, Mark Schubb, Yosi Sergant, Allison Smith, Michael Rohd, Destiny Walker, Sunnie Whipple and Jacqueline Wilcoxen. Thank you to the Alliance of California Traditional Arts, Anti-Recidivism Coalition, Bacup, The Center for Performance and Civic Practice, Khmer Girls in Action, Korean Immigrant Workers Alliance, Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California, Los Angeles Tenants’ Union, Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, ProjectQ and Self Help Graphics.

Header image of Wellness Wednesdays, courtesy of Self Help Graphics.