REGISTER for CURE: a black/water immersion
Register for CURE: a black/water immersion today!
REGISTER HERE! REGISTER HERE!
CURE: a black/water immersion
July 16-21, 2024
Mumbet's Freedom Farm
896 South Undermountain Road
Sheffield, MA 01257
Registration Dates and Fees
Registration Closes: July 10, 2024
Tuition: 500.00 (Limited scholarships are available to support food and tuition costs. Scholarships will be paid as reimbursements. Please be prepared to send an invoice.)
Lodging
Accepted participants are responsible for travel, lodging/camping.)
Camping: 22.00/day (Bring your own equipment.)
Local lodging option: Race Brook Lodge (20% discount available, use code: mumbet)
Photo: Bleu Santiago
About CURE: a black/water immersion
Registration is now open for CURE: a black/water immersion at Mumbet's Freedom Farm. This immersion is a learning ceremony that activates experiential and embodied explorations of land stewardship, movements for environmental justice and climate reparations and ritual performance. Rooted in ecowomanist spirituality, popular education and cultural organizing, CURE: a black/water immersion conjures a Queer Black vision for humanity to live in harmony and right relationship with natural and super/natural worlds, realms and the great beyond.
Who is this immersion for?
Welcomed participants should be comfortable with learning and creating in rural, natural environments. Participants should be prepared to be responsible for themselves and be sensitive to the needs of others who will be among our intentional community. Participants should be thrilled to partake in discourse, non-Christian ceremonies, ritual performance that takes place in water and on land. Additionally, participants must be willing to rise in the morning and should be prepared to attend field trips, workshops, nature walks, discussions and independent explorations. CURE: a black/water immersion devised for people of the global majority. All allies should donate to Mumbet's Freedom Farm.
Curatorial Statement
From our souls to the ocean
from the sky to the sea,
the people and the land are forever free!
In the beginning, there was water and water was life. Water was our first home. Water ushered us into the world and for the rest of our lives, we must negotiate our relationship with this powerful force of nature. For some, water is the root of spiritual practice--washing us into new phases of being, cleansing us of despair, and elevating us to new realms of consciousness and possibility.
Water is a portal of purification and potential. Gazing deep into its ripples and waves has been the way of miracle-makers and mystics who have sought to find the meaning of life. From baptisms to burials, water provides, teaches, destroys, and redefines what it means to be a part of this planet. Water is all.
The super/natural world continues to reveal its power and teach us about the adaptation needed to continue to live on this planet; to continue to heal us, teach us and support our collective well being. Even in the face of the world’s extractive practices, the planet remains resilient, flexible and overwhelmingly generous in support of our needs. Simultaneously, we ask the planet to be patient with us as we continue to learn from all of the ancient elements that govern our universe--air, ether, earth, fire, water and the great beyond.
What would happen if we leaned into sustainable collaboration and cooperation with our shared environment instead of practicing domination and competition? Our lives indeed depend on it. We feel very deeply that the inconsistencies with which we live with the natural world mirror the many ways internal spiritual battles manifest and materialize as extraction, oppression, unchecked capitalism, pollution, and deep disregard. These diseases are indicators of the imbalances we have as a human race, internally as well as externally. Whatever we do to the water, the land, the air, we are doing to ourselves. Water is a mirror. Water is an orisha. Water is a beloved ancestor. Water is a liberator.
Photo: Bleu Santiago
There is no way away from water. There is no way away from the land. There is no separation between us and our super/natural siblings. There is no healing, no wholeness without nature.
We need a movement that deepens our understanding of our relationship to the earth and each other through the lens of the Earth. Our vision supports the exploration of Black, African and Afro Caribbean relationship/relatedness to land as an ancestral holder of knowledge and healing for peoples of the diaspora. Our vision intentionally approaches the earth with reverence and inquiry as to new ways and possibilities of connecting with the world around and within us.
These considerations and creative wanderings are in part of how CURE: a black/water immersion was born. Designed as the meeting of prophecy, practice and possibility, the immersion building on the longstanding work of Ashni and Ebony. Together we will explore these ideas artists, organizers, healers and stewards who are thinking about related themes and ideas. Through the organic growth of the relationship between Mumbet’s Freedom Farm and Jupiter Performance Studio and our shared interests, this immersion has been divinely inspired and devised.
CURE: a black/water immersion revolves around three thematic imperatives:
Creativity: How can creativity, and more specifically radical imagining advance the movement for climate justice in urban and rural settings?
Climate and Environment: What are the strategies that support the holistic thriving of our built and natural environment?
Culture and Community: What are the rituals of restoration and repair that foster well being?
We hope that our time together devises new pathways and opportunities for addressing environmental justice and climate reparations through a lens of imagination, joy and hope. We believe that addressing these issues is not only an environmental concern inclusive of spiritual, economic, political, and social challenges and opportunities. This immersion’s focus is to amplify rituals of repair, stories, and strategies that fortify our collective movement for climate reparations and collective thriving.
We can’t wait to see you in July as we sing and share stories; dance and dialogue; perform and ponder and sink our fingers and souls into the soil.
Until soon,
Ebony Noelle Golden and Ashni, Co-curators
About the Organizers
Ceremony. Spectacle. Flight. Established in 2020 by Ebony Noelle Golden, Jupiter Performance Studio (JPS) is a hub for the study of diasporic Black performance traditions. Current and recent projects include: The Art and Survival Fellowship, in collaboration with Double Edge Theatre; The Keeping, commissioned by Weeksville Heritage Center with major support from Creative Capital and In The Name Of The Mother Tree, commissioned by Apollo Theater and National Black Theatre with major support from Double Edge Theatre and the National Theater Project. JPS supports climate justice and reparations through Watering (W)hole, the studio’s community-powered engagement platform. IG: @jupiterperformancestudio. jupiterperformancestudio.com
Mumbet’s Freedom Farm is a BIPOC-led farm untangling from oppression by cultivating food networks and community sanctuary that rehabilitates right relationship to land and one another. This project exists as a model of what is possible when we come together to be in the living practice of liberation, guided and directed by land, heart, and spirit.
Our farm is nestled at the base of a mountain in the ancestral homelands of the Mohican Nation, also known as Sheffield, Massachusetts – the town where the revolutionary Elizabeth ‘Mumbet’ Freeman resided. Mumbet was an enslaved African nurse, midwife, and herbalist who sued for her freedom in Sheffield, MA and won. Mumbet’s Freedom Farm is in community with a flowing brook, natural spring, waterfalls, forest trails, an array of plant and animal life, Race Brook Lodge and The Stagecoach Tavern.
At Mumbet’s Freedom Farm, we aim to create a sustainable home and sanctuary for Queer Black, Indigenous People of Color, animals, insects, birds, and all of Earth’s beings and elements. We currently practice Afro-Indigenous, regenerative, and biodynamic agriculture strategies & are inspired by our personal + cultural gardening and food way experiences. We understand & continue to cultivate a relationship with Earth as a living and sovereign being, we acknowledge the need for authentic and reciprocal exchange of nourishment. We seek to produce biodynamic preparations & diverse amendments to cultivate the health and livelihood of the soil of this land. We understand that nutrient-rich soil produces nutrient-rich food, & we strive to harvest + distribute nutrient-rich foods & medicine to BIPOC communities and kindred community members.
Program Leads
Ebony Noelle Golden
Jupiter Performance Studio, Lead Artist
CURE: a black/water immersion, Co-Curator and Facilitator
Portrait: Melisa Cardona
Ebony Noelle Golden (she/her/hers) is a theatrical ceremonialist, culture strategist, entrepreneur, and public scholar. In 2009, Ebony founded Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative, a culture consultancy that devises systems, strategies, and social justice solutions nationally. In 2020, she founded Jupiter Performance Studio, a space to study and practice Black diasporic performance traditions. Winner of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s Transformational Practice Award, Golden works to incite and ignite the creative capacity of everyday folks in service of liberation and collective wellbeing. Her practice is rooted in community-design, ritual performance, and leadership development through a womanist and Black feminist praxis. Invoking messy, magical, and medicinal processes, Ebony and her collaborators, work to conjure a better world. Recent and upcoming projects include: The Keeping, commissioned by Weeksville Heritage Center with major support from Creative Capital and In The Name Of The Mother Tree, commissioned by Apollo Theater and National Black Theatre with major support from Double Edge Theatre and the National Theater Project. IG: @ebonynoellegolden. bettysdaughterarts.com
Ashni
Mumbet’s Freedom Farm, Lead Steward
CURE: a black/water immersion, Co-Curator and Facilitator
Ashni, daughter of Cynthia and Allan, is a farmer, at Mumbet’s Freedom Farm, facilitator, educator and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, born and raised in Brooklyn, NY with rich roots in the island of St.Vincent & The Grenadines.
Movement, music, healing and their expansion through meditation and love are essential keys to Ashni’s being. From early experiences with death, escapades in library stacks to discovering yoga and teachings with Buddhist monks in High school, Spirit has always peaked her curiosity and tickled her heart. From an early age, Ashni has been devoted to learning from and listening to Spirit.
Leaving her Brooklyn roots to live in Costa Rica in 2011, she embarked on the red road path and has recently completing her tenth year in the Moondance in the Mexica tradition. While in Costa Rica, she also developed her line of Flower Essences, called SOULutions and received training in Zen Shiatsu from Kantu Veet Mor. In 2014 She began her Initiations into the wisdom of Light Language with Starr Fuentes. She continued her studies and received certification through Flower Essence Society with the phenomenal Lindsay Fauntleroy in 2017. Since then she has continued deepening her light and therapeutic work with teachers Abuela Ana Itzpapalotl, Abuela Carmen, Abuela Tlazotiani, Keren Or Atari, Ren Mahlev, Selena Rodriguez, Russel Jones, Lael Katherine Keen, Joyce Stech and Homaya Amar and Svagito Liebermeister and Undoing Racism trainings through the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond.
Ashni is a land steward, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and has a private practice at Minka. She facilitates 1 on 1 and a group sessions, ceremonies, meditations and experiences permeated with love that cultivate radical awareness, appreciation of self and overall ecstatic wellness within participants and their community with the intention of re-cultivating a deep connection with our Earth mother.
REGISTER HERE! REGISTER HERE!
Contact: jupiterisfreedom@gmail.com
