At the end of this past August, our Care Pod’s two-year journey of creating a soft, regenerative space for dreaming and designing liberatory cultures of care came to a close with celebration and collective storytelling by coordinators, guest practitioners, and past participants. A recording of this celebration is now available on YouTube; a link to the Farewell Digital Care Package mentioned in the event is included below.

Reconnecting with Guest Practitioners

Experiences throughout this two-year series have been dreamed into being alongside guest practitioners of healing arts and healing justice, informing the genesis, synthesis, gatherings, and resources to explore four themes: communicating through conflict, creating care ecosystems and care teams, healing money wounds, and connecting with nature and our inner ecologies.

As part of our celebration, the Care Pod team—Denise Shanté Brown, Corina Fadel and Jody Chan— invited guest practitioners to share how co-creating this series has (re)shaped or transformed the dreams they hold for care, and how it lived within their facilitation and space holding.

DJN’s Care Pod Coordinators: Denise Shanté Brown, Jody Chan, Corinna Fadel.

Guest practitioners shared gratitude for the intention the Care Pod poured into sustaining a process that centered care in both the public-facing events and in the prep leading up to them. The latter was named as a life-giving approach that’s often missing in many invitations to practitioners who facilitate care work in and with their communities.

“Trust-wise, this has been a really great way of kind of building trust in collaborating with folks because the experience was so welcoming and allowed for Kayla and I to do what we do without having to compromise our integrity and who we are.” *– Carmen Galvan, BIPOC Death & Grief Talk, guest practitioners for ‘grief, money and power’ sessions*

The variety of perspectives invited to this series was also elevated as a point of appreciation, notably as an expression of the unique points of view each of the Care Pod’s coordinators represented in their invitations to guests and the curation of each theme throughout the series. This expanded sense of what care can look like in community practices revealed a greater possibility for shaping healing and disability justice principles into wider cultural norms.

“A raising of the standard of working and partnering is really what it felt like – it wasn't just front-facing. It was like how we actually did this, and it was like active care, and it wasn't care without the understanding of how political care can be.” *– Kaylce Carter, BIPOC Death & Grief Talk, guest practitioners for ‘grief, money and power’ sessions*

Shared Learnings and Practices

“I think a lot of people are really interested in building care and they just don't really know how to get involved or don't always feel welcome to join.” – *Yoo-Jin Kang, guest practitioner for ‘astrology as a portal to prototyping care ecosystems’ sessions*

Reflections on the impact of our gatherings pointed to this new, or renewed, sense of scale: there being both a growing number of folks interested in bringing these practices into their communities, and a stronger network of facilitators and organizers prepared to reciprocate support with practitioners in those spaces.

“It's easier to do anything consistently when it feels fun, and so then I'm always thinking about what is it that makes ‘the math’ [of consistent practice] fun. …The way [Care Pod coordinators] create a container of consistency there's a vibration there that feels right, and I'm like okay whatever it is that is happening here is the correct math.” *– Meenadchi, guest practitioner for ‘framing conflict as play’ sessions*

Throughout this series, Care Pod coordinators have curated recordings, readings, and many other resources they’ve created or referenced on Are.na channels for ongoing access. These channels are offered as an archive of artifacts for folks interested in shaping a practice informed by the principles of and lineages within design, healing and disability justice movements.

A screenshot of the Care Pod Team’s Are.na curations centered on a pastel rainbow gradient background.

Dreams and Spells for Future Cultures of Care

“Watching what has evolved and emerged has been so exciting for me and has created a lot of hope. Being connected with this community has allowed me to be more explicit in claiming care as politically central to my work.” *– Karishma Kripalani, guest practitioner for the series kick-off session, ‘excavating our care lineages, dreaming our care possibilities’*

Celebrating the past two years includes looking forward to a future now growing from the seeds of care shared and embedded in and outside of this series’ ecosystem. Dreams of that future shared in this celebration embraced the scale and throughline of care as a design process from interpersonal reciprocity to global acts of solidarity.

“[Nat] Turner and Harriet Tubman had public facing, maybe not professionalized in the way that we think about it now, spiritual practices. … I think that some of that gets very lost and I wonder what the movements of our time benefit from these gifts and if they feel ready.” *– Cyrée Jarelle Johnson, guest practitioner for the kick-off’s follow-up session, ‘reflecting back our longings and intuitions’*

Collages for each theme and their connections to futures named in the care may be living document can be explored via the slide deck from the celebration event, linked here and on the Care Pod’s Are.na page.

Our Care Pod’s Farewell Offering

For this Care Package, coordinators focused on the theme of tending as they nurture their ongoing cross-movement collaborations and create spaces to resource connections with people and groups who are practicing everyday care, design justice, and healing justice.

A teal green border with soft pink sparks and shapes frame lush imagery of yellow blooming cacti . Text reads “From the Design Justice Network Care Pod, Digital Care Package: Care May Be Tending”

In sharing this Care Package, they hope to seed moments of sustenance, reflection, and future dreaming amidst the long middle of revolution; to open up portals and pathways where tending, while being tended to, is an everyday possibility and act of liberation; and, to create a space to return to, to tend, tend again, and remember.

The Care Package can be found in the Are.na library. The recording for this event, celebrating our care possibilities, is available on DJN’s YouTube channel and included in the series’ playlist.

Looking back on where we have journeyed, alongside our past guest practitioners, to reflect on what we have learned, shared, and practiced together, celebrate the ways we have gathered and the possibilities we have collectively nurtured, and cast spells forward for more liberatory cultures of care.