Hey Garden(ers),
Have you visited the Enchanted Library in Garden? Located on Garden Map, with eight rooms to explore and hundreds of free e-books, grants and other resources, you can find yourself lost for hours. Take in the winding rivers while reading or listening to books on everything from Palestine, to anarchy, to fictionalized worlds we want to live in and more! Or simply come to access the Guestbook and Love offerings padlet (👀); or games to help you self regulate when you are feeling shitty! Come visit our free library!
Reminder: Next week we'll be sharing our Black August events. If you would like to propose or host an event for Black August to commemorate the struggle and movement for Black Liberation, the event proposal form can be found here. Please fill it out by July 27th at 11:59pm PST!
📚 Join saffy as they embark on a literary journey of self discovery and read selected pieces from her debut collection Deeper this Thursday July 24th at 5pm PST, A Live Reading of Deeper and Poetry Workshop. Call on your people and prepare to be guided on a spiritual reclamation of self. Content warning: selected pieces may contain mentions of disordered eating, suicidal ideation, self harm, fatphobia, transphobia, queerphobia, sexual themes. RSVP here!
😱 If you love some good horror movies, we want to watch with you! Chanelle & J Mase will be hosting Horror Head Movie Marathon Part 3: Garden's Revenge! From niche films that make you squirm to more pop-culture horror comedies, we love all the subgenres of horror! Join us this Saturday July 26th starting at 1pm PST! RSVP here! We'll be watching Climax, Talk to Me, Megan 2.0 and more! The showing schedule will be up by Thursday here.
🎨 Let’s unlock our creative spirit together! Garden's Way a 12-week meetup where we’ll discuss chapters, share progress, and encourage each other as we move through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Open to anyone (writers, painters, musicians, dreamers, etc.) looking for a supportive space to grow and express themselves. 🌱 Sundays at 11am PT starting July 27 through Sep 28, hosted by Deeda & Mo & Dan. Meeting weekly at Garden and yapping asynchronously in our Signal group. DM a host to be added to the Signal group, or join us at their weekly meeting! RSVP here
🎬 Saturday August 2nd at 1pm PST is Best Practices for Facilitating and Hosting in a Virtual World! Wanting to hone in on your virtual facilitation and/or hosting skills for Garden events, Zoom or other digital meetup spaces? Join J Mase for best practices of holding space in a virtual environment! We'll be covering how to manage an online audience, tech considerations and facilitation styles among a host of other necessary components to having the best possible online experience while hosting/facilitating. RSVP!
🫁 Want to increase your lung capacity? Come to Breathing in the Knowledge Nursery! Every weekday at 9am PST. RSVP here! Please note that on Wednesday the 23rd, Breathing will be pushed to 10am PST.
💃🏾 Co-Twerking this Tuesday will be postponed to next Tuesday (July 29th) at 3pm PST!
📔 Quiet-ish Reading Club / Connect (QRC) 💜💛📚 meets Tuesdays at 6pm PST! QRC - Garden Edition is where we chill together in mostly quiet company of 45 min reading blocks. Bring your own: book, audiobook, article, magazine, comic book, training manuals, graphic novel, paperwork/forms, poetry, etc. anything you’d like to or need to read. Most of the time will be us practicing sustained silent reading (SSR) in cozy, quiet company together. We will take occasional breaks to chat and socialize - mics optional. Learn more about QRC - Garden Edition. Like to be kept up-to-date on QRC meet-ups in Garden? Fill out this interest form. RSVP here
🎥 Name That Movie (Night!) is Wednesday at 5:30pm PST! This week's movie is a live action remake of a cartoon where an extraterrestrial being comes to Earth and pretends to be a dog. Think you know what it is? Come thru and find out! RSVP via the visit page.
🫂 The next session of Chronic Illness and Long Covid Support Group will be Thursday July 31st from 5:30pm-7:30pm PST with Chanelle! Navigating everything that comes with chronic illness can be difficult - from managing symptoms to experiencing grief over missing your pre-illness life. This is a peer support space where we can share our feelings about living with any chronic/long-term illness, including long COVID, during an ongoing pandemic. RSVP here!
🪷 Stretch it out as Caroline leads us in another weekly afternoon Yoga sesh Fridays at 3pm PST by streaming a yoga video from YouTube and following along. Videos will be between 25-45 minutes long between easy to moderate pace. Drop ins are always welcome! RSVP via the calendar on the visit page.
📺 Based on Issa Rae's acclaimed web series Awkward Black Girl, Insecure is a show about the awkward and messy experiences of a young Black woman. Join us for the next showing on Friday July 25 at 6pm PT to stream and chit-chat about Issa and her crew's hilarious moments, relationship drama, bad decisions, breakups and glow-ups. Issa watch party at The Dunes! RSVP via the visit page.
😷 Hang out, chill and play games with Black folks who take COVID precautions at Bonfire in Garden! The next Bonfire will be Saturday August 16th at 5pm PST, where will have a facilitated conversation about solidarity across the diaspora. RSVP here.
🦾 Self Defense Discussion Series with Caroline will be Sundays at 8am PT. Each group includes reading, discussion and (potential) movement on self-defense principles! In these politically challenging times, it is especially important for our collective liberation and self-care to learn self-defense. RSVP via the visit page!
💻 Do you work from home and sometimes feel a little too isolated from others? Come Co-Work with us in Garden! We are a 24/7 drop in space for folks to join to co-work silently, listen to music, play a game or chat amongst each other in the chat box.
📔 Blessing the Boats Selections offers a prize of $1,500 and publication annually for a poetry collection by a poet who is a woman of color and lives in the United States, “including poets who identify as cis, trans, and non-binary people who are comfortable in a space that centers on women’s experiences, regardless of citizenship.” Submit a manuscript of 65 to 120 pages and a cover letter from July 1 to August 1. There is no entry fee. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
🖊️ The Granum Foundation Prize will be awarded annually to help U.S.-based writers complete substantive literary works—such as poetry books, essay or short story collections, novels, and memoirs—or to help launch these works. One winner will be awarded $5,000. Up to three finalists will be awarded $500 or more. Additionally, Granum Foundation Translation Prize will award $1,500 or more for work on translation. Applications are due August 1st.
🍉 Centering Palestine has a zoom every Tuesday at 5pm PST, along with other resources to show up for Palestine available here.
😷 World Health Network has a weekly call to organize community members against mask bans every Friday at 12pm PST.
✍🏾 For past attendees of Working Towards Witness (WTW) and Black QT (Queer/Trans) people in Garden, workshop facilitators Ebbie and Sun have a poll for a potential new offering. Please complete at your earliest convenience and feel free to add your email to the form for WTW updates! They hope to see you in virtual space soon! Please stay tuned for information about the next Working Towards Witness workshop.
📢 As a follow-up to the Anti-Blackness sessions GenDoc facilitated with us a few weeks ago, she has graciously provided this Notes on Anti-Blackness write-up which shares some key takeaways about how Anti-Blackness shows up in BIPOC spaces and what non-Black folks can be doing to support dismantling that.
🌻 We are looking to open Garden up to more community orgs who would like to share space with us here. If you are part of an org that may benefit from office/event space here, please email info@meetatgarden.com
💌 Don't forget, we can design and host non-Garden virtual events too.
Until next our avatars meet,
🪄Al, 😻Gata & 🪻J Mase
PS: Have a one-time-event or a recurring event and need a place to host? Email us at info@meetatgarden.com!
Garden is a free 24/7 space, but it does cost money for us to maintain it on Gather.Town. If you'd like to donate to this work, consider throwing some money in the pot here. To send donations directly through our 501c3 fiscal sponsor, email us!