Hey Garden(ers),
Are you new to Garden and/or need a tech refresher on how to navigate the space? A New Member Orientation will be happening on Thursday July 23rd at 2:30pm PT! RSVP here.
Quick note, Garden Roast w/ Groovy will be moving to a new date/time! Please look out for updates!
⏰ Our events are generally listed in PST/PDT. Need help converting to your time zone? We recommend using World Time Buddy!
🛠️ Thursday July 9th at 10am PT, join misha for the last installment of tools for tending to our nervous (eco)system - intro to the Resilience Toolkit. This will be a 3-part series for quick, accessible somatic practices for stabilizing, reconnecting, and growing our capacity for healing and transformation. RSVP!
🦈 For Shark Week (July 9th-11th, 4:30pm-8:30pm PT) we’ll be watching two shark-themed movies each day in the Up All Night room. Join us for classic, comedic, and animated sea flicks. Lineup: July 9th - 🦈 Jaws + 🌪️ Sharknado; July 10th - 🧪 Deep Blue Sea + 🐠 Shark Tale; July 11th - 🦖 The Meg + 🌊 The Meg 2. RSVP for Shark Week Film Fest.
🎮 Learn how to make, size and implement objects in Gather w/ J Mase at Gather/Garden Object Making! We'll go over skills like how to create and upload an object, ensure it embeds websites/videos correctly, how to do 2-step animation, synchronize videos and more on Saturday, July 11th at 2pm PT! RSVP
🎬 Watch Interior Chinatown w/Anne on Saturdays at 2pm PT, starting July 18th! IC follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural trying to find his way into the larger story--and along the way discovering secrets about the strange world he inhabits and his family's buried history. RSVP
💄 Transform Your Face(or don't) – A make-up class: Since ancient times people have adorned themselves and personalized their looks. This class is for anyone interested in or curious about makeup! // Has modern society's ideas of beauty and gender bummed you out and had you steer clear away from the beauty industry? Have you wanted to use makeup to express yourself but had no idea where to begin? Do you have questions regarding what products might work best for you? Rori is a chronically ill disabled mexican genderqueer cosmetologist.
They've worked with all hair textures and skin types over the past decade and love helping people achieve the look they want, however and wherever they can.
Let's explore the art of makeup as expression together on Sunday July 19th at 5:30pm PT. RSVP here
👾 It's time for another Among Us game night on Friday, July 24th, starting at 5pm PT w/ heather. Join for fun, strategy, and a little bit of betrayal 🗡️ Complete your tasks (yes, even after you are killed!), look around to see who is acting suspicious and see if you can spot the Impostor before it’s too late. Whether you're a seasoned crewmate or a sneaky saboteur, all skill levels are welcome! RSVP!
🎬 Saturday July 25th at 3pm PT, catch Bittersweet - Black Lesbian Short Film Screening + Talkback: Jhenè, a 20 something ~aspiring~ tech genius helps their best friend, Candy, find a date through a speed dating website. Written and Directed by Soe Noire. Attendees will be invited to a discussion after the film and ask/answer questions about what they watched. RSVP here
🫁 Want to increase your lung capacity? Come to Breathing in the Knowledge Nursery! Every weekday at 9am PT. RSVP here!
🍿 Mondays, B will be hosting Black Movie Night, a now weekly movie (and show) night to highlight movies (and shows) made by, for, and about Black people. The media will generally be entertainment focused, but will also include nights where the intention is education. (Black Folks only.) RSVP! Next movie: NOPE
🏋🏾♂️ Movement Mondays: Need to stretch more? Commit to your physical therapy? Do some resistance training? Whatever your movement needs are, this is a weekly time to do your independent movement work, while also being around others who need to move with intention! Weekly on Mondays at 7:30pm PT w/ J Mase & Chanelle. RSVP here!
💃🏾 Co-Twerking is on Tuesdays at 3pm PT with Caroline! RSVP to get notified!
📔 Quiet-ish Reading Club / Connect (QRC) 💜💛📚 meets Tuesdays at 6pm PT! 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. 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 PT! This week will be a 2026 sci-fi buddy comedy about pizza 🍕 and consuming illicit substances. Content warnings: here. Think you know what it is? Come thru and find out! RSVP via the visit page.
🪷 Stretch it out as Caroline leads us in a weekly afternoon Yoga sesh Fridays at 3pm PT 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.
🐱 Hello Kitty Island Adventure Meet Up w/ Gata! Calling all Hello Kitty Island Adventurers and sanrio fans! We are hosting a game night bi-weekly to play Hello Kitty Island Adventure. Whether you're on a switch, on steam, or another playing platform, come through and hang out. We will be swapping gamming tips, visiting each others islands and more! See you there Friday July 17th at 5pm PT! (We will also be showing Aggretsuko (2018) while playing games or for folks who maybe don’t wanna play games but just wanna watch the show with us!)
🧛♀️ Let's Rock n' Roll all Bloody Night! Season 3 of Interview with The Vampire is officially here to tell the villain origin story of the dramatic, messy and passionate anti-hero, The Vampire Lestat. We'll be meeting every Sunday at 4pm PT to watch Lestat de Lioncourt’s rise as the "world’s first immortal rock star”. Follow Groovy to continue season 3🩸. *Content warnings here* RSVP here!
🫂 The next session of Chronic Illness and Long Covid Support Group will be Thursday July 16th from 5:30pm-7:30pm PT 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!
✍🏽 Are you an aspiring writer? Come join The Storytellers' Anthology which is every other Saturday at 1pm PT (next session is July 18th), hosted by Louis! This group is created for writers who want feedback and constructive criticism on their unpublished literary works, especially for those looking to publish their piece, but just need an extra pair of eyes and encouragement. All genres are welcomed and encouraged. RSVP to attend here.
🎭 Places, theater nerds! At Do You Hear the Garden Sing? we watch musical theatre movies, pro-shots (and some slime tutorials) every other week. This is a space to nerd-out about musical theater, enjoy some tunes and even share some hateful takes ;) Our next watch will be EPIC (animated compilation) a sung-through retelling of the Ancient Greek epic poem Odyssey by Homer. Come join the curtain call on Saturday July 18th at 5pm PT! RSVP!
🏳️⚧️ At our first Trans Meetup, the group was unanimous in deciding that Trans Meetup will be a monthly occurrence. Every fourth Sunday in Garden, at 2pm PT will be a day that Trans folks have made! The next meetup will be July 26th! Join us by RSVP'ing here.
😷 Hang out, chill and play games with Black folks who take COVID precautions at Bonfire in Garden! The next Bonfire will be Saturday July 18th at 5pm PT RSVP here.
❤️🩹 Our Pain We Carry Study Group meets in the Kinship Room on the 3rd Sundays of each month (with occasional adjustments around holidays). Upcoming date: July 19 Group begins at 2:30pm PST/ 5:30pm EST for reading and discussion. If you prefer to join after reading, we’ll begin practicing the experiential exercises together around 3pm PST/6pm EST. See Deeda for more information & materials. RSVP.
📝 Saturday July 25th at 2pm PT join Boba for Rooted, a fun and relaxed monthly space to explore a variety of poetic forms and styles. Think of this more like an informal poetry club / co-learning space. While there will be some prepared materials and prompts, this will be a much more collaborative space: we’ll learn from and celebrate each another’s experiences, perspectives, knowledge, questions, and creative instincts. Each "session" will have a short reflective groundings/meditation, followed by exploring some texts, time to write, and a no-pressure opportunity to share our writing. (Would love to have an optional ability to create a mini Garden anthology that could live on an internal padlet as example.) RSVP here
☕ Sunday August 2nd at 1pm PT, Garden will be hosting its next Social Hour series. Each Social Hour will typically feature a 15-30 min rant// talk// presentation// performance from a Garden member on a subject of their choosing as well as time for folks to meet other members in a casual hang out space with games and activities. Want a place to share your random idea, your new poetic works, to present something special, get feedback or even host at a Garden Social Hour? The format is flexible as needed, and can be a space to practice facilitation skills for those wanting a friendly place to try something new. Want to share your topic at the next, or a future Social Hour? Send us your proposals here! RSVP to attend here.
💻 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.
💌 The National Queer & Trans Therapists of Color Network has opened up their Mental Health Fund for applications until July 15th! The Mental Health Fund (MHF) provides crucial financial support to increase access to mental health and healing for Queer and Trans Black, Indigenous and People of Color. While we honor the diversity of strategies our people use to heal, this fund is reserved specifically for people seeking care from licensed or pre-licensed psychotherapists. The Mental Health Fund provides financial support for up to 8 sessions with a licensed or pre-licensed psychotherapist for $150 per session!
🖌️ The Illuminations Grant for Black Trans Women Visual Artists is an annual $10,000 grant awarded to provide critical support to Black trans women whose work has often been under-recognized in the visual art field. In order to further recognize finalists for their artistic achievements, Queer|Art is pleased to announce that the grant will also provide a $1,250 award to four distinguished finalists. Winning artists and finalists will receive additional professional development resources and further guidance to bolster their creative development in the field. Qualified artists must be self-identified Black trans women and trans femmes working in visual art and based in the United States. The application deadline has been extended to July 20th, 2026.
💼 Facente Consulting is a woman-owned consulting firm headquartered in San Francisco's East Bay, specializing in providing public health-related professional services to health departments, other government agencies, nonprofits, universities, coalitions, and collaborations. Our mission is to support our clients to improve health and wellness by helping them understand, implement, and tell their story. We are seeking a (remote) Senior Consultant to join our team - someone who is passionate about public health, values the wisdom of communities, and wants to apply their skills and experience to advancing health equity for under-resourced populations. We strongly encourage people of color and people with lived expertise in communities impacted by health inequities to
apply. Base Salary: $120k. Submit applications ASAP!
🎬 Established in 2018, Inside Out’s RE:Focus Fund aims to address industry inequities through providing direct financial support to women, non-binary, and/or trans filmmakers telling 2SLGBTQ+ stories. In 2019, Inside Out expanded the fund with the launch of the RE:Focus Fund Post-Production Grants to support post-production and promotion of short and feature films. Submissions are due by July 22nd.
💾 Last week we put out a call for laptop/desktop donations for fellow Garden members and we already were able to pair someone with a donated device! THANK YOU all for your kindness and care! We are still on the hunt for 2 more laptops/desktops for Garden(ers) that need devices for their work and/or to connect with the community here in Garden. If you/your organization have a device or two to spare, simply reply to this email. 🙏🏽
📖 The Black Trans Prayer Book, is organizing a Trans Book Fair, where we will be connecting virtually with Trans folks, and our solidarity partners, from all over the US and beyond, while also distributing physical books by Trans Authors to Trans people! If you/your org would like to support this work (attend // fund // be featured // etc), there is a form for that here! We are looking for people and organizations who would like to help us make this happen!
🥐 If for whatever reason, you are in the US and find yourself, or someone you care about, to be food insecure, here are three sites to find food banks where you/they are: Food Finder, FindHelp and Feeding America. If these are not resources you personally need, please share with your folks.
🍉 Centering Palestine has a zoom every Tuesday at 5pm PT, 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 PT.
📢 As a follow-up to the Anti-Blackness sessions GenDoc facilitated with us a few months 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 continuing 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
🎉Want to host your birthday, or the birthday of a friend in Garden? Check out our Birthday Guide and email us!
💌 Don't forget, we can design and host non-Garden virtual events too.
Until next our avatars meet,
🪄Al , 🪻J Mase & 🪴Kwaku
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!