[Re]Generating Across Generations | VBP Convening at The Commonwealth
From Wednesday, June 15 - Friday, June 17, Sweet Water Foundation welcomed more than 80 of its Values-Based Partners from across the country to participate in the inaugural Values-Based Partner National Convening at The Commonwealth. The theme of the convening was [Re]Generate Across Generations. Partners, spanning multiple generations and disciplines, traveled from Detroit, Boston, Tucson, Wayne (West Virginia), Querétaro (México), Camden (Maine), and across Chicago to The Commonwealth to connect with each other, the land, and the values of Regenerative Neighborhood Development.
Read more about the Convening below.
Values-Based Partners are Solutionaries, who share a common set of values, and actively practice those values in their daily cultivation of healing and rebuilding communities through spaces and places. In January 2021, an informal network of partners, with relationships and collective efforts spanning decades, began to formally meet monthly in response to the ongoing COVID pandemic, global supply chain disruptions, and the climate emergency. The Values-Based Partner Network meets virtually every month to connect, share practices and progress, and reconnect across shared values. Each call also features critical conversations on essential writings such as the works of James and Grace Lee Boggs. Beyond monthly calls, the VBP network works together to re-member and re-imagine physical sites, secure and activate land, and translate practices and designs from The Commonwealth across the network.
In October 2021, Values-Based Partners began planning in earnest for a three-day, in-person convening that would take place in June 2022 at The Commonwealth. The vision for the Convening was to create an opportunity to bring together Partners to share knowledge, catalyze collaborations, and deepen our collective regenerative action across the network. Entitled, [Re]Generate Across Generations, the content of the convening flowed across five tracks - Critical Connections & Dialogue, Agriculture, Carpentry, Culinary Connections, and Arts & Culture - to introduce different practices across each track while simultaneously and collectively doing the real work to tend to The Commonwealth.
In the Critical Connections & Dialogue track, partners shared wisdom about the theories and practices central to each Partner’s work. The Detroit network, including Kim Sherobbi, Rich Feldman, Myrtle Thompson Curtis, and Stephen Ward, led a discussion on why the writings of Grace and James Boggs Matter. Dr. Derise “Mama Afua” Tolliver and Dr. Ann Washington, both of Chicago, invited people to re-connect with the land to re-store our collective and individual health and wellness. Nelda Ruiz and Claudio Rodriguez, representing Regeneración in Tuscon, Arizona, engaged Values-Based Partners through their collective process of Armando Barrios | Barrio Campesinxs -- building and arming the hood. The SWF team joined the inaugural cohort of RND Research Interns at SWF’s Communiversity to share reflections and introduce their portfolio of work from their year-long experience engaging [re]search grounded in the history of the neighborhood and SWF’s practice of Regenerative Neighborhood Development.
SWF team members -- past and present -- shared the routines, rituals, and reflections practiced daily at The Commonwealth. In the agriculture track, the SWF team led conversations on the differences between community gardens and community farms; shared the practices, structures, and spaces that enable year-round agriculture in Chicago’s changing climate; and engaged partners in hands-on work including weeding, pruning, clipping, and harvesting for the weekly Farmer’s Market.
Each day, participants in the culinary track harvested from the Community Farm and prepared meals for their fellow Convening attendees. On Thursday, Gina Milum, representing Coalfield Development in Wayne, West Virginia, led a hands-on cooking demonstration of fried green tomatoes, a cultural tradition of Appalachia, while sharing histories of extractive policies of the coal industry and how the people of Appalachia continue to organize together to challenge extractive practices and steward life. On Friday, Sandy Mitchell, a local resident, SWF volunteer, and owner of SanJustins Kitchen, led a collard greens cooking demo with greens harvested from SWF’s Community Farm. The demo traced the culinary traditions of collard greens to its origins from the African continent, and then to Chicago via African Americans making the Great Migration from the Southern United States.
The carpentry track focused on SWF’s practice of transforming ‘wastes to resources’. Participants learned how so-called “waste” in the form of used pallets and crates, which is abundant in every city, can be transformed into usable material and, ultimately, furniture/structures through the process of deconstruction and reconstruction. Values-Based Partners actively participated in deconstruction (sorting pieces and removing nails) and reconstruction (cutting, sanding, and building. The combination of deconstruction and reconstruction invited participants to break down the often perceived barriers to building by demonstrating the affordability and accessibility of the process via SWF’s daily practice of transforming ‘wastes to resources.’
In the arts & culture track, Values-Based Partners participated in a printmaking workshop with Chicago-based artist, Michelle Nordmeyer; created a public art installation on the solar shed at The Commonwealth, immersed participants in an African dance and drum workshop with local drummers, and engaged in a Huichol beading workshop led by SWF Summer Fellow, Leslie Ponce-Díaz, a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, from Kansas City by way of Cuauhtémoc Chihuahua, México.. SWF Translator-in-Residence, Sam Scardefield, and SWF Summer Fellow, Jada Cannon, led a hands-on session that invited participants to Re-Member and Re-Imagine specific sites in their neighborhoods using digital and analog tools for vision organizing around re-imagining the land.
The second day of the VBP Convening concluded with the ceremonial opening of SWF’s newly renovated Civic Arts Church. SWF’s Executive Director, Emmanuel Pratt, led a procession of Values-Based Partners, SWF team members, and local residents to the church where they learned about the history of the building and the journey of its transformation. The group was then guided to the vacant land surrounding Civic Arts Church, known historically as The Field, where Values-Based Partners engaged in collective visioning for the future of Civic Arts Church and the partnerships we are cultivating to [Re]Generate Across Generations.
The inaugural Values-Based Partner National Convening culminated with partners joining the greater SWF community at the Fifth Annual Juneteenth Celebration at The Commonwealth on Saturday, June 18. Participants left with renewed energy to continue their work, new relationships, stronger connections, and specific plans for collaboration and action.
The Sweet Water Foundation Team + Community are grateful for the opportunity to convene with Values-Based Partners in person and restore our collective energy and commitment to action.
““At the Values-Based Partners Convening and the Juneteenth Celebration culmination it became clear to me that we are indeed in a time of new suns. This network that Sweet Water Foundation is cultivating is part of that — a paradigm shift towards healing, justice, love, abundance, regeneration across generations, place-rooted neighborhood-led development, life.””
