Join the faculty performers and learn about how they receive, embody, and bring to life music that has been performed for centuries.

Denial of evidence and misinformation on science issues has led to polarization and politicization of our national science conversation.  This interactive discussion will consider ways to combat this by shifting to a more productive approach to public participation, dialogue, deliberation, and decision making on science issues that matter most to us. Jonathan Garlick is Professor of Oral Pathology in the Department of  Cell, Molecular & Developmental Biology at Tufts.  

A powerful workshop to examine participants' own and others' attitudes about youth participation in different aspects of working with young people. This workshop explores themes on adultism, to unpack the messages from society and how those messages have been internalized in order to find different ways to authentically include young people in all parts of society. Adopted from a workshop designed by Youth Force in 1980, and led by youth leaders of Pittsfield Listens, encouraging the power of underrepresented youth, parent,…

Members of The University of Orange (NJ) lead a reflection on love of country. U of O is a community organization and people’s urbanism school that builds collective capacity for people to create more equitable cities.  We solve the problems of our world by learning to see the richness of our cities, becoming lifelong learners, participating in civic life, and having fun with our neighbors.

Ellen Meeropol will lead a discussion about politically-engaged fiction and read from her new novel, about which Angela Davis wrote, “At a time when radical movements are on the rise, we find in Her Sister’s Tattoo exactly what we now need: both caution and hope.” Ellen is the author of four novels, Her Sister’s Tattoo, Kinship of Clover, On Hurricane Island, and House Arrest. Recent story and essay publications include, Ms Magazine, Lilith, Solstice Magazine, Guernica, and Mom Egg Review. Elli…

Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie will read her debut children's book Layla's Happiness and discuss the importance of inclusivity in publishing. Ekere is the mother of three galaxies who look like daughters and the author of Strut, Dear Continuum: Letters to a Poet Crafting Liberation, and Karma’s Footsteps. She is a Ph.D. student in Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University.

Julia McKenzie Munemo reads from The Book Keeper: A Memoir of Race, Love, and Legacy which Jim Shepard calls “a fiercely felt memoir about family shame and the transformative power of love even as it’s also an ongoing meditation on privilege and race in twenty-first century America.” Julia holds a bachelor’s from Bard, a master’s in education from Harvard, and an MFA in creative nonfiction from Stonecoast. She will lead an afternoon generative workshop on epistolary memoir writing for registered retreat participants.

Lisa Bunker's first novel, Felix Yz, about a boy fused with an alien, was published in June 2017. Her second novel, Zenobia July, about a trans girl getting to live as a girl for the first time in a new family and school, came out in Spring 2019. Lisa will read from her novels and talk about championing rainbow youth. In 2018 Lisa was elected to serve the town of Exeter in the New Hampshire House of Representatives.

A storyteller and educator, Chloé came out as transgender in 2016. She would quickly find her voice while volunteering with trans peers and allies on the historic New Hampshire transgender nondiscrimination campaign of 2017-2018. She is a regular volunteer with the ACLU and organizes with progressive nonprofits like Rights & Democracy and Freedom For All Americans. Within organizing Chloé discovered her love and natural ability to communicate on the big stage. She’s become an established voice in the New Hampshire LGBTQ…

Heather Levi is a cultural anthropologist and an assistant professor at Temple University. Her primary research interest is on professional wrestlers and professional wrestling in Mexico City.

Joia Mukherjee is chief medical officer of Partners in Health, and associate professor of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School.

A report from Antarctic expeditions to study the vulnerability of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Frank Nitsche is a geophysicist and research scientist at Columbia University. He has been on eight Antarctic expeditions including one in early 2020, which investigated access of warm ocean water to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and related past ice retreat.

Hilary Binda is Founding Director of the Tufts University Prison Initiative and Director of the Tufts Program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Hilary Binda has a PhD in English and is a Senior Lecturer in the Visual and Critical Studies Department. Binda’s research includes a collaborative study with Carolyn Rubin and Jill Weinberg of the impact of college-in-prison on formerly incarcerated people. Binda also works on the relationship between the literary and the visual registers as this productive tension…

Quincey Roberts is co-founder of The Hispanic Black Gay Coalition of Boston.

Harry Smith is a community organizer, economic development strategist, baseball player-coach, and director of organizing for the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation, director of sustainable economic development for the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative. Part I. Discussion to continue Wednesday morning.

Harry Smith is a community organizer, economic development strategist, baseball player-coach, and director of organizing for the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation, director of sustainable economic development for the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative.

How a small business incubator-model can help grow sustainable food-sector businesses and create jobs in urban America. A discussion with Jen Faigel, who is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of CommonWealth Kitchen, Boston's nonprofit food business incubator and food manufacturing social enterprise. CWK provides kitchen space and business support to 50+ entrepreneurs, 75% of whom are women, people of color and/or immigrants, employing over 160 local residents. CWK’s small-batch contract manufacturing provides recipe development, production, and value-added processing for 25+…

Homelessness continues to grow around the United States and beyond. Jim Greene will present about Boston's best-practices providing housing-first solutions to end homelessness, the tension of finding solutions while maintaining a safety net, and engage participants in a dialogue around what a true multi-sector movement for fully housing our unhoused neighbors will take. Jim is a long-time advocate and activist in Boston, and a World Fellowship Center board member.

A discussion introduced and facilitated by Susan Bruce, a political activist who ran for the NH legislature, worked for the 2007 presidential campaign of Dennis Kucnich, and has written about NH politics for twenty years.

Northeastern University Muslim Spiritual Advisor Khalafalla Osman gives a crash course on Islam and its misconceptions, followed by a Q&A session on contemporary issues from an Islamic perspective.

A history of immigration bans and an update on Executive Order 13815, with Northeastern University law student Khalafalla Osman.

Kleaver Cruz is an Uptown native of NYC, a writer, dreamer, and lover of travel. His work has been featured in La Galería and African Voices Magazine as well as on Vibe.com and the Huffington Post among others. Cruz is also one half of the poetic duo, The Delta, which has performed at The Nuyorican Poet’s Café, Bowery Poetry Club as well served as judges for the Wordat4F Poetry Slam. He is an alum of the VONA/Voices of Our Nation…

Often, organizing work, healing services, and other helpful services and interventions do not reach certain populations, particularly those marginalized and oppressed. Even after professionals and young people become highly trained and join the systems themselves, it becomes quite difficult to serve their own populations with the wisdom from the lived experience. In this workshop, led by young people here who have joined such systems, you will get an understanding of those challenges, strategies that the effect of populations have attempted…

The fight to get local control of a marginalized urban school district, Lawrence, MA, that has been under state receivership for 8 years. Talk with Lawrence School Committee member, Joshua Alba, who has been helping to lead the campaign.

A veteran Washington DC reporter lifts the veil to reveal secrets to success with the press. She’ll walk you through simple tips for getting the media to cover your events and include your viewpoint when writing about key issues.

A look at the media coverage of the 2020 Presidential Campaign, and how it portrays candidates, their policies, and their constituents. Are the issues presented in a way that informs or persuades? How can media narratives encourage participation and enliven democracy, and ultimately, fulfill their First Amendment mandate? Robin Andersen is Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University and has written numerous books on the topic of media criticism. Her book A Century of Media, A Century of…

How can educators transform the ethos of an “education for liberation” ideology into a practical reality in the modern-day classroom? Participants in this interactive workshop will engage in two classroom-based protocols that aim to help them come to their own understanding of Paulo Freire’s ideas, as explored in his defining work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Brenda Lee and Emanuel Marshack are Brooklyn-based educators in the New York City public school system.

Lucas Cone's research examines the effects of privatization and commercialization on social equity and the possibilities for critical pedagogy in schools. He is a doctoral fellow at the Danish School of Education and earned his MA in Education at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He is the co-editor of If Schools Didn't Exist, which will be published by MIT Press in June 2020.

New Hampshire native Joseph Lascaze is focused on seeking effective, productive, and fair solutions to ending mass incarceration. This includes prison reform, educational opportunities for re-emerging society members, and working closely with people that are re-entering society and are at risk for re-offending. His personal experience with the criminal justice system in New Hampshire motivated him to seek change and reform in the rehabilitative process that incarcerated people undergo. While on the Resident Communications Committee at New Hampshire Department of…

A representative from Friends of the Congo will speak about the impact of green energy advances in the West and the connection to the living conditions of miners.

This presentation will discuss the ability we all have to engage politically at the municipal level and make progressive change while holding local institutions accountable. Ricardo Arroyo is currently a Boston City Councilor, previously a Public Defender for Public Counsel Services in the Public Defender Division in Massachusetts. He is a member of the National Lawyers Guild and the Massachusetts Bar Association.

Danielle Coates-Connor is an internationally known story-teller and communications strategist, dedicated to shifting how humans live on the planet towards justice, sustainability, peace, and happiness. Her creative work spans genres, from documentary film, photography and writing to podcasts and immersive video installation. Danielle is the founder of Infinite Growth where she designs and facilitates interactive learning experiences for online and face to face environments, developing vision and voice with groups and individuals.

A workshop exploring popular children's book titles as critical texts -- opportunities to notice, critically read, and disrupt dominant narratives with children around race, gender, ethnicity, LGBTQ identity, immigrant identity, and other marginalized identities. Includes a Wee The People library of recommended #ownvoices children’s books. Tanya Nixon-Silberg; mother, artist and co-Director of Wee The People, a social justice project for kids in Boston, MA.

Carolyn Mow is a long-time immigrant rights activist who has worked extensively with the immigrant community in the Hudson Valley of NY. She worked in human rights solidarity in Central America in the late 1980's, and visited the US-Mexican border earlier this year.  

Charles F. Weller, the co-founder of WFC was born 150 years ago on August 19. Learn more about his and our amazing history with Christoph Schmauch, Executive Director Emeritus. Christoph and Kathryn 'Kit' Schmauch directed WFC from 1970-2000.

Emily Kawano is Co-Director of the Wellspring Cooperative Corporation, which seeks to create an engine for community-based job creation in Springfield, MA . She is on the board of the US Solidarity Economy Network  

Bill Brandt, whose images combining important social commentary with poetic resonance, was one of the 20th century's most influential and creative photographers.  Photographer Gina Bilander presents.

In the 1700s, enslaved West Africans brought their rice-growing knowledge to plantations in South Carolina’s coastal swamps.  Their skills and labor made huge fortunes for plantation owners and the nation.  The Gullah Geechee culture they created made a major contribution to American culture.  NH activist, artist, educator, Judy Elliott, will discuss what she learned about enslaved West Africans and Gullah Geechee culture when researching the history of plantations owned by her ancestors in Georgetown, South Carolina.  

Tamara C. Williams is a jazz vocalist and composer with extensive experience developing music programs with non-profit organizations, colleges, and universities. Prior to arts administration, Mrs. Williams volunteered with domestic violence and sexual assault organizations in the greater St. Louis area. Using spoken word poetry, she became a spokesperson and advocate for the prevention of violence against women, HIV/AIDS prevention, and recovery for substance abusers. Through Music Beyond Measure, which she  founded in New Jersey in 2013, Mrs. Williams founded…

Tamara C. Williams is a NJ-based jazz vocalist and composer with extensive experience developing music programs with non-profit organizations, colleges, and universities, and the founder of Music Beyond Measure. See Aug 27, 7:30pm program description for bio.

Within each person there are memories, stories and insights longing to surface in a creative way. We will use prompts, poetry, art, nature and music to unearth and help them find their way out. This writing experience is not an examination of how to write memoir; rather, it is an exploration of ways to stir memory and niggle your creative urge. No writing experience is necessary, but a willingness to play and explore is. Please bring a small note pad…

Robert Shetterly explores some of the major themes of US colonialist history. Shetterly is a writer and artist who lives in Brooksville, Maine. He is the creator of the portrait series, "Americans Who Tell the Truth."

Lila Kohrman-Glaser is the director of 350 New Hampshire.  She graduated from Tufts University in 2015 and brings 10 years of community organizing experience to 350NH.  She can be found hiking, biking, skiing and running around the great outdoors when she is not at work organizing for a radical shift in climate policy.

We have seen the growth in money in our political system, we have seen how the party in charge uses redistricting and the attacks on voting rights. Learn about the solutions to fix our democracy. What we are doing in NH and nationally to build a grassroots network demanding structural democracy reform and create a government that represents the people again. Olivia Zink is Executive Director of Open Democracy, a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organization founded in 2009 by a group of campaign finance reform activists, including the…

Sandra Yarne is a NH-based activist with Seacoast Peace Response and the Back From the Brink Coalition.

A talk followed by a walk in the woods with Lawrence Millman. As a mycologist, he has studied fungi all over the world, but especially in his own backyard of New England. As an explorer, Millman has made over 40 trips and expeditions to the Arctic and Subarctic.