PRACTICE
FORWARD
RESILIENT . CREATIVE . COMMUNITIES
A community of practice cultivates a community of care.
Each session offers embodied and creative practices to strengthen resilience and deepen connections, collectively building community resilience and capacity to help us face uncertainty. This series insists that creativity and embodiment are key to building resilient communities.
Culture Mill's Fall 2025 series is provided in partnership with the Haw River Ballroom and curated and framed by Culture Mill.
Upcoming Practice:
November 18th:
Intergenerational Movement
With Culture Mill and Clint Lutes
6pm to 9pm: The Haw River Ballroom
In this multigenerational movement workshop, we invite you to connect body awareness, a non-judgmental mindset, centered action, and play individually, relationally and collectively.
During our practice together we will inquire:
How do we center and balance? How do we move together? How do we practice adaptability and fluidity in our movements? How do we slow down and pause? How do we practice our capacity to listen to ourselves and each other and to make informed decisions in the present moment? How do we practice togetherness away from sameness? How do we use playfulness and movement explorations as a modality to imagine new possibilities?
The workshop is open to everyone from age 13 to 93 with or without dance experience.
It will be taught by Culture Mill co-director Murielle Elizéon together with Culture Mill artist in residence Clint Lutes. Join us! Your presence matters.
Some things cannot be expressed only in spoken or written words. For those, singing is required. How can raising our individual voices into collective song be a practice that builds embodied solidarity and resistance while allowing the braiding together of both grief and joy. You do not need to be a singer or even able to carry a tune to participate. All you need is a body and a voice.
December 3rd:
Songs of Resistance
Led by Kamara Thomas and friends
6pm to 9pm: The Haw River Ballroom
December 16th:
Breathwork and Inner-Relationship Focusing for Male-Identified People
With Culture Mill and Ari Berenbaum
6pm to 9pm : The Haw River Ballroom
Facilitators will guide participants through multiple rounds of breathwork, followed by an introduction to Inner-Relationship Focusing, in order to allow new embodied insights into the complex connection between internal physiological and emotional landscapes. Specifically for male-identified people who often lack spaces for such internal and communal exploration, this workshop is designed to foster a deeper and greater understanding of all that can be unearthed by spending time within the complexity of the body and the felt sense.
Past Practices:
September 23rd:
Processing Chantal: Embodied Integration of the Flood
With Culture Mill and Collaborators
6pm to 9pm: The Haw River Ballroom
Just two months following Chantal, and during the one year anniversary of Helene and 20th anniversary of Katrina, there is much to grieve, be with, move through, and welcome in as we collectively experience climate crisis. Culture Mill will facilitate a space to the broader community in which we can acknowledge the work that has been done, share and hear personal stories centered around climate crisis. In a series of embodied practices we integrate individual and shared experiences, learn body-centered tools, and embolden communities with practices that support creative and responsive resilience.
October 15th:
Solidarity Economies
With Culture Mill with members of Haw River Assembly and Triangle Mutual Aid
6pm to 9pm: The Haw River Ballroom
Are the systems of care and resource distribution (economies) upheld by our larger society the only option? What kinds of alternative systems have thrived, particularly at a local level? How are these ideas being put into practice right now in Saxapahaw or elsewhere? How can these systems allow for greater collective care, stronger relationships, more abundance and deeper resilience as neighbors? How can we deepen such practice together?
This embodied program is open to all, and will be divided between facilitated learning, reflecting and exchange.
October 28th:
Time Bank
With Culture Mill and Harry Phillips
6pm to 9pm: The Haw River Ballroom
Harry Phillips and a team in Saxapahaw are starting a time bank. What is a time bank and how does it work? How can you get involved? Come to learn and discuss the concrete planning around this initiative.