Cultural
commissioned sculpture by Serah Lenea
The Respite hosts cultural residencies for creative artists and healing practitioners, prioritizing queer, trans, nonbinary and/or black, indigenous, cultural workers of colors’ working, resting or scheming for our collective libratation.
The Beautiful Project brought Nikki’s Table: Poetry Peer Learning Cohort to the Respite for a two-day retreat in October 2024 to deepen their young artists’ writing and publishing skills.
Nikki’s Table offers a nurturing space for poets to cultivate their craft, explore their identity, expand their creative community, and navigate the path to publication. Through community-building, mentorship, and opportunities to share their work, Nikki’s Table: Poetry Peer Learning Cohort empowers gender-expansive youth to empower their inner poet to use their stories as a means of self-healing and collective transformation.
photo credit : Derrick Davis (Above) and Madylin Nixon-Taplet (Below).
Friends, fellow Alternate ROOTS members and Cultural Leaders with Teens with a Purpose came for a healing, immersive, spiritual nature-filled weekend retreat in July 2024. Leaping into the wilderness, exploring the sacred land, connecting with the horses, eating blueberries and tomatoes straight from the vine, they laid in the hammock by the creek, and swam in our serene watering hole.
“we are often the givers and healers of our communities, but this one was for us.”
in October 2020, three cultural organizers from Chicago - Irina Zadov, Abena Motaboli, and Peregrine Bermas -
came to the Respite for two weeks for the very first cultural curriculum development residency.
“The creek was magical. I can’t say it enough. It gave me life, it gave me what I needed. To be able to wake up to the sounds of nature as it should be. I am personally so
inspired by water, so this creek became like a nurturer to me. I would put my loose tarps
on rocks in the creek and return to them each day seeing how they had changed or
interacted with the earth.”
- Abena Motaboli, interdisciplinary artist, writer, educator, cultural worker
canvas drop cloth prints of India ink, tea, coffee, clay and pokeweed berries from the creek by Abena Motaboli
by Irina Zadov, queer post-Soviet Jewish artist, educator and cultural organizer
re-matriation
re-mothering
re-membering
we, the doulas of
joy, slowness, and fire
healing wounds and wombs
guided by the stars
on our ancestors' fingers
we dance with the creek
build altars to orb-weavers
read poetry to the trees
we journey with burdock
mullein, tulsi, and comfrey
pressed leaves are portals to childhood
fires to ancestral homelands
our stories flow
like rain in a flood plain
fallen trees fertilize
the alluvial forest
possibilities grow here
nourished by affirmations,
generosity, and accountability
we gather by moonlight
wait for the sun to raise through the fog
we know regeneration
in our cells
joyful redistribution
releasing what is not ours
these are the lesson of the earth
we do not own anything
we are all guests here
leave behind your ambition
your illusions of control
beneath the rage is pain
beneath the pain is power
a child sized elder
calls me sis
we cultivate fire
she asks to sit on my knee
we build a twig mountain
and watch it fall
embers dancing
with the wind
we pray with our actions
cast spells with our hands
heal and transform
by reciprocating the gift
Film Shoots
Part III of Prophesy (2020) written and performed by Durham theater artist, Monet Noelle Marshall was shot at the Respite. photo credit Caroline Cockrell.
Between Dreams, short film by Arpan Gauchan shot on location at Respite in the Round. Sept 2018.