Reflections on Creating WellSpace at TCG Miami 2019

With this being my philosophy around wellness, self care and community care in the artistic workplace, I was so thrilled by the initial conversation I had with TCG Conference producers Hannah Fenlon and Devon Berkshire around their ideas and plans for what would be “WellSpace” at the 2019 TCG National Conference in Miami, FL.

We had an initial video call in February and about a month or so later, I got the confirmation that my session would be a part of the “Skills-Building Workshops” sessions. The team also wanted me to help co-curate what this WellSpace would be in terms of intentional thinking around all aspects of the space.

We embarked on this months-long journey of video calls, a big google document and emails to curate what this space could and would be.

“WellSpace is… the manifestation of the TCG Conference’s commitment to self-care: not just as a band-aid, or a one-time event or purchase, but as an ongoing practice of healing, restoration, and reflection that must be cultivated over time. Our personal self-care, and the self-care of those who work with and for us, demands an investment of our time and energy. If we are able to commit to that, the subsequent benefits (for us as individuals, and for our industry as a whole), will be transformative. The future of the theatre industry depends on the wellbeing of its theatre workers. Wellspace offers the unique opportunity to explore financially sustainable models of self-care, while also acting as a launching pad towards setting up an affordable self-care practice in an industry where compensation is not always a top priority. In Miami, this space serves as an opportunity to take part in and learn from ongoing activations, workshops, and healing circles that prioritize care and sustainability. WellSpace is also an invitation to practice and share your own self-care strategies such as meditation, journaling, art therapy, and beyond. We welcome you to visit WellSpace at any point during your Conference week to take some time to personally invest in yourself, and in our community. We’ll see you at WellSpace.”

I’m living off of a new “EDI” philosophy valuing decolonization and collective liberation. Read more about what this means here. A lot of these values are reflected in the community agreements for WellSpace, which are ever-evolving as we will be updating and adding to them during the conference:

“WellSpace Community Agreements:

With WellSpace, I know we, our co-curating team including TCG Conferences Associate Amara Brady, Hannah, Devon and I, were constantly pushing on both our external and internal/personal aspects of this kind of thinking. We realized that so many things in mainstream U.S. American wellness can be culturally appropriative and/or extremely capitalistically driven.

From our first initial video calls, one key aspect where we found ourselves conflicted was around sharing yoga as a wellness practice in this space. There are many conflicting ideas out there about how to practice yoga in a decolonized way, debating whether it’s even possible and what it means in our present day context. Amara also shared with us two articles early on to start our thinking about it, which I will include a further learning area at the bottom of this post. I highly encourage everyone to do their own thinking, processing, research and discussion on it. To be truthful and transparent, in the end we couldn’t come to a solid “yoga politic” for all, especially one that we were ready to share as an example for others at this Conference. I’m excited for this continued conversation around yoga in our communities; I know I have a lot of thoughts.

After we had a solid outline of what we wanted the space to be, Lani Fu, Elizabeth Doud, and especially Annalisa Dias, all members of the Conference Committee on Climate, were specifically helpful in giving feedback on some of our early ideas. Sometimes, you need this kind of feedback when it comes to creating inclusive and equitable spaces. This included things like rethinking a community altar and a conversation about how we discuss spiritual wellness, the need for more POC affinity spaces, thinking about community care and not just “self” care, and so much more.

I’m also really grateful to the Conference Committee on Climate and for addressing climate change mindfulness overall and in WellSpace. This is another area where we need more focus. I personally think climate wellness, our relationship with our planet, is a super key aspect for our own wellness and our community’s wellness. In Kichwa and Quechua indigenous languages, we call her pachamama, mother earth. And I think we, living in a colonized, white supremacy culture, have to go through a serious shift in our relationships to pachamama — a shift that involves moving from taking and destroying to giving and restoring. Decolonization and indigenization are inherently tied to climate justice and earth wellness. That’s another area in which I’m excited to grow personally at this Conference and in my artistic and professional journey.

Love,

Viviana Vargas
(Pronouns: they/them/theirs)

Some Further Learning Resources on Yoga:

Related posts:

Before I could submit this article for publication, it appears Black Panther star Letitia Wright has deleted her Twitter and Instagram accounts following online backlash for a video she shared. I suppose that’s a frustratingly apt metaphor for what I’m about to discuss.

Uniswap v3 brought some interesting new concepts to the AMM industry, some of which will be quite useful for Rising Coin, such as: We have been thinking about how to implement our Adjuster on Uniswap…

When you start with Data Studio and you want to filter in one of the reports, you get a broad offer of many different filters. In this Blogpost, I want to show the different kinds of filters and give…