BMTN's Black Creative Healing

In this episode, dance/movement therapist Breanna Davis joins us for a conversation about self-care. We explore the role creativity can play in that when we use it to meet our need for well-being and not only for our work. We discuss the importance of re-connecting with our bodies, re-discovering joy in movement, and then put that in practice by coming together to pose, move, and dance virtually. Breanna Davis, MS, R-DMT, LMHCA is a Registered Dance/movement Therapist from Indianapolis, Indiana and has a Master’s in Dance/Movement Therapy and is in the process of achieving her Mental Health Counselor License. Through The Andrea Rizzo Foundation, Breanna brought Dance/movement Therapy back to Riley Children’s Hospital where she provides therapy services to kids, teens, and caregivers during their hospital stay. Breanna works to help connect others to movement as a way of emotional expression, pain management, coping, and encouraging positive self-esteem and body image. Breanna continues to work as a dance teacher and choreographer. She also is the Director of Mental Health at Dance Education Equity Association, an organization on the quest to make dance spaces for all. You can learn more about Breanna and her work by following her on Instagram @foreverrbrej. A full transcript of the episode is available here: https://share.descript.com/view/5LpPgMnlR1E And be sure to check out us video of us dancing together on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/rdcA-JSZsMk Resources mentioned: The Body is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor. You can get a copy of the book and workbook, as well as learn more about the movement for radical self-love by visiting https://thebodyisnotanapology.com/

Natasha & Adenike sit down with BCH Students Kalysta Bryant and Breanah Williams to reflect on a previously recorded conversation with our Retreat Planning Team members: kei slaughter, Zelda Lockhart and Hakeem Leonard. We share the Date for the retreat (June 3-5, 2022!) as well as other details around our process and progress. Past Collaborators have already been invited to see inside the Sutra Space that we discuss here, but coming soon our general Black Community will also have an opportunity to see inside the space we’ll be using for our retreat, thanks to grant funds from the Pollination Project! Ultimately our purpose with this episode is to provide insight into our progress and process, particularly the setting of intentions and the sacredness with which we are holding the space. These are elements we believe are valuable for anyone interested in cultivating care centered spaces! Link to the interactive transcript for this episode: https://share.descript.com/view/3KrWpIPfkWR Link to the NEW BCH Website: https://www.blackcreativehealing.com Link to the BCH Retreat Registration: COMING SOON! Stay tuned to our Socials & the Website for more information! Follow us on Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/BlackCreativeHG Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blackcreativehealing/ Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blackcreativehealing/

It’s PART TWO of our collaboration with Clinical Bopulations featuring Van Gammon, American rapper, singer, and songwriter from Fayetteville, North Carolina. This was our first time collaborating with another podcast. You can listen to part one of our discussion over on the Clinical Bopulatations website (HERE: https://clinicalbopulations.fireside.fm/51), or just dive into the recap with us at the top of this episode! Wanna keep the story going afterwards? You can access the editable Google Doc of our New World Story HERE: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UtnYuUq9FYWSJzbrBYzmFTYOCV7FI0gpRewiAMhLg90/edit?usp=sharing  And of course, don’t forget to subscribe to Van Gammon on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/vangammon/?hl=en)and go listen to New World! A full transcript of this episode is available here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1ptaukquyp4aodr/BCH%20302%20with%20Clinical%20Bopulations%20%2B%20Van%20Gammon.docx?dl=0 

This episode features your co-hosts as the guests! Adenike and Natasha take time to reflect on what drew them to creating and producing this podcast, and they share ideas for the vision of Black Creative Healing in general. They talk about their values, their work, lives and loves, and take a moment to discuss the importance of addressing grief and community from the center of their most precious relationships. The arts-based collaboration is one that you’ll become quite familiar with, as it is a rewrite of the theme song! This episode invites listeners to join Natasha and Adenike in honoring and reflecting on the past two seasons as well as welcoming the possibilities that can manifest for season three. We hope you enjoy this collab as much as we did! Link to a transcript for this episode: https://share.descript.com/view/uwivJly8qgm Resources referenced: My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem You can also visit our new Season 3 Study Room for links to all the resources we may mention this season! Right now the Menakem is listed there, as well as a link back to the Season 2 Study Room! All these links can be found by visiting https://linktr.ee/BCHpod

Welcome to Episode 204! This episode marks almost exactly 1 year since Black Creative Healing began as a podcast, and we’re marking that occasion by closing our 2ndseason with another multi-guest collaboration. Yes, you heard right, this is our Season finale! More on that later J Our guests for this collaboration are Jaia Cooper and Breanah Williams, who have been working alongside us this past semester as work study students from Shenandoah University. Both Jaia and Breanah are students in Shenandoah’s Music Therapy program, and we share our deepest thanks to their professor (and BCH collaborator Hakeem Leonard) for recommending them to us for this term! Jaia and Breanah have been managing our social media throughout the semester, and introduced themselves early on with their own Instagram posts – they’ve also been behind many of the quotes and quizzes you’ve seen in our Instagram stories. Our conversation leaps right from their introductions into a topic that – unbeknownst to each of us - has been burning in our bellies for a long time to discuss: Abolition. So buckle up and prepare yourselves for a deep and much needed conversation, followed by some teasers of what you can expect in BCH Season 3! Link to the “plain” interactive transcript of this episode on Descript: https://share.descript.com/view/rLNXX9rUA72 Link to the “resource-filled” version of our transcript on Google Drive (with direct links to some of the places and topics discussed this episode:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yNYKaMAycAAH4i5THhMz6hFRYf2m2kHd/view?usp=sharing Don’t forget our BCH Study Room, where you can find all things discussed in BCH Season 2! https://docs.google.com/document/d/19J1vv918dsws-3Keh_OqFMIC_TYkOtazNIzoVcv1q3w/edit?usp=sharing And, follow us on Social Media for the most up to date info from us, as well as access to our link tree with even MORE resources and ways to support this work: Instagram & Facebook: @BlackCreativeHealing Twitter & Clubhouse: @BlackCreativeHG Wanna send us an email or a tip via Paypal? Use this address: blackcreativehealing@gmail.com Thanks for joining us and see you in Season 3!!

We ditch the script for this episode and start with some frank discussions about the last month’s challenges and heartbreaks. We also take some time to thank all our supporters for helping us raise funds for Volcano Relief in St. Vincent! We remain tremendously grateful for all our BCH family, whether you support monetarily or in other ways. Every like & share matters! This episode’s guest is Cynthia Francillon. Cynthia is a 30-year-old storyteller born and raised in the city of Brooklyn, NY, and currently residing in New Orleans, LA. A descendant of Haitian parents and a self prescribed maladaptive daydreamer, Cynthia believes storytelling + love are the threads that keep us going. Across the mediums of fiction short stories, nonfictional essays, poetry, short/TV/feature film screenplays, stage + on-camera performance, and audio podcasting... Across genres of romance, magical realism, drama, and comedy… Cynthia asks and tries to answer the questions, “Who are we when no one is watching? Do we like those parts in the shadows? Why do we run from the tenderness we cannot and shouldn’t do without?” Her stories feature Black girls/women/femmes exploring their growth as individuals through acts of intimacy with either themselves and/or their relationships with other women, whether it be familial, platonic, or romantic. You can find Cyn on Twitter as @cynfinite. In our collaboration for Episode 203, Cynthia, Natasha & Adenike discuss the "big things" that happen when one moves away from home for the first time, the magic of places like New Orleans (which we discovered we'd all lived in before!) and how ancestral stories may serve - unbeknownst to us at the time - as the sparks that spur us onward in our lives. This episode includes some exciting announcements as we look ahead towards the end of Season 2 in just a few months. So stay tuned for this episode (and those announcements) to drop soon! For more info on Cyn, check the BCH Study Room link here, which includes additional links to topics and resources discussed this episode!: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19J1vv918dsws-3Keh_OqFMIC_TYkOtazNIzoVcv1q3w/edit?usp=sharing You can find an interactive transcript of the episode here: https://share.descript.com/view/kzsgBvoDTY2

Brenda Dixon Gottschild is the author of Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts; Waltzing in the Dark: African American Vaudeville and Race Politics in the Swing Era (winner of the 2001 Congress on Research in Dance Award for Outstanding Scholarly Dance Publication); The Black Dancing Body–A Geography from Coon to Cool (winner, 2004 de la Torre Bueno prize for scholarly excellence in dance publication); and Joan Myers Brown and The Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina-A Biohistory of American Performance. Additional honors include the Congress on Research in Dance Award for Outstanding Leadership in Dance Research (2008); a Leeway Foundation Transformation Grant (2009); the International Association for Blacks in Dance Outstanding Scholar Award (2013); the Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus Civil Rights Award (2016); and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts (2017). A self-described anti-racist cultural worker utilizing dance as her medium, she is a freelance writer, consultant, performer, and lecturer; a former consultant and writer for Dance Magazine; and Professor Emerita of dance studies, Temple University. As an artist-scholar she coined the phrase, “choreography for the page,” to describe her embodied, subjunctive approach to research writing. Nationwide and abroad she curates post-performance reflexive dialogues, writes critical performance essays, performs self-created solos, and collaborates with her husband, choreographer/dancer Hellmut Gottschild, in a genre they developed and titled “movement theater discourse. Our guest's decades of experience are shared with Adenike and Natasha in an intimate conversation about the creative process, and the way racism pulls at the time and energy of Black people, particularly women/femmes. We also discuss embodiment, self-concept and more! Our collaboration culminates in a visceral vocal improvisation that we can't wait for y'all to hear! Check the BCH Study Room link in our bio for more on Brenda, with easy access to additional links from previous episodes! Link to transcript: https://share.descript.com/view/nAYy4p0MJOk Links to content discussed in this episode: Brenda’s website (where you can find information to purchase her books, and more!): https://bdixongottschild.com Yvonne Daniels: Embodied Knowledge (Book): https://books.google.com/books/about/Dancing_Wisdom.html?id=nhCRJ4u_CYIC Frank Wilderson - Afropessimism (Book and Theoretical framework): https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631496141 Afro-futurism (Theoretical framework): https://newsroom.ucla.edu/magazine/afrofuturism Somatic Self-Portrait Exercise: TikTok created by Natasha to demonstrate: https://www.tiktok.com/@blackcreativehealing/video/6937759473989717253

Just in time for the end of Black History Month, our Newest Episode of #BlackCreativeHealing is NOW LIVE! #BCH201 Marisol Norris, Ph.D., is a board-certified music therapist, educator, consultant, and founder of the Black Music Therapy Network, Inc. In our collaboration for Black Creative Healing, Marisol, Adenike & Natasha explore concepts of Refusal and Solidarity. Our conversation and collective art making weaves through personal experiences with mindfulness of Consent & the potential for Harm.  Our episodes now include INTERACTIVE Transcripts, meaning you can click the transcript link in our show notes and just read it, or you can listen to the episode alongside the transcript with text automatically highlighted as the episode plays to follow along! We can’t wait for you all to enjoy all the new things to come this season

Welcome to Black Creative Healing - a Space for Radical Conversation, Mindful Collaboration, and Holistic Visioning, Centering Black Communities. Enjoy this little peek into our process, with all it's profundity and mischief :-) A visual version of this trailer is available via our Youtube page: https://youtu.be/Ce7hvz3y1mI Season 2 coming February of 2021!

We humbly present our season one finale! Recorded as part of a live event, this episode features returning collaborators from season one of the podcast, as well as some folks from our earlier video blog days. We were joined by Anika MacDonald, Hakeem Leonard, Zelda Lockhart, Nsamu Moonga, and Vilissa Thompson, but also by general members of the Black Creative community on the webinar “stage” with us, if you will, including (in no particular order) Jamilia Jacobs (who you’ll hear referred to as JJ during the broadcast), Kamica King, Shana Oshiro kei slaughter, Kerri Williams, LeAndrea Wallace, Chantise Hunt, and Keva Melvin. Other community members, including our non-Black allies, sat in the audience of the webinar, and we thank them for honoring the important role of bearing witness and holding space as we centered Black creativity and joy, played creative games and shared in conversation around topics of community and care, particularly in light of the US Presidential Election and the construct of survival. Now, as we air this episode in wake of personal losses and the American Music Therapy Association’s 2020 National Conference, where our own lived experiences at the intersections of Blackness, queerness, disability and more came once again to the forefront of conflict and harm, we recommit ourselves to honoring ALL Black lives, and the uniqueness of every intersection within our communities. We dedicate this episode to our families and loved ones, who have walked (and continue to walk!) beside us. A transcript of this episode can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/142qi1umnqntmyg/BCH%20105%20%28Natasha%27s%20EDIT%29.docx?dl=0 After this closing episode we’ll be taking some time to rest and recalibrate, and we look forward to more conversations, more collaborations, and more learning and sharing in community as we head into Season two! Some links and handles shared during this episode: The stickers Vilissa mentioned: https://ohsopaper.com/collections/kamala-harris Isle of Tune (our first game): https://www.Isleoftune.com Plink (our second musical game): https://plink.in Funky Town Fridge (the community resource shared by Kamica during the episode): https://sites.google.com/affiantauto.com/funkytownfridge/home Keva Melvin’s TikTok handle: @disguy_datgirl_theirkids Survival (the BCH Multimedia Collaboration that premiered this episode): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMXR64hkFLI Finally, we are tremendously excited to be sharing a workbook of Black Creative Healing prompts inspired by this season’s collaborations. Everyone who attended this live should already have one in their inbox, but if you'd like a copy of this workbook for yourself, you can become a subscriber on Anchor in the dollar amount of $5 or more! If you do that, make sure you're also on our mailing list, so we can send you your gift. Or you can drop us a one-time donation of $10 or more on our new PayPal account via the following link: paypal.me/BCHpod. (all donations of $10 or more are automatically forwarded to the Black Music Therapy network). Thanks and stay tuned for Black Creative Healing Season 2, coming in 2021!

Episode Description: Our guest for this episode is Nsamu Moonga. You can read more about Nsamu via the bio below. In our collaboration for Black Creative Healing, Nsamu, Adenike & Natasha discuss colonialism's impact on African Diasporic Peoples, Indigenous perspectives on creativity, and share in an intimate exploration of affirming each other through music. Nsamu's definition of music is not to be missed! You can find a transcript of this month’s episode here: https://tinyurl.com/y3y9fhp2 You can find the companion Youtube video (featuring our song collaboration) here: https://youtu.be/xn1rSu_IIo8 Nsamu is a music therapist and psychotherapist born and raised in Zambia. Nsamu earned a BA in Psychological Counseling from the University of South Africa and MMus in Music Therapy from the University of Pretoria. A therapist grounded in holistic anti-oppressive practice, Nsamu works with people exploring health and lifestyle choices, medical complications, human sexualities and gender, spiritualities and religious experiences, psychosocial support, and learning enhancement. His music therapy experience span health, medical, and school settings, and centre human development programing, design and facilitation, community infrastructure and social development, cross-cultural living and working. Nsamu is a classically trained singer and enjoys dancing. His interests include lifelong development, learning, and critical theory-informed research. He enjoys long-distance running and writing mystical poetry. He is a foodie, enjoys mentoring youth, and loves being an uncle. Nsamu's affiliated with the Health Profession Council of South Africa, South African Music Therapy Association, South African National Art Therapy Association, and Institute for Creative Conversations. Nsamu has provided a Google doc with a thick description of the ritual clip shared in the center of this episode. You can view that narrative here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11MkM3uQJVXKx0AdITuZjRXsVcR2TLTGG/view?usp=sharing   Don’t forget you can also hit that “support” button to help us keep this podcast going! Every “like,” and share goes a long way too. We continue to be grateful for all those who’ve supported us this month and beyond! Stay tuned to @BlackCreativeHealing on Instagram (and now Facebook! Plus our new Twitter page @BlackCreativeHG) for ongoing details!

Our guest this episode is Jenni Graham, LCAT, ATR-BC, MPS. Jenni is a Nationally Registered & Board Certified Art Therapist & has been working in the mental health field since 2005. She is a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University & Pratt Institute; where she earned her BA in Psychology & her MPS in Art Therapy & Creativity Development respectively. Jenni co-creates compassionate & empowering spaces of healing, liberation & connection by creating space for the full scope of human emotion through a lens of restorative mental & emotional wellness.  In our collaboration, Adenike, Natasha & Jenni discuss the generational and collective aspects of trauma, as well as the power of art to help bring to the surface and integrate aspects of the self that we may not realize have always been there. You can find the collaborative art we made together with Jenni (along with prompts for your own visioning process!) by visiting https://ijustwanna.carrd.co/ and clicking the folder titled "Find Freedom." A transcript of this episode can be found at https://tinyurl.com/y429ag52 We also HIGHLY recommend checking out Jenni’s Instagram and other pages for resources! Website: www.traumafreeuniversity.com Facebook Page to Follow: www.facebook.com/traumafreeu Facebook Private Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TFUbreakfreecommunity/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/traumafreeu And! And! Don't forget to hit that NEW "Support" button on our main anchor page - with as little as $1, you can help support this podcast, and the work of the Black Music Therapy Network!

This episode, we sit down with Diovanni LaBeija. Diovanni  is an Afro-Latinx dance artist and queer art historian. She is a member of the Royal House of LaBeija (NYC Chapter), has appeared as a featured performer on FX’s hit TV show "Pose", and has danced with Vogue troupes at the Apollo Theater and El Museo del Barrio. Her choreography and art focus on Afro-Latinx culture, spirituality and the Trans identity and experience. In our collaboration with Dio, Adenike & Natasha dive deep into the history of Ballroom as a part of broader Black History, as well as relating it to African Diasporic Spiritual practices and how those are connected to Black & Queer history as well. A transcript of the episode can be found by going to https://tinyurl.com/y72umh6s.  After listening to this episode, go to https://tellmeastory.carrd.co/ to hear the story collaboration Dio, Natasha and Adenike created. We encourage you to take in the story aurally, if you can. For those who need an alternate version for accessibility, a transcript of this recording can be found by going to https://tinyurl.com/yaf3wmn7.

Black Creative Healing is a platform dedicated to radical conversation, mindful collaboration, & holistic visioning centering Black Communities. Conversations and arts-based collaborations are facilitated by Music Therapists Natasha Thomas and Adenike Webb, and feature professionals from across the professional spectrum of the arts, humanities, and everyday life. We discuss and explore our own creative approaches to healing as a restorative and ongoing transformative act, informed by current events and guided by imagination and care for our communities. Episodes are hosted online by the Black Music Therapy Network, Inc. You can find links to past collaborations, as well as current episodes and details on each collaboration (including some downloadable resources!) by visiting www.blackmtnetwork.org/black-creative-healing. Our guest for this Episode is Vilissa Thompson LMSW - Vilissa is a macro-minded social worker from South Carolina.  Ramp Your Voice! is her organization where she discusses the issues that matter to her as a Black disabled woman, including intersectionality, racism, politics, and why she unapologetically makes good trouble. ​ In our Collaboration for Black Creative Healing, Vilissa, Natasha & Adenike discuss the necessity of self-care within the Black Community (particularly amongst Black Helpers, Disabled Women & Femmes), and play with the idea of creating safe and healing spaces. You can view and download a full transcript of this conversation here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/z0m065u3lbt9meo/BCH%20101%20Transcript.pdf?dl=0 You can learn more about Vilissa online at these locations: ​ Website:  http://rampyourvoice.com Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/RampYourVoice Twitter:  @VilissaThompson, @RampYourVoice, & @WheelDealPod You can visit the “I Just Wanna” resource created by Adenike, Natasha & Vilissa in this collaboration by clicking here: ijustwanna.carrd.co