PROJECTS

In addition to our signature program, I Ching Mothering Change, we offer fiscal sponsorship and small grants to support worthy new initiatives and cultivate creativity, reduce distress, and support greater flourishing among the family of the earth.

Small grants are available on a first come first serve basis when funds are available. If you’d like to learn more about fiscal sponsorship, please contact us.

The Lena Wall
A public-facing temporary mural series in Santa Fe

The Lena Wall is an ongoing public mural exhibition on large public-facing walls at 1805 Second Street in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Since 2020, the Lena Wall has presented the work of Three Sisters Collective (Autumn Dawn Gomez lead artist), Chip Thomas (jetsonorama), Godfrey Reggio, Kaitlyn Bryson, Amelia Bauer, Darryl Lorenzo Wellington, Kevin Allende, Iliana M. Briceño, Matthew Chase-Daniel, Ed Epping, John Paul Granillo, Taslim van Hattum, Terran Last Gun, Israel Francisco Haros Lopez, Jonathan Meade, Jessica Ortiz, Artemisio Romero y Carver, Windsong Tapia, and Diego Ulibarri.

The exhibitions are in an accessible location and visible day and night to pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists. All exhibitions are accompanied by text panels which provide information about the art and artists and also direct readers to more information online (thelenawall.com). The website has contact information for artists who wish to propose projects for future presentation.

Mi Vida Trans
Ocelotl Mora at El Chante, Casa de Cultura, Albuquerque

About the Artist
Ocelotl Mora, El/He/Him, is a transgender man of 41, a pocho “Ni de aqui, ni de aya,” Mexicano, Chicano, 2Spirit, caregiver, and advocate for trans and disabled people, two-spirit QTPOC traditional medicine, and queer elder communities. He was born in San Antonio, TX, but unable to exist there, left home at 14 to be raised by 4 feminist chosen families. He now calls the Tiwa lands of Albuquerque, NM home. A self-taught, interdisciplinary storyteller, Ocelotl brings the Chicanx aesthetic of rasquachismo, “lifestyle of the underdog,” to photography, blended with digital art, writing, sculpture, installation, and dance. With raw vulnerability, he integrates community voices as he exposes his personal struggle to live authentically within his culture, illuminating the dire need for TransMale visibility and supportive healthcare for all Transgender people.
About The Project:
A multi-modal storytelling installation, Mi Vida Trans launched its first phase for Trans Day of Remembrance, November of 2023. The debut featured 18 large scale photographic portraits including La TransCena and the My Trans Generation series. Amid a culturally immersive installation of altars, sand tapestries, and dance, the portraits root Mi Vida Trans in Transgender and Gender Diverse visibility.

FLOW
Remembering Our Way to A Livable Future

FLOW was a 2023 Vibrant Participatory Procession to return water to the Rio Chiquito (now Water Street) in Santa Fe, generating a current of celebration, memory and the possibility of water. Featuring local artists, giant puppets, music, dance, mural art, street theatre, and poetry.

What is FLOW??
FLOW is an awakening to what was, what is, and what could be, marking the Rio Chiquito’s path (now Water Street), and unfolding the history of what was once a major water source for the city’s flora, fauna, and agriculture.

FLOW is a procession of giant puppets, street theatre, music, poetry, dance and ceremony running from the source Spring at the northwest corner of Paseo de Peralta and Alameda, following the Rio Chiquito (now Water Street) to its confluence with the Santa Fe River near the Guadalupe Church.

FLOW offered free public arts workshops to engage, educate and inspire all community members about Santa Fe’s water and water history. At these workshops, we shared histories of the Rio Chiquito and the Santa Fe River as inspiration for puppets, banners, movement and poetry about water and the Rio Chiquito. Resulting artworks inhabited the procession, coming to life as we community members wore, danced, spoke and sang our relationship to the waters.

FLOW Sponsors: Santa Fe Watershed Association, Wise Fool NM, The City of Santa Fe, McCune Foundation, In The Family Way, ArtSmart, and individual donors

FLOW Creators: Jo Redline Christian and Bobbe Besold

FLOW featured :
The Partzani Band!
Street Mural by Autumn Gomez
Hyda Maria Dougherty offering a water blessing
Historical placemaking Cantastoria performed by Sarah Jane Moody with Juliana Ciano on accordion!
Poets Bianca Barela and Chasity Salvador
Dierdre Morris and dancers!
YUCCA Youth Climate Activists
The All Species Day “We Are All In The Same Boat”!
Madi Sato water songs
The Aztec Dancers
Wise Fool Stilters, Giant Puppets and Unicyclers!
Interactive Clown Brigade!
Axle Contemporary’s mobile artspace was wheat pasted with river art and poetry by 3rd and 4th graders!
PLUS art made by participants in FLOW’s FREE public artmaking workshops.

photos (unless otherwise noted) by Gabriella Marks.

Nihí K’é Baa’ Resiliency Hub
Love on the Land, A Land Back Initiative

Nihi Ké’ Baa’ is a collective of grassroots Diné organizers working to remediate their homelands to create a healthy and viable future rooted in ancestral knowledge. Since 2015, founding members Kim Smith and Makai Lewis have been organizing mutual aid, conducting citizen science, and deploying art and direct action to shift policy and bring awareness to issues across their homelands

Nihi Ké’ Baa’ is designing and building an off-grid community hub on Diné Bikeyah (Navajo Nation) comprised of two sustainable structures constructed using site-appropriate alternative building materials; a multi-use building with kitchen and meeting spaces; and a ceremonial hogan.

In the Family Way provided $3,000 for completion of the roof of their community resilience hub, engaging 25 participants (75% Diné, 25% allies) in learning through participatory experience, raising roof beams and installing roofing layers.

“We built and deepened overall team skills in trust, safety, and communication as we innovated creative ways to raise such a large roof structure without heavy machinery. This included repurposing our direct action training skills and supplies such as harnesses to support each other in risky moments. Furthermore, we expanded our strawbale building skills and engaged in collective problem solving as we learned to test moisture levels, remove, and replace straw bales that were soaked by the unexpected deluges of the 2022 summer/fall. In this way we turned an unfortunate situation into experiential knowledge and added detail on real life troubleshooting and accessible solutions to be included in our sustainable building toolkit.”

heARTful rEVOLution
Inaugural Residencies at Motherful, Columbus, OH and Casa Carmelita, El Paso, TX

Autumn of 2021 marked the launch of heARTful rEVOLution, by Amy Jo Christian, an artist residency project that raises and centers voices from distressed, marginalized and underserved communities by providing spaces, skill building, tools, supplies, and logistical support for participants to connect and express themselves through the arts.  As proposed, artist residencies at Motherful, in Columbus, Ohio and Casa Carmelita, in El Paso, Texas, were 10 days long, emergent, process oriented, and free and easily accessible to community participants. Giant Puppet and image creation focused on themes and stories chosen through community brainstorm processes and storyboarding. Both residencies were held in collaboration with BIPOC led small grassroots local organizations and culminated in highly visual and theatrical participatory public events. Host organizations were left with supplies, specialty tools, skills, documentation and handbooks, and a collection of street-ready large-scale puppets & related imagery for future use. In total the two residencies offered over 120 hours of instruction, skill sharing, and creation time to 52 youth and adults from poor/working class BIPOC communities. The resulting performance and parade were enjoyed by @500 people in these communities and afforded these two young grassroots organizations opportunities to build greater awareness of their work, while gathering their members and close communities to share their stories, and express their values and visions through creative exploration. Watch a short video here of the Motherful performance.

Amy Jo Christian has been performing circus, puppetry, dance, and creating hand wrought visuals and outdoor spectacle for productions from international festivals to political actions for 24 years.

BELONGING
a Photo Mural for Project Worthmore

Project Worthmore is a refugee relocation organization in Aurora, Colorado, serving thousands of refugee clients through six comprehensive programs. Artist-photographer Edica Pacha photographed refugee-staff members and created large-scale photo murals as a community social arts project that stretched from six feet tall to forty feet long. With the creative participation of local families and community members, the murals were further embellished, where they were prominently visible to thousands of people in the area.

The images were also installed at the Dairy Art Center in Boulder, CO.. There, they were pasted on the front of the building, reaching a whole new community who could learn more about the project through a QR code system installed with the piece. The Dairy is home to 14 resident arts organizations, over 2,000 music and dance students, 250 live performances, 27 art gallery exhibitions, over 1,000 movie screenings, and 200,000 arts experiences that happen here every year. The opportunity to show art on the outside of the building, gave way to thousands of visitors and viewers of the work as they attended events at the Dairy over the 6 months that the images were up.

The artist describes the project beautifully, saying: This project acts as an opportunity for people to be seen and stories to be told, to weave together those who have migrated from lands which could not support them and created a life helping and serving other people. Art acts as a platform of transformation through the act of creating beauty to inspire a deeper level of awareness.

In the Family Way provided a grant of $3000 in support of the project.

Pacha is interested in creating opportunities for ‘humans to be seen’ and vulnerabilities to be shared, while connecting deeply through Social Art and street art practices.

I Ching: Mothering Change

Launched in 2011, this free online divination program is a continuous offering, a dynamic tool for creative reflection about major transitions in family and community life. Since it was recorded nearly three thousand years ago, the Chinese Classic of Change has been in continuous use and has evolved under the prevailing political climate and worldview of scholars who have produced countless interpretations, commentaries and translations over time. It provides images and messages that have persisted over thousands of years, inviting other ways of knowing to rise to our awareness and enrich our rational thought with intuition and heart-centered insight.

This unique version was developed in collaboration with leading I Ching scholar and diviner Stephen Karcher, Ph.D. to share the heart of In the Family Way. In a world weary of approaching change through heroic striving, I Ching Mothering Change expands our capacity to nurture the mutual process of becoming in ourselves, our families, and in the family of the earth that holds us all. Rooted in the conviction that times of upheaval and change are the open hinge of evolution at all levels of human culture, we offer Mothering Change  as a resource for those seeking to engage creativity and compassion to shape the transitions and transformations through which evolution unfolds.

I Ching Mothering Change is now used regularly by people all around the world. It is an honor to continue sharing it and we are grateful if your experience using it inspires you to support the vision and work of In the Family Way.

Poetry Pollinators

This is an eco-poetry public art installation program founded by former Santa Fe poet Laureate Elizabeth Jacobson and Julie Chase-Daniel, first launched as a project of In the Family Way and now operating under the fiscal umbrella of New Mexico Literary Arts.

The mission of Poetry Pollinators is to empower poetry, art, and education to bring back declining native bee populations and animate public spaces as ecological systems that support the flourishing of all species.

Solitary native bees live underground and in the channels of plant stems with no hive, no honey, and no queen to protect. They rarely sting, which has allowed communities nationwide to champion their preservation through the placement of educational nesting boxes in urban locations that have come to be known as “bee hotels.”

With the support of the City of Santa Fe River Commission and Parks and Recreation Department, the Santa Fe Watershed Association, and former representatives from the Santa Fe County Commission and the Santa Fe Arts Commission, Poetry Pollinators on the Santa Fe River has facilitated the creation of an artist-commissioned bee hotel as a donation to the City of Santa Fe, located along the East Alameda river path. The Camino Escondido Bee Hotel integrates an educational panel and presents one poem panel that can be changed seasonally, and now serves as a quiet spot for personal contemplation as well as poetry readings and educational workshops.

Support and Feed: Covid-19 Crisis Response

In response to the pandemic, we were honored to serve as fiscal sponsor for this worthy new initiative that sprang into being through the efforts of a tireless group of volunteers and the vision of Maggie Baird, actress, screenwriter, and mother of Grammy-Award artists Finneas and Billie Eilish.

Support + Feed began as a crisis response initiative to provide plant-based meals prepared by local restaurants to individuals, children, and families disproportionately affected by the pandemic, while showcasing the benefits of a plant-based diet. Since then, Support + Feed has grown into an established organization with a mission to positively impact the environment and combat food insecurity by providing plant-based food and education about its benefits to underserved, distressed, or historically marginalized communities.

Operating in Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington DC, volunteers delivered nearly 60,000 meals in 2020 through partnerships with vetted organizations such as homeless and women’s shelters, family and children’s programs, food banks, senior centers, LGBTQ programs, and community centers.

Our multidisciplinary practice leads to creative interventions, arts programming, and fiscal sponsorship for select projects that relieve suffering, cultivate transformation, and make life on earth better for all beings.

Past Projects & Events:

The Torso Project

This long term collaborative art project, organized by Julie & Matthew Chase-Daniel from 2007-2010, was an invitation for pregnant women to create a living legacy of the mystery, magic, and relationship to nature that the pregnant form represents. The goal of the Torso Project is to empower and support women, men and children during the life changes evoked by pregnancy and birth. Life-cast torsos of women at full-term were created in editions of three. One was given back to the woman from whom it was cast. The second was placed in the wilderness near the location of the birth and left as an offering to the natural world. The third was held by the artists for exhibition of the entire group of torso sculptures. For participants, and through the wilderness placements and public exhibitions, this project invites a new way of experiencing the way we all live as a family of the earth.

The Muse in the House: An evening to celebrate In the Family Way

Meditative Song Group

Led by vocalist Annette Cantor from 2007-2009, this meditative song group met in a series of four weekly classes dedicated to the celebration of spirit through song for people whose families are reforming after divorce, loss, or other life changes. Accompanied by the tambura, participants were invited to sing and relax into the still point that is the source of our creativity and emerge profoundly refreshed and centered in mind and body.

Pottery for Parents and Children

Weekly pottery classes for children (five and up) and their adult companions were offered as a six-week series facilitated by Julie and Matthew Chase-Daniel in 2007. Participants learned a variety of hand-building techniques through working on a set of cups and bowls for daily use. Classes offered parents and children a chance to connect and have fun amid the challenges of daily life.

Journal Project for Tweens and Teens

In this empowering program, led by photographer Anne Hayunga from 2007-2008, young girls learned how to blend text and photographs they created themselves into journals to capture the questions and revelations of their age. Journal groups met in a series of 4 weekly classes dedicated to fostering creative self-expression through photography, writing, and drawing.

In the Family Way is a federally recognized tax-exempt 501c3 public charity. Donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.