Cultural organizing is an artistic and community engaged discipline that blends practices of faith, culture, art, and community organizing. Here, at QC Family Tree, we intentionally integrate arts and culture into organizing strategies to build people power and make social change.
We believe meaningful and long lasting impact is made when cultural organizing is practiced from a particular tradition, cultural identity, community of place or worldview. QC Family Tree is rooted in the place of Enderly Park and our work grows out of the gifts of our neighborhood.
As a community based organization, we listen and respond to the assets and needs of the community in which we are immersed. Together with community members, we work to create an enduring understanding of individual and communal identity. We strengthen social infrastructure and expand on interdependence, mutual aid, and solidarity where it already exists.
Using the language of culture- art, story, ritual, celebration- QC Family Tree cultivates folks’ sense of belonging, connection, and interdependence. This is long term, rooted, work that involves strategy. Though integral to our work, we are not focused solely on creating opportunities for individuals to express themselves and learn. Collective aims- mutuality, community, shared, cooperative- are our focus.
QC Family Tree’s Cultural organizing efforts, such as #Tuckbound, Tiny School, Kindred Table, and the Healing Justice framework, promote community pride, cohesiveness, and collective efficacy. They empower the community to build long-term capacity and impact social change at small and large scale.
It is important to draw on local resources: stories, voices, perspectives, and art forms of our community. The process of creating together builds relationships. It also helps us to learn more about our community and individuals so that we can better organize and collaborate with one another. New leaders and collective goals emerge from collaborative artistic actions. Our capacity to create change increases as we build relationships and participate in culture bearing together.
QC Family Tree actively connects artists, community members, and organizers. These connections cultivate a sense of gifts, imagination, possibility, and fulfillment. QCFT has partnered with Hannah Hasan as Resident Storyteller to organize storytelling projects and community meal poetry events. Hannah is currently working on telling the story of community members who are actively impacting the community in the midst of the difficult times of this year. The Kindred Table project at QCFT has connected neighbors, nutrition researchers, foodies, and gardeners around the topic of food sovereignty and sustainability. Mady is putting together a zine with stories and recipes from the Kindred Table experience.vYou can look forward to encountering the stories soon.
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