Theatre of the Oppressed

As always, this Game Day we invite new folk and veterans alike, for folks wanting to try something new, explore something deep, make meaningful connections and get silly. Theatre of the Oppressed offers us the opportunity to explore a myriad of complex topics creatively, while we build community together. I will be asking the assembled community to weigh in to shape the day to best meet the needs and desires of the group in attendance. We may choose to respond to harm, to turn towards joy, to get silly, to get deep, or a combination of all of these as we get out of our heads and into our bodies. 

If this is your first time joining us, you’ll be able to jump right in and play, explore and dialogue with other participant community members. All games will be scaffolded to make sure everyone is able to participate, and I work to make sure we work together to create comfort and trust.

We will be hosting three more game days: one Sunday a month until summer! So mark these dates on your calendar: March 24, April 21 and May 26. 

For more information check out The Good Work Hour, where Leigh was our guest on the Nov. 22nd 2022.

The Village Revealed: Two Lenses, One Vision

In the 1970’s Sharon VanDyke and Benjamin Wigfall as part of the mission of Communications Village, captured the spirit and faces of the Black community in Kingston. The photos restored by Michael Torres of Soul Reflections Photography & Art Collective will be on view during the moth of February in the Gallery @ 107 and Good Work Institute in Kingston.

This programming is sponsored by Soul Reflections Art & Photography Collective, TRANSART & Cultural Services, Inc. and Good Work Institute

Climate Grief Conversations

GWI and Jenny Bates are holding ongoing climate grief conversations. This group will meet on the first Thursdays of the month, (though this one is on the second Thursday) at The Greenhouse 65 St. James St. on the corner of Clinton street and St. James Street in Uptown Kingston. This group is free and open to anyone who has concerns about the climate, about our City of Kingston, and who are stressed about an uncertain future.


“We are picking up distress signals, as living beings on this planet” – Jenny Bates.


Grief is not easily processed alone. The grief felt, consciously or unconsciously regarding the planet is on a scale previously unknown to our species. This series of conversations is an opportunity to share and verbalize what is felt in the context of group that will be facilitated with care, support and a sense of belonging in a confidential and fully respectful manner.


You can listen to Micah and Jenny speak on The Good Work Hour about this topic.


If you have any question email [email protected] or [email protected]

Climate Grief Conversations

GWI and Jenny Bates are holding ongoing climate grief conversations. This group will meet on the first Thursdays of the month, (though this one is on the second Thursday) at The Greenhouse 65 St. James St. on the corner of Clinton street and St. James Street in Uptown Kingston. This group is free and open to anyone who has concerns about the climate, about our City of Kingston, and who are stressed about an uncertain future.


“We are picking up distress signals, as living beings on this planet” – Jenny Bates.


Grief is not easily processed alone. The grief felt, consciously or unconsciously regarding the planet is on a scale previously unknown to our species. This series of conversations is an opportunity to share and verbalize what is felt in the context of group that will be facilitated with care, support and a sense of belonging in a confidential and fully respectful manner.


You can listen to Micah and Jenny speak on The Good Work Hour about this topic.


If you have any question email [email protected] or [email protected]

Day 1 Walk

We invite you and your neighbors to gather as fellow human beings and walk. Starting at Kingston Point Beach at 1pm. Ending at The Greenhouse at 65 St. James St. Following the walk we can gather to get warm, have some hot drinks and continue discussions.


This is not a protest and there is no agenda, it is just unity. We walk together in solidarity, and start over from Day 1. We put aside what divides us and focus on what unites us – our humanity. This is just one day to simply walk together.
In the face of so much that divides us, let us not forget that we are united by the bonds of our common fellowship in the human race.

Climate Grief Conversations

GWI and Jenny Bates are holding ongoing climate grief conversations. This group will meet on the first Thursdays of the month at The Greenhouse 65 St. James St. on the corner of Clinton street and St. James Street in Uptown Kingston. This group is free and open to anyone who has concerns about the climate, about our City of Kingston, and who are stressed about an uncertain future.


“We are picking up distress signals, as living beings on this planet” – Jenny Bates.


Grief is not easily processed alone. The grief felt, consciously or unconsciously regarding the planet is on a scale previously unknown to our species. This series of conversations is an opportunity to share and verbalize what is felt in the context of group that will be facilitated with care, support and a sense of belonging in a confidential and fully respectful manner.


You can listen to Micah and Jenny speak on The Good Work Hour about this topic.


If you have any question email [email protected] or [email protected]

Climate Grief Conversations

GWI and Jenny Bates are holding ongoing climate grief conversations. This group will meet on the first Thursdays of the month, (though this one is on the second Thursday) at The Greenhouse 65 St. James St. on the corner of Clinton street and St. James Street in Uptown Kingston. This group is free and open to anyone who has concerns about the climate, about our City of Kingston, and who are stressed about an uncertain future.


“We are picking up distress signals, as living beings on this planet” – Jenny Bates.


Grief is not easily processed alone. The grief felt, consciously or unconsciously regarding the planet is on a scale previously unknown to our species. This series of conversations is an opportunity to share and verbalize what is felt in the context of group that will be facilitated with care, support and a sense of belonging in a confidential and fully respectful manner.


You can listen to Micah and Jenny speak on The Good Work Hour about this topic.


If you have any question email [email protected] or [email protected]

SEASON OF REST – A Sound Healing

Wellness and rest are two facets that often elude our community due to the stressors that stand in the doorway of life. We offer this sound experience as a ray of light on the possibilities for us to find comfort, care, and a sense of belonging to self through our awareness and presence.

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Theatre of the Oppressed

Join us for an afternoon of creative play and deep community dialogue! Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) is a political framework and theatrical method, less about performance and more about creativity, play and exploration. TO engages people in embodied discovery, critical reflection and dialogue and the process of liberation. During this event, participants will be invited to stretch the limits of their imaginations, demechanize habitual behaviors, analyze social and political issues that are important to them and imagine a world of liberation. Take some time away from the hectic year-end and join community members as we laugh, play, explore and address critical issues together. 

For more information check out The Good Work Hour, where Leigh was our guest on the Nov. 22nd.

Theatre of the Oppressed

Join us for an afternoon of creative play and deep community dialogue! Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) is a political framework and theatrical method, less about performance and more about creativity, play and exploration. TO engages people in embodied discovery, critical reflection and dialogue and the process of liberation. During this event, participants will be invited to stretch the limits of their imaginations, demechanize habitual behaviors, analyze social and political issues that are important to them and imagine a world of liberation. Take some time away from the hectic year-end and join community members as we laugh, play, explore and address critical issues together. 

For more information check out The Good Work Hour, where Leigh was our guest on the Nov. 22nd.

Author Heather McGhee on The Sum of Us

**All ticketed seats have been reserved for this event. There will be limited standing room and bar seating available for walk-ins**

A renowned expert on the American economy, Heather McGhee is one of the most brilliant and influential thinkers exploring inequality today. Both her viral TED talk and her instant New York Times bestseller The Sum of Us reveal the devastating true cost of racism—not just for people of color, but for everyone. 

GWI is thrilled to welcome Heather McGhee to Kingston for a talk that springboards off of her book, The Sum of Us. Join us at Rough Draft, where we will gather to hear her reflections on how we can dismantle racist systems and create a vision for our country’s future. The talk will be followed by a Q&A.

The Sum of Us is available for purchase from Rough Draft now! You can stop in to buy a copy in-person ahead of the event or purchase the book online here and receive your copy at the event for signing (you’ll receive an email when it is available for pick-up too).

This free, public event is sponsored by GWI, and supported by Rough Draft and Radio Kingston.

Event Overview:

  • 5:45 – 6:15pm : Check-in, pick up your book, grab a drink/snack, and settle in!
  • 6:15 – 7:15pm : Heather, in conversation with Micah (GWI), will discuss The Sum of Us. They will then open it up to the audience for a Q&A.
  • 7:15 – 8:00pm : Book-signing + mingling!

About Heather McGhee:

An influential voice in the media and an NBC contributor, Heather McGhee regularly appears on NBC’s Meet the Press and MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Deadline White House, and All In. Her opinions, writing, and research have appeared in numerous outlets, including the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Politico and National Public Radio. She currently serves as a Visiting Lecturer in Urban Studies at the City University of New York’s School of Labor and Urban Studies. She has also held visiting positions at Yale University’s Brady-Johnson Grand Strategy Program and the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics.  McGhee is the Chair of the Board of Color of Change, the country’s largest online racial justice organization, and serves on multiple other boards of trustees, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Demos. McGhee holds a B.A. in American Studies from Yale University and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. For more, visit www.heathermcghee.com.

Navigating Conflict: Communication Skills for Working Together (8 of 8)

Are you ready to dedicate some attention to a fresh approach to your working relationships? In this 8-week workshop, we will cultivate our capacity to connect with ourselves and others and practice nonviolent communication skills that can support our working together productively, authentically, and with care, in service of our work towards collective liberation.

*Details on fees, sliding scale, and scholarship options can be found below.*

When we pour ourselves into work we care about, we want to know it matters. We want to know that our collective efforts to bring about needed changes and work toward Just Transition will be fruitful. How disheartening, exhausting, and frustrating it is to see our hard work fall short as conflict slows down the momentum of our work or, worse yet, leads us to step away from collaborative efforts. 

The legacies of a domination paradigm (capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and scarcity to name a few) have left us without the skills we need in order to collaborate effectively and to find generativity in conflict which, on some scale, is inevitable.

Nonviolent Communication (NVC) offers us a toolkit to deepen our own embodied self-connection and build our capacity to relate to ourselves and one another with empathy so that we can show up more fully and authentically to our work in the world. As we begin to unpack the way that domination culture has shaped our very language, we can learn new/old ways of communicating that bring us more deeply into alignment with our values, our purpose, and into connection with one another as we work together to build the world we long for.

During this 8-week, online workshop, we will explore practical strategies for undoing domination in ourselves, our communication, our relationships, and our collaborations. Each two-hour session will include interactive content and practices to engage with real-time examples from your work and life. You will have the opportunity to be paired up with another participant for practice in between sessions. Because a shared experience with colleagues can make it easier to bring this language and these skills into your working relationships, we encourage you to sign up with one or more of the people you work with! This course will support you, and the colleagues and collaborators who join you, to:

  • Understand empathy: what is it and why does it matter in working relationships? How can I listen with empathy and compassion, with others and with myself?
  • Explore NVC as an embodied mindfulness practice 
  • Grow your capacity to tune into body sensations as valuable feedback from your nervous system pointing you towards what matters to you
  • Develop an awareness of and vocabulary for resonant language – including “feelings” and “needs” – and your understanding of the brain science behind why this kind of language works
  • Prepare for difficult conversations, and have more tools for “clean up” afterwards
  • Foster connection while maintaining personal authenticity
  • Identify patterns of domination culture and develop a needs-based orientation that can enable you to undo domination
  • Develop an empathetic listening practice with a buddy between sessions as a foundational tool for resourcing yourself to show up better in conflict and collaboration

This workshop is not meant to be a forum for working through active conflicts with one another, but rather a place to be supported in cultivating the skills that will help us to engage more effectively with conflict in our working relationships.