February Welcome Ceremony

We introduced some of our team, shared our care ecology & seeded the ground with our ethos/values, played with the Pandemic Players, and shared connection space at the end.

About the Pandemic Players:
We are a group of diverse artists who came together during the pandemic to make art using comedy, theatre, dance, music, spoken word and storytelling. As our process emerged, we created a shame-and-blame-free space where we learned to listen deeply to each other as we discussed issues of race, gender, spirituality, the environment and decolonization. We experience a special creative alchemy between us and we offer kind, loving, generous support to one another in friendship.

Heidi J bio

From a young age Heidi was very sensitive, empathic and artistic. She studied science and art, had a love for nature and a deep yearning to understand reality through the integration of many perspectives. She joined La Caravana Arcoiris por la Paz (the Rainbow Caravan for Peace) for many years. This was an international group of rebels led by visionary Alberto Ruz, who travelled and worked in Latin America, learning to live simply together in the mythic, and in connection with the sacred and the land. The Caravan initiated her aspirationally decolonial path. Upon returning from Latin America, she initiated a multimedia art collective in Missoula, MT called the Open Field Artists, who were interested in social and spiritual change. She was also a yoga practitioner and body-worker. Eventually her body began to release personal unconscious material (trauma) into the conscious mind to be integrated. She then produced a show called First Breath which looked at patterns inherited from our parents and the chakras. After this show, her body initiated a deep process of integration of ancestral trauma and shame, and she moved onto the land. This was a very difficult process due to isolation and lack of support, and lasted a few years. Since then, she has been continuing to make art, seeing now how the system is intrinsically tied to our trauma, and how important collective re-patterning is. She initiated a multimedia art project called Free System-Sistema Libre (see below), which will be going online in the next few weeks. She has been reading, thinking and feeling about white-bodied supremacy, decolonization, the gender binary and indigenous issues.

The Purpose of the Free System-Sistema Libre Project is to co-create art with a diverse group of people, allowing each individual to share their own voice and to be seen, showing that we are intrinsically connected and are worthy of living within healthy, just, loving, integrated systems. These systems would support processes of decolonization through art, mindfulness practices and connection to the land, ancestors and cosmos. We aim to inspire a local and potentially global audience to connect with and empower one another, looking toward ourselves for deeper change.

Penélope Baquero Bio

Penelope is an interdisciplinary artist from Colombia/Ecuador. She independently studied Anthropology and acquired a degree in International Relations in Bogotá. During the early years of her career, she worked as a student organizing around higher education reforms. This work led her to live in the Colombian Amazon and in Ecuador. She joined the Rainbow Peace Caravan in 1998, an international group of eco-activists doing popular ecovillage education and multicultural networking for the healing of the Earth in 13 countries of Latin America. Between 98-05, she and her new partner Jason from Missoula, co-created a life between Montana and wherever the Caravan would be found in South America. As a Missoulian she has been engaged as visual and theater arts specialist, preschool teacher, facilitator, artist, and community organizer. Between 2016-19, she and her husband lived and worked in Bali as eco-educators with Green School. During that time, she began the development of her eco-theater project. Currently based out of Missoula, Penélope works as consultant and facilitator for The Emergence Network. Influenced by Bayo Akomolafe, the Work that Reconnects, Theory U, and her own eco-artistic-spiritual research, she has been partnering with local entities to facilitate community building spaces that activate innovation and wellbeing through theater, grief ritual, systems thinking, emergent strategies, in an attempt to help us unlearn old ways of being in the world.

Michael Beers Bio

Michael has been in an open relationship with Disability Advocacy since 2001 when he was a delegate at the Montana Youth Leadership Forum (MYLF). He then began a casual courtship with Summit Independent Living as a Peer Advocate in 2003, a match that would eventually develop into Michael being labeled as Summit’s Youth Transitions Coordinator in 2008. Both these relationships have opened doors for Michael to have a plethora of other opportunities as an advocate, including being a board member with APRIL (Association of Programs for Rural Independent Living).

He also works at BASE community center (a program of Summit IL) with Missoula’s HomeGrown Comedy to teach communication through Improv classes to students of all ages and abilities.

Michael has been performing as a stand up comic for about 12 years. He has a very unique gift of being able to pull out a full set of comedy that is not obscene in its content, but still leaves crowds clutching their stomachs with laughter. His comedy content bridges issues of everyday life and disability advocacy with social and political commentary. Mike's comedy is surprisingly insightful and good-natured, enough to leave any audience feeling light- hearted with a new perspective on life. He has traveled this Country and a bit of Canada telling stories to audiences ranging in size from 1-1,000ish people.

Jason Forges Bio

Jason is a local artist from Montana that is actively finding his way through the arts! Jason finds himself tapped into a lot of different things such as performing spoken word as a social justice artist, being a musician via hip-hop, flying his drone, shooting videos, and navigating ways to harmonize social justice and technology.

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