A living experiment in re-worlding and virtual gathering space for collective study, relational experimentation, and the practice of care. Where village is a practice.
The Rooted Village
We are living through a time of instability, fragmentation, and uncertainty. Trust in institutions is eroding and systems rooted in inequity are faltering giving rise to what Cassie Thornton has called the "Crisis of Care".
Alongside that breakdown, a growing awareness grows that we were never meant to simply consume the world as it was given to us. We are here to participate in shaping what comes next; and to become conscious designers and architects of that world.
The world is calling.
Many of us can feel it.
Many of us have learned to accept the world as it is and to move within it in ways that keep it operating as it always has. The monoculture of modernity reproduces itself through our habits, our consumption, and our participation in systems we rarely pause to examine.
At the same time, we are facing a crisis of imagination. We do not yet have clear models for what more just, relational, and life-giving systems look like. We do not fully know what a post-capitalist, post-extractive world requires of us. The work becomes experimental and relational.
Rooted is a living experiment in that shift.
Rooted exists as a place for people to expand perceptual horizons, encounter (themselves and others) in new ways, and plant seeds of creativity in fertile ground.
It is a place to practice, to unlearn, to experiment, to fail, to try again, and to build collective imagination
muscles together.
It is a place to give birth to and midwife the worlds that come next. It's a response to a call from the world.
We are moving from a consumption-based model of engagement toward a participatory ecology of care.
Your presence shapes this space. Your questions, ideas, practices, and longings influence what grows here.
Some people arrive knowing exactly what seed they want to plant. Others arrive with a sense that something in them wants to grow.
“To become what we need to each other, and to find power in friendship, is to become dangerous."
— anonymous
Movement, Creativity
& Collective Joy
Collective Study &
Critical Consciousness Raising
Crafting Rituals for
Community
creative contribution &
cultural work
This is a map of our areas of focus that make up Rooted’s collective life. These elements emerge from our study, our gatherings, our experiments, and our creativity, forming an interconnected ecology of care, relationship, and cultural imagination.
The Rooted Ecosystem
Rooted may be for you if...
You are drawn to exploring what radical love and collective care could look and feel like, and you want to challenge the systems of isolation and alienation that shape so much of our world.
You feel ready for relational experimentation and brave space, practicing vulnerability as a way to reach across divides and weave forms of friendship rooted in care and mutual regard.
You are exhausted by the binary thinking that dominates our culture and are seeking meaningful alternatives.
You want to engage in ongoing personal and collective embodied study without returning to institutional schooling, and you value the practice of self-care and self-responsibility, calling forward your wisest and most intentional self in community.
You appreciate third spaces where collective study, practice, and idea incubation can help you discern how to respond
to the world in ways that are thoughtful, grounded, and
aligned with your values.
What you see here is a map of the many practices and areas of focus that make up Rooted’s collective life. These elements emerge from our study, our gatherings, our experiments, and our creativity, forming an interconnected ecology of care, relationship, and cultural imagination.
The Rooted Village Connections & Practice Spaces
Some of the most transformative things that happen in Rooted begin with the willingness to sit with an inquiry. These are gathering spaces for those curious about how the world and language have shaped experience, who want to encounter others across difference, and who are interested in shifting the perspectives and orientations they move through life with. Storytelling, witnessing, and finding resonance are at the heart of what happens here.
Drawing on Paulo Freire's notion of critical consciousness and Gloria Anzaldua's Spiritual Activism, these spaces invite us to relinquish the belief that we are powerless or fated to a particular world or set of experiences. They acknowledge, in big and small ways, the power we have to shape the worlds we inhabit. Spirituality here is not prescriptive but is understood as what we are rooted in: the exploration and practice of interconnection, presence, and reverence for life that serves as the engine for how we see things, what we do, and the choices we make. These are spaces for curiosity, reflection, and encountering others in the process of un/becoming.
Sunday Study Circles, Gift Culture Cafés, Death Cafés, Disability Cafés, and occasional offerings from guest voices like Kai Cheng Thom's Wisdom of the Divergent Voice
These spaces rest on the understanding that culture is not something simply imposed from the outside. It is embodied and embedded, carried in our bodies and in the patterns of relating to self and others that have become habituated throughout our lives. And it is through our bodies in relationship that we find portals of possibility to new ways of being, thinking, perceiving, and connecting.
Experimentation, play, failure, and risk-taking are not incidental here. They are the practice. These gatherings embrace creativity and the courage to take relational risks as pathways for disrupting what has become automatic, so that new possibilities for relationship might emerge. There is something that becomes available when we are willing to not-know, to move differently, to try out new shapes.
SE+AM (Somatic Experiencing and Authentic Movement), ReSounding Joy, Afrorhizomatic Dance, The Hologram, and various villager offerings.
The New World Nursery, Diasporic Hush Harbor, Co-Being, Belonging Ambiguity, and various spaces offered by Villagers.
These spaces begin from the assumption that creation flows through each person, and that people yearn for opportunities to know their creative power and contribute to the birthing of worlds through their unique expressions. What you are sitting with and what you long to create are all held with curiosity, mutual regard, and care.
The New World Nursery is at the heart of this stream, offering accompaniment and scaffolding for creative seeds that villagers are nurturing in their own communities and beyond Rooted. Alongside this, Rooted also holds space for villagers to develop and offer creative ideas within the village itself.
These are spaces of accompaniment and collective imagination, asking together: What are you sitting with, what do you long to contribute, and how can we support you? We midwife each others' creativity here.
What to Expect Inside
Live gathering spaces and workshops, some of which recur monthly and others are offered as a one-off or limited series. Most gatherings are recorded for later access.
Access to a community platform called Circle where you'll find a full events calendar (you can RSVP and add to your personal calendar from there), connect with others and access recordings & resources.
Self-paced mini-courses (in Circle) on topics like: indigenous cosmologies, Queer Ecologies, Weaving Ecologies of Care, Building the Muscle for Relationship, Decolonial Somatics, and more.
“Knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.”
— Paolo Freire
$25
usd/month
Rooted
friend
$45
usd/month
Rooted
sponsor
$35
usd/month
Rooted
supporter
We'd love to welcome you no matter your current financial situation. The Village relies on the financial investment of members (as fertilizer), but if finances have been impacted for any reason, please consider the Work Trade (aka the "contributor") option.
Work-Trade includes a couple of hours per month doing something that aligns with your skills and interests. There are many possibilities, including community tending, video editing, writing an article/blog, outreach, administrative skills, etc.
Please use this form to indicate interest.
How to Join Us
Rooted membership has been simplified to make joining the village and its adjacent Care Lab more accessible in a difficult economic climate and across global geographies and currencies.
All levels of membership receive equal access to all of Rooted's activities in the Village and within the Rooted Care Lab.
You are welcome here.
Please choose the option below that best meets your financial & situational needs. If you are in a position of relative economic advantage, please pay what you can, as your contribution goes to support our ability to offer these activities.
Work Trade