Institutes

Facilitated by: Adaku Utah - Featured Practitioner

Audience: All - Open to Everyone

Description: In our lives, and within movements and organizations, many of us step into different roles in the ongoing pursuit of liberation, justice, and collective power. Each role matters, and each of us brings unique strengths and responsibilities to the whole.

As people and organizations committed to social justice, how do we sharpen our skills, clarify our social change roles, and practice solidarity in deeper and more sustainable ways?

In this interactive session, Adaku Utah of the Building Movement Project will share frameworks and embodied practices that can help us anchor our commitments and align our actions with our values.

Together, participants will:

• Identify guiding values and principles that shape their work.

• Map the roles they hold within their organizations and movements.

• Assess the ecosystems they are part of and explore how to strengthen connection and collaboration.

• Reflect on what sustains their practice of solidarity and collective care.

By the end of the session, participants will hopefully leave with more tools, clarity, and inspiration to more intentionally play their roles in building the world we long for.

Facilitated by: Alejandro Miranda, Brian McInnes, Dekila Chungyalpa, Guy Reiter, Janice Rice, and Marin “Mark” Denning, Roxanne DeLille.

Audience: All- Open to Everyone

Description:
This brand new documentary, Sacred Wisdom Sacred Earth, unveils the deep connection of Wisconsin’s Native American tribes to the land and waters of the Great Lakes and how that relationship seeds their efforts to restore spiritual, cultural, and environmental resilience. Showing for the first time in Madison (and to non-Native audiences), the documentary screening will be followed by a generative dialogue between culture keepers of Wisconsin's Indigenous traditions that are featured in the film and the audience. Viewers are invited to be in solidarity with movements for Indigenous sovereignty, resistance, and resilience, and to explore ways to build direct mutual aid with Wisconsin's tribes. The documentary is a Loka Initiative production, in partnership with Bravebird, UW-Madison's Center for Healthy Minds, and the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council. Learn more and Watch the Trailer Here

The screening will be followed by a dialogue with some of the people featured in the film. Attendees will have the opportunity to hear about the current status of the fight to protect our water, and will learn more about how we can all take action now for our future generations.

Facilitated by:
Mya Williams, Micah-Jade Stanback, Rudy Bankston, & Sam Jeschke

Audience:
Youth and Educators take priority, but is Open to All Community Members

Description:
Throughout history, the concept of freedom has manifested in various forms across cultures, ranging from dance to visual art to collective social justice movements. Honoring the Summit theme of Get Together: Becoming the Liberation Ecosystem, we invite high school youth, eighth-grade youth, young adults, and K-12 educators to participate in a mixed-media art co-creation that focuses on what freedom looks like, sounds like, and feels like as both individuals and as a community. Co-led by youth from Bayview Community Center, we will explore several forms of media, including painting, music production, and written poetry, to co-create an art exhibition centered on the experiences of youth, young adults, and educators. At the end of the session, there will be a showcase of the different art pieces that were created. With this offering, we hope to create an ecosystem where participants can come together to craft an intricate and beautiful representation of liberation that transcends time, honors our ancestors, ourselves, and future generations to come.

Facilitated by: Bobbie Briggs

Audience: All- Open to Everyone

Description: This workshop offers participants an affirming and interactive space to explore the realities of vicarious trauma, particularly in the context of racial justice work. Through guided education, reflective dialogue, and body-based practices, attendees will learn and practice tangible ways to release stress, regulate their emotions, and process the emotional toll of showing up for others. Rooted in the belief that rest is resistance and healing is collective, this session advocates for liberation as a daily practice - not just in external systems, but within ourselves. Participants will engage in self-healing while being held in community, modeling what it means to be part of a liberation ecosystem that centers Solidarity, embodies Mutual Aid through shared tools and care, and commits to Repair by addressing harm, burnout, and over-responsibility. By reclaiming rest, emotional well-being, and nervous system safety as necessary tools, this session moves us closer to becoming the world we’re fighting for - together.

Facilitated by: Keena Atkinson

Audience: All - Open to Everyone

Description: This immersive workshop invites participants into a powerful three part experience of reflection, embodiment, and practice. It begins with readings and dialogue that uncover the personal and communal impact of incarceration, centering the voices and experiences of those left behind, and exploring what true safety and accountability can look like outside of carceral systems. The session then shifts into a brief dance break, where movement serves as a liberatory tool to recharge the body, clear the mind, and embody joy, resilience, and connection. To close the session, participants engage in an interactive conflict resolution practice that emphasizes repair, trust, and accountability as essential ingredients for sustaining communities and fostering safety, acceptance, and wholeness. Together, these three parts create a transformative arc that encourages deep reflection, embodied engagement, and practical tools for building life affirming systems of care, justice, and connection.

Participants are encouraged to dress comfortably and bring water, as the workshop includes an energizing dance segment accessible to all body types and experience levels. No dance or movement background is required. (Just a willingness to engage, laugh, and move in a supportive environment) This workshop is especially valuable for those seeking to further understand the impact of carceral systems, explore embodied approaches to justice and repair, and for community members, leaders, practitioners, or anyone committed to fostering connection, accountability, and healing in their personal, professional, and community relationships.

Facilitated by: Rebecca Hoyt

Audience: All- Open to Everyone

Description: This session is about unpacking ableism from its roots in history anti-Blackness, eugenics, misogyny, colonialism, imperialism and capitalism.  We will examine how models of disability are mobilized today to institutionalize, segregate, and disempower people with disabilities.  Often issues of race and gender are not centered in disability spaces and issues of disability are not centered in race and gender-centered spaces.  This session is designed to foster solidarity for stronger movement work.  In this approachable and conversational training, you will learn (and unlearn) different social narratives of disability and how Disabled people have informed their own sense of identity. We'll explore movements rooted in disability rights, the social model of disability and disability justice.