Sojourner Truth School for Social Change Leadership

This workshop is a learning journey grounded in JuPong & Mona's collaborative artwork and personal and family stories. 

The PeaceBirds project grew out of a shared desire of two artist friends, Mona Shiber and JuPong Lin, to transform the agony of witnessing atrocities happening around the world. Our people come from lineages of occupation and struggle for sovereignty, from Palestine and from Taiwan. Both of our parents survived the post-World War II massacres in their respective nations. The project focuses on coming together in response to the immense loss of life, grief and devastation continuing over these past many months in Palestine/Israel, to make meaning out of hopelessness and to instill messages of peace within ourselves and our many communities.

The laboratory will be co-created by participants, building on lessons learned through our experience of initiating The PeaceBirds Project. Each monthly session will integrate creative practice with critical inquiry exploring questions of peace (inner peace, outer peace, peacemaking as resistance to conquest, and military violence); land relations and mutual vitality; making new solidarities in and across conflict zones. We recommend that participants bring a notebook to use as a journal/artist book to hold reflections and creative experiments throughout the three months of the co-learning laboratory.