Featured Event
DEMO2024
06/05/2024
11AM
Educators
Toward Healing Justice in Education: A Workshop for Teachers with Adaku Utah
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Adaku Utah
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The New Museum’s third Convening for Contemporary Art, Education, and Social Justice invites educators to join a free, online workshop with Adaku Utah, liberation educator, healer, organizer, performance ritual artist, and co-founder of Harriet’s Apothecary. Educators will learn about healing justice so that we can deepen, ground, and center healing, wellness, safety, care, and power for ourselves and the communities in which we teach and learn.
For the past two summers the New Museum held a free multi-day Convening on site. Previous themes were “Spaces for Learning” and “Transformative Justice,” and the gatherings included self and community care for educators, participatory workshops, and keynote speakers. Presenters have included: Mariame Kaba, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, the Black School, Mirror/Echo/Tilt, Mable O. Wilson, Dipti Desai, Amanda Torres, healers from Harriet’s Apothecary and MINKA Brooklyn, Nicole Fleetwood, Ayodamola (Ayo) Tanimowo Okunseinde, and Groundswell.
Co-created with art teacher and healer Tiffany Lenoi Jones, Educator in Residence for Art and Social Justice, the Convening focuses on educators broadly, including classroom teachers and teaching artists who work in diverse school and community-based settings. While continuing to center New York City educators, the year’s online workshop can be accessed by educators near and far. The Convening will continue to provide a space that acknowledges institutionalized experiences of oppression based on race, gender, ability, sexuality, and class, as well as the global health crisis that compounds with its disproportionate impact on BIPOC communities, and share resources for teachers to address inequity.
This summer, youth, educators, and caregivers have contributed and authored urgent reports to advocate healing centered plans in the return to school this year including the following: “Wellness & Healing-Centered School Re-Opening Recommendations,” New York State Education Department report “Rebuilding, and Renewing: The Spirit of New York’s Schools,” and the NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of School’s “Guidance on Culturally Responsive-Sustained School Re-Openings.” Toward Healing Justice in Education: A Workshop for Teachers is a participatory, 90-minute workshop designed to support educators in advocacy and practice.
This workshop is at capacity. For questions about upcoming educator programs please email educatorprograms@newmuseum.org.
Adaku Utah
Hailing from Nigeria, Adaku Utah is a teacher, organizer, healer and ritual artist committed to cultivating movements that are strategic, sustainable, and mutually nourishing. For over twenty years, her work has centered movements for radical social change with a focus on gender, reproductive health, race, youth, and healing justice. She has taught and organized both nationally and internationally with organizations like the Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health, Black Lives Matter, Black LGBTQI+ Migrant Project, The Movement for Black Lives, Yale University, Planned Parenthood, Astraea Foundation, Black Women’s Blueprint, and the Audre Lorde Project.
She is founder and director of Harriet’s Apothecary, a healing village led by Black Cis Women, Queer and Trans healers, artists, and organizers committed to living out Harriet Tubman’s legacy of centering healing, wellness, and safety as movement-building strategies to deconstruct legacies of trauma and galvanize communities.
Sponsors
Generous lead support is provided by the Keith Haring School, Teen, and Family Programs Fund.
New Museum Digital Initiatives are generously supported by Hermine and David B. Heller.
New Museum school and youth programs are made possible, in part, by Con Edison, Bloomingdale’s, the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Endowment support is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund; the Skadden, Arps Education Programs Fund; and the William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for Education Programs at the New Museum.
Additional endowment support is provided by the JPMorgan Chase Professional Development Workshop Program for Teachers.