.jpg)
Evolved Living Podcast
This is a podcast dedicated to coming together and sharing multidisciplinary and multicultural wisdom from diverse perspectives to support adapting to change holistically and ecologically together with honesty about the messy and imperfect process of ongoing growth, change, and adaptation to the contemporary world.
This podcast seeks to help facilitate mindful, inclusive, and transformative dialog and responsive trauma-informed and responsive action to connect people across the globe toward constructive life-affirming adaptation in context with engagement in a diversity of honest and transparent perspectives and actions in the field.
Disclaimer:
The information provided in the Evolved Living Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute professional advice. The views and opinions expressed by the host, guests, or any individual associated with this podcast are their own and do not reflect the views of any formal association related to and Professional Licensing Body or Employing Agency particularly related to Occupational Therapy or Occupational Science, or the Employers of the host and guests.
Full Disclaimer: https://swiy.co/engagingOSPodcastDisclaimer
Evolved Living Podcast
Broadening the Roots of the Arts and Craft Movement in the US with Lauren Black, Executive Director of the Social Justice Sewing Academy
Free Occupational Science 101 Guidebook
https://beacon.by/evolved-living/occupational-science-101-guide-podcast
OS Empowered OT Facebook Group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1569824073462362/
One of the core themes of this module is contextualizing the inseparable connection we have as OTs to the history of the United States and the opportunity we have today to author our legacy and to expand and repattern the legacies of our past foundation to be an active part of constructive change and multilayered intergenerational healing. This discussion highlights how the Arts and Crafts movement can be connected to navigating contemporary social challenges and how OTs can practically build partnerships with community stakeholders such as the Social Justice Sewing Academy and use artistic expression and occupation as a medium to build connections across differences and repair divisions, and harm brought about through system injustice and marginalization. Today we as OTPs have the opportunity to connect to, build off of, and expand the legacy of resistance, resilience, and repair we have inherited in response to current challenges.
Information on Arts and Crafts Moment in OT History
William Dunton's connection to simplified quilt blocks for occupational intervention in mental health asylums in the turn of the century United States Context.
Social Justice Sewing Academy:
Social Justice Sewing Academy Free Antiracist Guidebook
https://www.sjsacademy.org/antiracist-guidebook
Social Justice Sewing Academy Learning Community Facebook Group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/sjsaclc
Recent Book Published on the Social Justice Sewing Academy Remembrance Quilt Project
Stitching Stolen Lives: Amplifying Voices, Empowering Youth & Building Empathy Through Quilts
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09F2XWCKY/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0
Trail, S., & Wong, T. D. (2021, September 25). Stitching stolen lives: Amplifying voices, empowering youth & building empathy through quilts. C&T Publishing.
Evolved Living Network Instragram @EvolvedLivingNetwork
Free Occupational Science 101 Guidebook
https://swiy.co/OS101GuidePodcast
OS Empowered OT Facebook Group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1569824073462362/
Link to Full Podcast Disclaimer
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13DI0RVawzWrsY-Gmj7qOLk5A6tH-V9150xETzAdd6MQ/edit
Hello, everyone. I wonder to do a quick shout out that if you are a new listener or maybe you've been checking out a few of the episodes that we've had so far this year I just made sure to go through and add links to the free occupational science 1 0 1 guide. So it's very likely that even after listening to a few of these episodes, or this is the first one you've checked out and you're like, oh man, what the heck is occupational science? I've never heard of that before. I have some news you're not alone. Occupational science. It is. Largely published about in academic journals, which. Have a hard time making their way, those insights. To those of us that are ordinary. Occupational beings at the ground floor. So as part of why I put together. A guide. That can orient a little bit to some of the main terminology, give you some names of occupational scientists to look into different lists of the textbooks. So if you're wanting a little bit more of a big picture orientation, To what occupational sciences, as part of joining in these dialogues and discussions, I just wanted to let you know that I've went ahead and linked to that. And each of the show notes of the episodes we've recorded so far. And I'm a bit more professional. I've gotten a nice disclaimer out there both myself and any of the guests I have. We're always just representing our perspectives at this point in time. None of this is an official affiliation with any of our employers or any of the OT associations. This is really a space for informal dialogue and figuring out how to support each other. And I'm really here to support you too. On your occupational science literacy journey in different ways that I hope that this can support you. This lens and perspective can support you. And your growth as an occupational being and perhaps as an occupational therapy practitioner, just as much as it has me. So I just want to make sure that you know about that resource. If you go onto the show notes here, you can get that free. Engaging occupational science guide. Delivered right to your email inbox. And we also have a Facebook group. I'm still learning how to set that up, but I share occupational science, relevant conversations and pieces. That's the container right now where you can find others. To engage in this dialogue and discussion over time. So feel free to check out those links. I'm so excited to share this episode with you today
Josie:Hello Everybody I wanted to do a little bit more of a personal check-in today. With this episode release and just update you guys that have been listening so far. And where this process is. Going and to give some context on this next episode. So this has been kind of part of my imperfect action about putting some of this content out there and just seeing what happens.
I thought I would tell you a little bit about some of my goals that are emerging. With this project and kind of some of the things that. I've been going through in the field and responding to some of the challenges of co-op. COVID and. Just I'm navigating my own relationship to being at risk. For burnout in the OT profession. And I'm pretty certain that I'm not alone there and I'll be honest. I've seen. I think that there's one approach that I see to burnout, which I think is important of getting to a point of. Being able to pull your energy out of where it may be over invested and where you may not have. Occupational balance in your own life. So one of the classic framings. Within occupational science and occupational therapy. That has evolved a bit with occupational science, but going in, starting with that basic of having a balance between rest. Productivity and leisure. In a Western sense, that can be a helpful guidepost, right? So I think that it can be meaningful to start, pulling your energy out of someplace where it's out of balance. So that you have, resources to allocate and these other containers. And those can be rest productivity, leisure, or if you listened to last week's podcast, it can also be the different occupational categories that are very customized to you. As an occupational being and where you want to delegate your energy. But one of the things that I feel that occupational science as helped me with as well as just like reading through some of the literature on burnout in general. And I think some of this is the premise of occupational therapy. Sometimes it's not that we necessarily need to be doing things less. To just restore more like rest to the system and pull things out. Sometimes we have to actually look at doing things differently. Doing things differently where there's more of a sense of being connected to purposeful and meaningful activity in your life. Some of these symptoms of burnout. Can be a consequence. Of. Working in systems in which you feel stuck. Stagnant systematically disempowered. And even connecting to this concept of internalized oppression, Working in systems that limit your capacity to express the authenticity of who you are as an occupational being, and being genuinely responsive. To the needs of your community. When that gets stifled and it feels like you're doing work. That's purposeless. That contributes to burnout When I first started. To experience that was coming off of working in school-based practice. And really, I actually came at a time where I felt like I was doing some of my most impactful work. In school-based practice. I was helping with developing emerging practice at the high school and adult transition level. And, it, the ways that, I was. Aspiring to show what I was capable of. In that setting were quite disruptive because it was a little bit different than how OT had been implemented prior. I ended up feeling discouraged because it was like, oh, even at a time where I'm having like this transformative intervention. For one of my clients. It just felt like there was no way for it to move forward. And part of that is. I think I needed some space in my life to creatively express how I was developing as a therapist and where I was stewing from like my master's level education, the things that I studied, which were really around like adolescent executive dysfunction. I had been, really anxious to exercise. That capacity until look at. How it can use assistive technology to transform. One of the students' experiences of school and it was really amazing to see it be effective. And at the same time, it wasn't compatible really. With the system that I was in or the pace that it was in. I think that's part of why I went back to school is I needed a space and a container where I could creatively express and explore things in OT practice. And that's what I want to role model for you guys too. I'm not saying that you shouldn't. Pull your energy out of some of your practice settings that aren't serving your own occupational balance. But I do hope to inspire you to create some space in your life to consider these questions. And to reconnect with that inner therapist inside of you, that hasn't been able to develop in your current setting, that hasn't been. Currently expressed to create some space in your life. Where you can start engaging with that side of yourself with less pressure, with less fear of pushback. To create some creative flexibility. In your life into re-imagine new possibilities. When we create the space to reflect and think about what OT could look like, what it could be, even in these traditional SIS settings. Sometimes if we make some space for that reflection and some space in our life to in build some of these skills. Outside of our current job, we can start seeing things differently and see ways that we can incorporate in transform. How we show up. In our current and emerging practices create space for developing a new practice or seeing new opportunities. And this is often what our clients need to do to most of our clients are seeing us where they're also feeling stuck, where they're feeling in a rut because. They lost use of one of their arms or something's not working the way that it did before. And they're stuck. And they need a work with a therapist. To imagine new possibilities for their life to create space, to try new things where it's scary and where there's a fail safe. That if they try something new and it doesn't work, it's not going to fully crash. And so what I'm wanting to help create is for you as your own OT to create that space for yourself. To try new things and to explore what could work by engaging with things differently. So this is the premise of this episode. I wanted to release another. Episode from my capstone course. Because I've also given myself some space to reflect on that body of work and to think, and imagining new ways to constitute that and to build a relationship with you guys. Two. So this discussion here. Came about with me wanting to explore what it looks like to reconnect. With the arts and crafts movement and being open to find and search for where this movement may still be alive and well today. And how it's been evolved. And looking at, one of the things that you'll learn about while you start exploring occupational science. Is the facets that look at. Occupational alienation, occupational injustice, and even just social justice barriers in general. And what I think is so amazing about adopting that lens and starting to see the context around you systemically and seeing some of what stifles, occupational expression and adaptation. Are these systemic features that we're often a part of in our conventional settings in some ways. We don't always realize that some of the spaces where we have the most agency and our offering might be where we're creating some of those barriers and our challenges with our clients. And what's amazing about getting awareness of that is then you don't actually have to fight a system to change it. We're like fighting ourselves and we can once we understand it from their perspective, think about how we can do things a little bit differently. In this. And this discussion I'm hoping to share with you and help empower you and starting to build your own more informal community partnerships with ally disciplines, allied contributors that kind of inadvertently have some of the same social justice goals. And thinking about how we can create strategic partnerships to dress systemic injustices. With the benefit of art expression, do wing. Actively building community and understanding through different mediums of expression, like through art. And through bringing communities together that are previously systematically separated. And how this can tangibly work to bring balance into our communities and heal from the legacy of systemic racism and issues as important and vital as police brutality and violence in our own communities. Where we're currently living in a cultural context in the United States. Where. The outside. Con context isn't habitable. For a good portion of humanity. That having a certain demographic. Intersections get to experience a level of safety in our community. Is that folks of different demographics. May never get to experience in their lifetime and how we really can't change that until we know about it. And this is where following that thread of trying to discover. Where the threads of the arts and crafts movement have evolved and how they can be revived. And incorporated into traditional settings. So this conversation today takes place with at the time, the executive director of a social justice sewing academy, which I'm so excited for you guys to learn about and to connect with. And she also happens to, at the time of this discussion, she also worked as a school psychologist. So we got to brainstorm how we could support each other within the RD functioning, system. Of inclusive and sometimes called special education. Where we were saying like, Hey, if I worked at your school as a school-based OT and you were the school-based psychologist and we wanted to do an intervention, like the social justice sewing academy. To naturally work on IEP goals, man, we could have done that like tomorrow, like that wouldn't have required really changing the system much at all is just to creating a strategic partnership. And, honestly, we still plan to do this because. Social justice. Sewing academy is very interested in incorporating the lens of disability justice into their programming. Moving forward. So my goal. Goal is for this to inspire you. To think about sometimes you don't actually have to. Fully walk away from the settings you're in. But maybe take some time. And ability to take some distance to reflect. And not necessarily do more. But consider. Doing something differently. With a little bit more rootedness to values. Purpose, meaning in the sense of not being stuck, but actually moving forward on a systemic problem. And I can't tell you how intoxicated kiddingly empowering. That can feel. And how much that can become a true antidote to burn out. And this is the gift of OT in yourself and reconnecting to your roots as an occupational being and discovering some of the possibilities that occupational science and an occupational lens. Can have to really evolve. And transform your practice. And that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to take more energy. It just might mean. Pulling out some energy reflecting, and then shifting your perspective and changing how you show up so that as you're engaged, The work you're doing is actually meaningful and supporting your life and values. And at the same time, Supporting the client, the community and the populations. Values and finding where those shared goals. In systemic. Transformation can take place and that we can actually build community. Build this occupational ecosystem where human rights are upheld and all of these different contexts. And when we're expressed and facing systemic barriers, we respond them not with internalized oppression, stagnancy, and burnout. But actually empowerment because we know that there's an alternative when there are barriers, because we are OTs. And OTA. We know we have a toolkit. Too. Navigate barriers and find empowerment. That is really the goal here. And that's what I'm trying to help facilitate in some ways, and to join with you as like a peer role model, because I'm doing this for myself. As much as I'm hoping to help you find it, because I really do. I want there. I want OT to be a sustainable, accessible, and responsive option to so many different communities that are experiencing challenges around. Barriers. To their ability to self express and having a healthy and meaningful and connected inclusive time in their community. And this is never going to get easier to do. And so until we start experimenting with it and tell we're open to taking a chance. And seeing what can enfold. When we try to address burnout in a different way. Again, I'm not telling you not to do less. Indeed, I'm working on that too. I'm pulling. Bring out, I'm reducing my hours at work so I can step back, reflect and consider how to use my energy differently. So it's not that my work is slowing down. As I slowed down and taking things off your plate. That's one approach to burnout. And then the other approach is sitting, reflecting, just staining, and then seeing how you can continue to use your agency. Differently. In a way that isn't alignment with your values, your core interest, your rules, responsibility with more balance. By endeavoring to do this ourselves. I am a firm believer. We will get to a place where we can meaningfully. Offer this to our clients. Great transformative. Services that are just irresistible to so many different folks that need our support. And creating a vision where OT can grow as a sustainable and meaningful profession at every scale of intervention and where we're going. We really need to bring OT back to life, which I don't think we can do without this sense of hope of being able to overcome. Some of the systemic barriers. I do think that. This is work that is very challenging to do alone. And it's so important to build allied community around. So that's my hope is that this conversation. Gives an example of how we can start building relationships to address our burnout in our stagnancy. Differently through incorporating meaningful activity and in threat. Reflection as part of our navigation through these challenges. I hope that you enjoy this discussion. And I'm excited in the future. We're hoping to share one with you too. That also has a similar, space for reflection and brainstorming about how we consider that intersection of gender and sexual identity. Especially some that's playing a stronger role in the OTPF four and the 2020 release. And just quickly before we get into the episode, I'll let you know too, I'm planning to release soon a webinar that is going to go over. How I've been able to reflect and relate to. Understanding how occupational science is now incorporated into the OTPF four and many of the new changes to the OTPF four, because I want to make sure that you're informed. And you can at least see how I've been able to make sense of my position within the profession. Through exploring this world for the past three years. And that can maybe give you some guideposts. And I honestly would be exciting to see. How your exploration of it might have you relating to it in a completely different way, from a different perspective, based on your intersectionality as an occupational being. I think that's exciting. I'm really hoping just to be like a peer role model as I try these things on. Maybe you'll feel more comfortable trying things along with me. One of my favorite things about this conversation is how we take, The developments of the social justice sewing academy, how we can create a strategic partnership. With other social justice aligned professions and re-imagine and understand how we can incorporate this into our traditional settings, using the already established reimbursement infrastructure that we have such as Medicare, which, defines sewing activities as one of the reimbursable activities in the chapter, 15 of the Medicare part B OT, reimbursable service guidelines. So I love that about this discussion is getting that space to reflect and. Seeing how we can relate to even our established systems differently. And then what agency we have to transform these systems and getting inspired by other colleagues and interdisciplinaries and not having a competitive mindset, but more of a collaborative mindset. One of the beautiful things about having shared goals is that automatically creates more resources and less burnout when you're sharing the burden across everybody that has a shared interest in this transformation. So I'm excited to share this conversation with you. Thank you for taking this time. And Really feel free to reach out. I would love to know how you're responding to this podcast. What you think would be helpful, what sort of resources I can help create. I really want the theme of this year to be community building and helping us OT is that our wanting to offer holistic services and our traditional merging settings to find each other and figure out how we can support each other to build these connections. That's really my goal this year. Thank you so much for joining.
Josie:Just to orient you a little bit to this project you're, I'm going to hoping to include this interview in a module that's talking about occupational therapy and occupational science history and how that ties into the current day and our current challenges and starting to see our work as something that's intergenerational and connected through those through lines. And sometimes we think of history as, Oh, that's in the past. We're not doing that anymore. Rather than, it's just a constant tie into what we're doing and we are passing on these batons and. Looking at that relationship and quilting is just an interesting lens for that. But one of the things is that oh, occupational therapy got started in the arts and crafts movement in the arts and crafts movement, which even preta created the development of the mental health and the physical health in infrastructure in the us. It was a reaction to the loss of hands on trade based cultivation. I think it started in New England. It was probably centered mostly white people, but it was just that there, this is this loss when we're manufacturing everything. It was a reaction to the impacts of industrialization and by proxy that connects to colonization and imperialism. And so I'm wanting to show that there are still seeds of the arts and crafts movement that are present and active today that we can connect to that maybe has a broader lens of social justice and how we can use art as a way of repairing our minds, our spirits, our bodies, and really healing our community and recognizing when there's been wounding in relation to systemic injustices. And that I think the Social Justice Sewing Academy is such a great example of that, and while also encouraging interdisciplinary partnerships, interprofessional partnerships, and just building community responses rather than getting gate keep about who gets to do what. That part of it is hopefully creating openings for art, being more democratized. And that's the spirit of the arts and crafts movement, and that as people that are continuing this legacy, we can hopefully take it farther and deeper than it ever got before. Instead of stepping away from it.
Lauren:Yeah. No, that sounds
Josie:great. That sounds great. So I'll just ask you to introduce yourself and then I'll like basically say what I just said. So maybe I'll have to clip that and keep that. And I'm gonna try to not talk too much. So I'll hope I'll give you a good amount of space. Okay. So thank you everyone for joining us. I am so excited to feature a discussion today with Lauren Black and I'm gonna let her introduce yourself. And Lauren, what was, do you have any initials that you like to be part of your name or anything like that? No. It's ok. All right. Sounds good. And I got connected with Lauren's work when I was engaging in a local quilting guild activity. Seattle Quilting Guild, and I got to see an amazing presentation about the Social Justice Sewing Academy. And it just gave me chills throughout my whole I got so excited. At that time I was just learning about occupational science and I could see the correlations between how quilting can be a really great medium to connect to that therapeutic power for of occupation. And looking at it beyond just the individual level and bringing it back to the arts and crafts movement where we look at how systemic injustice and changes in our outside context. It can separate us as a community. And since the beginning, quilting has been an attempt to bring communities together and to take care and nurture. And at the same time, it's just like everything has been impacted by these rifts and institutional injustices. And at times it's been actively appropriated by some of these same corporate forces and it's evolved over time. For example, speaking from my lineage quilting had a strong condition within the settler and colonialist area and a lot of Caucasian women of European descent that would come together out of times of scarcity and poverty come together to quilt something that can then bring warmth and compassion and understanding and coming together in a circle. At the same time those same urges have also individualized us where quilting has become more of a solo activity or an exclusive one. And so I guess what I'm bringing this up today is the Social Justice Sewing Academy is a. Insight into how we can continue following these threads into broadening the who gets to be included in the circle of our crafts and addressing systemic injustices and building bridges between these usually d disparate communities. Lauren, do you mind introducing yourself a little bit and giving some context now? I've just been talking around it, about what the social justice, So Sewing Academy is and I'll love to explore with you as we go on about how we can build connections as occupational therapists, occupational therapy, assistance to this work and be supportive, bringing more of this lens into our practice. Today I hope to explore
Lauren:that together. Absolutely. So my name is Lauren Black. I'm the Executive Director of Social Justice Sewing Academy. I have been working with Social Justice Sewing Academy since 2016 where I was previously the director of Operations and then became the executive director of about two years ago. And the Social Justice Sewing Academy has evolved and the last six years we previously, and we still do a lot of work around youth programming and particularly around this intergenerational indirect dialogue. And that's something that is like at the foundation of our work in this sense of, we go into schools, community organizations, and we provide workshops and art education workshops for youth. But in those workshops, they are critiquing and raising awareness of issues that are in their local and larger communities. And so that's really impactful because we wanna make sure that youth are having a voice in some of these issues and where they typically. Would not. And so we're allowing and hoping that textile art can be the bridge for that. And for a lot of youth, they don't recognize textile art as something as way express themselves or as a medium that they can use particularly in the form of activism. So is a, getting them to understand that this is something that's cool, first of all, and then b, something that they can utilize to express their criticisms or how they feel about things that are going on in their communities. And then from there we have individuals from across the country that are engaging with that art. So individuals that will never meet the youth will probably never see them face to face, but they get to have that, as I mentioned, that intergenerational indirect dialogue. So you're sitting with the art that youth from some city across the country created, and you get to see the issues that they care about. And so our hope with that is that it is inspiring action for individuals in the sense of you're having hard conversations with the people in your communities. You're taking that step further. You're, yes, you're embroidering their art, but. You're doing more in terms of the particular issue. So it doesn't just stop at the art itself, that there is an action behind that. And we do a lot to generate community with our volunteers as well in terms of sodas. And so gathering our volunteers to have conversations altogether where we have 20 blocks in front of us from a group or from a workshop. And we're discussing these issues. We're talking about how we can contribute to, how we can educate ourselves. And so all of that textile art is at the foundation of all of that. And so we've also transitioned a little bit to doing remembrance projects. Remembrance projects are honoring individuals through textile art, through the same way. Allowing for education and awareness. But there's also an emotional process in that as well because you're honoring someone's life and doing so through, again, a medium that many others wouldn't necessarily utilize to do such. So it's another form of activism, but along text are to be at the foundation
Josie:of that. Do you mind if I just break down a little bit for those that are listening to this for the first time, And I'll let you guys know that are listening to this interview that I will link out to the Social Justice Sewing Academy website, which links out to also their social media accounts and profiles a lot of the different projects that they've been working on where you set for maybe the past six years or so. So from what I remember in learning about the origin story is Social Justice Sewing Academy as it came about that one of your founders was very connected to the quilting world through their development and was very active in a lot of the traditional sewing and even almost like the industry events. And they had a, in our class we talked about what's called a disorienting dilemma, where there's some sort of event that causes you to really requestion your foundations. And it sounds like for Sarah Trail, right? Am I saying her name right? the death of Trayvon Martin. Was a very stirring and a reflective event. And that was something that she was wanting to use the medium of quilting to process and recognize and look at how that looked at played out in the fabric of United States history and found that she, it was difficult to have that be welcoming in the quilting community as it was typically established. And that really inspired her to utilize quilting as a medium to bring these conversations and build community where there was safe space to have those conversations and also to challenge and disrupt. Why it wasn't safe to have those conversations in traditional quilting guild environments. And that's what you're talking about, that dialogue and building these communities, bringing this together is it's connecting and bringing quilting to more marginalized or systemically. Actually, like you're saying, all youth are marginalized systemically, so bringing these conversations even into some school districts that are maybe well resourced you have been able to simplify these tasks of quilting into a workshop where just about anybody can be provided a quilt block. I think you do a simple quilt block and more of a decapo style after having a discussion about systemic injustices. And you give a full platform for those that are falling into that more marginalized status to express what they care about and how social justice how it connects in their community. And then maybe that quilt block can then be sent out to professional or amateur embroiders sewers that get to take in the message from that really ground center where there's no censorship, of what the youth can put on the quilt. Do you wanna add some details that maybe I've left out or anything?
Lauren:Yeah, so a lot of that was pretty spot on in the sense that Sarah was moved and motivated by the death of Trayvon Martin in large part because he was around our age. So Sarah and I were with about three weeks apart, and I think he was a couple weeks in age from her as well. And so it was, as you said, a very disorienting experience, particularly for her as she wanted to process with that through quilting. And that was her way to express her feelings because she felt like that could have been me. And we were the same age, we're African American. And she had for a very long time, been in the quilting industry since she was a teenager and she's been writing books and sewing books. And so to be met with the. Ideas that quilting shouldn't be a political space. That this should just be a hobby. This should just be something that we do for fun. And to have a lot of the resistance and just outright like racist racism and bigotry that surrounded that particular quilt and has also surrounded some of the art that I should say has created since then. It was really challenging for her to access these spaces. Usually she was welcomed into
Josie:with like open arms. Yeah. Maybe. I wonder how much, I'd be curious to see how she's reflected on this event too, about like when times, what sorts of quilting were previously Okay. Like maybe it's okay and you can access this community if you express yourself in this way, but if you choose to express yourself in this way, then you, maybe you're stepping on trip wires, all of a sudden you cross a line. In some ways I, I can imagine that I'm sure we've all had that experience as therapist in a way that, Okay the therapeutic supports that I offer are okay and are advisable or sanctioned as long as they're in this context. But as soon as I bring it, as soon as I acknowledge maybe some of these broader. Injustice types issues, then we can start getting that pushback. And it can be really it can be, That's where I think it gets so discouraging as a therapist and taking on some of these issues. And I love that Sarah and Social Justice Sewing Academy has taken that step of, sometimes when we get pushback in one area, it can inspire us to figure out and see how can we use our agency and how can we create space another, a, another area so that we can keep this conversation moving forward.
Lauren:Absolutely. And I think she's had opportunities to reflect on it, but we've also had similar experiences and we also have frequent experiences at quote shows where people will tell us to our faces that not, that aren't art that they wanna see. This is not what they came to quote shows for. We created we had a youth and a workshop that created an injustice block where there was like a pencil eraser that erased like the n and that was met with so much. Pushback from individuals that just, you know, and it was just something as simple as the word injustice and we were just erasing the in and individuals felt like that was not the space that this should not be on quilting platforms. We shouldn't see this on social media. So it's really interesting how certain individuals perceive and absorb some of the information and kind of people's interactions and reactions to the art that we create. Because for a lot of people, this is therapeutic in the sense of it's racing awareness. It it's emotional. It is challenging to look at some of this because it's having you confront some of your own biases. It's having you do some of that internal work. And that can be hard, but for a lot of people it is the automatic rejection of, I don't even want to engage with, and this does not have a place here. And so that is very interesting to continue to na navigate that space, particularly through an
Josie:art form. Sure. And I would say that some of the seeds of the arts and crafts movement were convergent with or around the same time as the developments of the Civil War in the United States. And I think to think about that, that there's always been a place where utilizing our. Has been a mode of expression of resistance or of really it's always been controversial to cert the humanity of marginalized people. Something that I have come across in learning more about the history of occupational therapy that made me so excited about the really, and it sounds like Social Justice Sewing Academy, even amid Covid, has continued to grow and become like it's been a very successful enterprise and has really built so many partnerships. So one of the things we talked about in this course is how these things is disoriented dilemmas, even though they're uncomfortable and their. Really challenge us. It becomes this fertile soil that seeds of agency and solutions can go from and that they can almost can guide us into new opportunities. That growth is often uncomfortable. So we're encouraging the students here to embrace that discomfort in that resistance. What did I wanna say? But one of the histories of occupational therapy, one of our founders Dr. Dunton, I can't remember his first name. I think it's William, but I might get it wrong. But he's one of the founders of psychiatry. And he is a, one of the, initially he's considered a founding father of occupational therapy and he really pioneered something similar, and I shouldn't say pioneer, that's another example of settler based terminology that gets into this context. But he also did something with the simplified block in the Sanitariums and the mental health asylum at that time of utilizing group craft together in communities that are typically silenced. And that's something that maybe we can connect with, cuz I know that you work as a school psychologist as well. So that's one of the ones points of connection that we had. I think even at the time that I met you, I was fresh out of leaving school based practice. So that's been some something I've used quilting as well to try to work through. But a lot of our clients that live with disabilities, they're considered systemically invisible. Since the beginning. They've almost been considered like almost a disposable population. And like often we don't have the research to support our practice because nobody wanted to fund it. Nobody wanted to invest in these services other than almost doing kind of performative activism. Honestly, if you look at our founding, there was a lot of lip service. And in some cases I almost think that they were investing more back then than they are now But we're starting to have that conversation today. I guess what I'm bringing forward too is can you, do you connect with some of the, I'm curious how you position yourself with your background as a school psychologist in the social adjusting so academy and what are your sorts thoughts on how we can work together in how the arts and crafts movement or how we're having these conversations while acknowledging that this work has almost always gotten pushback and been challenging. So we almost need to think about how do we support each other and how do we keep this going despite the knowing that we're likely to get systemic pushback, that it's just controversial itself to acknowledge the humanity of populations that are systemically marginalized.
Lauren:Yeah. So for me as a school psych, sorry, there's an airplane behind me. But for me as a school cycle, a large part of it is looking at it in two different ways. So one is making sure that all work we do is through an equitable lens. And so we have had several workshops. We have to make accommodations, we have to make sure that every individual is able to access the materials that we are presenting. And so that's something that we keep in mind and for me is at the forefront of everything that we do. In the sense of that we know that everyone's coming to. From a different perspective, from a different lens, different cultural background and awareness. And so we have to shift how we engage the language that we utilize the materials. All of that has to shift to adjust to that. Because the workshop that I'm gonna do in a more affluent area is not gonna be the same workshop I'm gonna do in an underserved community. So I have to make sure that I'm aware of that walking in the door and even the youth and the difference in the youth that are within that particular workshop. So being as equitable and inclusive as I possibly can. And I think also being mindful of the emotional labor of this work as a school psych. And so being, Careful about how I frame these conversations because youth are very aware, more so than I think adults realize about, or just individuals in general about some of these issues that are impacting their communities. And so it's giving them some of the language and the tools to talk about LGBTQ issues, to talk about racism and talk about mental health and bullying. And for a lot of them, it's really challenging to say those things out loud. It's challenging to say that this is something that is either harming me directly or indirectly or something that I'm affected by. And so providing that space for them so it's not just therapeutic in the sense of the art itself, but in, even in the conversations. So it's like allowing them the, a safe space through conversations with their peers that they may or may not have even touched on some of these issues. A lot of their peers may not even know that's something that's important to them. Or this might be contrary. Their parents beliefs or their family's beliefs. So for them, this is the first time that they've engaged in this conversation with a complete stranger. And just how to have that kind of conversation. It's hard. And so walking them through that of this is completely safe. I'm not judging you. There is nothing in this that I'm gonna walk away and say, I can't believe they said this is, I want you to fill all of your feels. I want and we can name those feelings, we can talk through those feelings. And because all of that is gonna eventually make the Archie create so much stronger. But I want us to have this conversation first, because yes, that's the end product, but we're gonna have, if we have to have a mini group counseling session, that's what we're gonna do in terms of really bringing that full circle for them. So I really try to situate myself with that. And then in terms of knowing about, this is gonna be hard, it's gonna continue to be hard. We're gonna continue to get pushback and I know a lot of the issues and pushback we get. Are around race, we don't get the same pushback when we have climate change quilts. We don't get the same pushback. When we have quilts about bullying or about mental health. We don't get those kind of issues. But when it has to do with race or police brutality in particular, we get significant pushback on that because those are really polarizing issues and those are issues that have been, particularly with the help of social media, have been continue to be polarized. And so it's really challenging for people to have those conversation discussions around it. But for us, It drives us to wanna do the work even more. So it's saying, okay, yes, it's hard. People are not gonna agree with everything that we're saying, what we're doing. They may not want us in this space, but that's also more reason we need to be in this space. Because if you only have one perspective, then that's all that you're gonna hear. You've only heard from people that agree with you, who align with your beliefs, and that's all you're gonna see here and move forward with. But at least, yeah, you may not agree, but at least you saw it. And so that's gonna be a conversation you're gonna have with your family, your friends of, yes, you didn't agree with it, but at least you took that in for five, 10 minutes. And so that's all the more reason why. So it's it's the hope that. Eventually you'll be leaned towards or motivated towards educating. You'll be leaned towards having those hard conversations that you'll take it that step forward. It may not happen that day, that's fine. But we're gonna continue to show up. We're gonna continue to have these conversations. Because again, a lot of the spaces that we go into, people are so used to seeing one perspective. And so we come in and disrupt that and they have a really challenging time with that. And so it's being comfortable with the controversy, being comfortable with the fact that we're gonna be met with pushback. And it's like that's a part of this work. Like everyone is not gonna everything that we do, and that's a large part of that. And so it's really like sitting with that and using that as a motivating factor instead of a deterrent for
Josie:our work. And I think that's a great thing to have a historic lens on. In a way that a lot of 80% of occupational therapists at least tend to be European descent, maybe semi Alan systemically advantaged individuals. And part of the pride, I think, too, of the development of occupational therapy in a way, That we've ex, we've experienced our own as a cohort. A lot of occupational therapy came up with first and second way of feminism and acknowledging that systemic sexism is something that we have the legacies of till this day in this field where there's this presumed paternalism that we have to have the physician sign off and oversee everything that we do. Just the notion that arts and more nurturing based therapeutic services or helping people with say the activities of daily living and those basic life skills, because it's more feminized, it's not as likely to be systemically valued, or it is viewed as unskilled. At the beginning round. And I just bring this up as a bridge of understanding where one systemic oppression also lends to another. Just like sexism is part of the fabric of the development of the western healthcare system and mental health system in this country. Racism is also something that is built into the fabric in that we as a feminized workforce and as people that are a part of stewarding work through the lens of care. I like when you look at something as quilting where everything's connected to each other and we're looking at the f the fabric we can join in these pieces and know that the power of the resistance of the the arts and crafts movement in this country, that's part of what gave birth for the space of the development of a Finis workforce and that we're legacies of, and we can now use that systemic advantage that our occupational therapy ancestors created and opened up for us is now the reason that we're here. We can use that privilege and that agency to point out where we can make space to address and disrupt. So that this ultimate quilt that we're building together can look a little bit different. And I love that. I know that it's social justice, so sewing academy, it's not necessarily therapeutic process or something that you're wanting to do with the lens of like through purely like mental health or therapeutic lens. But there's also that sense of we're starting a conversation with an invitation to do something constructive. That it's not just instigating for instigating sake, it's through also an invitation to heal and create together and build connections. And I think that's such a great power there, that we are inheritors up, that there was an impulse with the arts and crafts movement that where there was pain in a community and you brought visibility to it and you created something tangible that was previously invisible and it's visible, It then becomes a platform that we can Respond to, to be kind of medicine for our community. I'm just curious about if that is part of the Social Justice Sewing Academy's ethos is also just making these things visible so that we can ultimately heal some of these rifts in our country, or the imbalances in our social structures that we're living in. Yes,
Lauren:absolutely. And that's a large part of why we do what we do, is we wanna make sure people are seeing it. So we put it in communities, we put it in museums, we're putting it in some of these places and spaces in the sense of that there's healing involved. For those that can identify with some of these issues. But also, like I said, some of those conversations. But for the sake of visibility, because a lot of these individuals particularly use I mentioned previously, that is an area where they have been voiceless. They have been perpetually silenced for multiple different ways. And also some of the individuals that we work with, like they come from communities where they don't have anyone to amplify their stories and their voices, and this is our way of doing that. So this is our way of allowing them. A little bit of healing in the sense of that you get to communicate this through textile art. You don't have to get in front of individuals and speak about it and tell your story and retraumatize yourself in that way. And no one's gonna be direct. It's not gonna necessarily be directly correlated back to you. So there's no paper trail of anyone necessarily finding out. So you get to walk away from it knowing that you created something that other people are gonna engage with. But that you don't have to necessarily deal with the mental and emotional strain of what may come or the pushback from that directly necessarily. But it's gonna be visible in the sense that people are going to be positively or potentially negatively impacted by what you have translated into the text art, What is gonna be the quilt? What is, And you get to see how all these different elements are shung together. And it's really fascinating, especially with different communities where you see similar themes of things that they are passionate about, things that they care about. And you see how ingrained it is in that particular community, how much it's infecting impact in this community. And so that is why it's so important for us to. Take it from that community. Yes, they get to keep it for a little bit, but take it from that community and take it to other areas. So that's people understand that this is something that this community and South Los Angeles or this community in Iowa, or whichever community that we've interacted with, there are people from across the country that are gonna. Have the opportunity to understand that this is something that is impacting them. This is something that they have, they feel very strongly about enough. Two A, put it onto textile R but B, because they want us to see, they want us to learn from it. They want us to have our own journey and moment with whatever they have created. And like that visibility is extraordinarily important to our work. And it's not, it's just going beyond just the art part of it, but we wanna make sure their eyes and it gets in front of the appropriate eyes and hopefully eyes that are gonna make change and want to donate or protest or read and educate or whatever. But also just individuals that to say that this is something that is impacting a community. I might also identify with, there might be a 14 year old black student in North in New York that I can identify with some of the issues. She's translated onto her quote block, I can identify with this school group who has talked a lot about racism and police brutality in their community. So it's saying that it's also that identification and self-awareness for you as well, and that's why the visibility is so important and why we have it translated across different
Josie:communities. I think to me too, one of the things that has been part of my own reflective process of being socialized as a Midwestern Christianized pretty well resourced Caucasian woman in the United States is there have been, there's a lot of investment in some of our social structures in keeping I think young people and a lot of white women insulated and sheltered from accurate information about how about how our structures are actually impacting, for example, like the lens of police and police violence. One of the things that you might be, if you're like me Christianized in my Midwest white woman, you've probably been told really call the police If something's wrong, call the police. Somethings are, and if you don't know what impact that is having in other communities and how that could be actually reinforcing systemic harm for other members and other human beings in our community if you don't have awareness of that, there's also not. Opportunity to correct that behavior. And I see that as also a social justice issue of keeping information blind and not being recognizing where systemic harm is being perpetuated. So I think too something like the Social Justice Sewing Academy, it's an opportunity for those of us in more of a privileged status to also get that full information and to undo some of those agendas of obscuring the information. I know something I'm really invested in I actually saw you have a great resource on your website that looks like it was a compilation of reflections from a variety of your community members. And I know one seemed to be a reflection, I think, of another person from the Seattle area reflecting on her grandmother, what worked as a social worker during Japanese internment, and sometimes that helping impulse that we have and that interest to be of genuine. Giving in our community can get weaponized if we're not aware of how it fits into the systemic contributions. And I think that's something that I'm sure you've got to witness too. As a school psychologist, sometimes we get positioned more as aps or withholders and gatekeepers. And what I love about projects like this and bringing more visibilities, it gives you agency even as a privileged person. In this context to see that your naivete that you're impulse to help doesn't somehow get accidentally weaponized. Or if it does, you can have the opportunity to bring some repair to those communities. Like for example, I got an opportunity to partner with my mom and a neighbor in quilting to create, I'm remember it's quilt for a victim of gun and police violence, which really brought that issue present in our home to be an active conversation and it really made it. To consider the real victims of police violence rather than just something that you think might be the media manipulating you with controversial dialogue. When we had an opportunity to sit with the reality that in this context, like a six year old's life got taken from police violence, when you actually sit with a quilt, you actually get to make real, the losses that are happening in the American community in a way that humanizes us across that degree of difference. It's a such a beautiful thing to bring that opportunity to have our good will and our really connection to bring healing our community because it's barricaded off by these barriers. It also just gave an opportunity, I feel like, for us, as like semi privileged white ladies to genuinely have our impulses go to the right place and not get weaponized, if that makes sense.
Lauren:That makes a lot of sense and I think a lot of volunteers can mirror that experience in terms of, and that's why the remand project was so important and it was, came at a very pivotal time and I think it came at a time where a lot of people had a lot more access to some of these systemic injustices. And I think the social media has done a great job of giving firsthand accounts of how this is. People. And I think 2020 was, we all had to stop and pay attention for more reasons than one. We had ample opportunity to stop and listen and pay attention. And for a lot of people that was their first time and they're awakening into some of these issues. And it was the first time really having to sit and digest how this is impacting communities And some of the ways that you were saying of it's not as abstract of this is happening someplace far away and it doesn't impact me at all, but how am I potentially contributing to these injustice? How am I working within these systems that I may be trying to disrupt, but I'm still benefiting from? So it raised a lot of awareness for a lot of different people. And these particular project. That's why they were so important because you get to sit with someone's life and honor them, and so you get, it makes it real in ways that it may not be in just by looking at, on social media, looking at the news, but it humanizes that these are individuals. People love them and cared about them. They had lives, they had things that they were contributing to, and they're not just a headline, they're not just the worst moment of their life, but they were people that lived and And were loved. And so it's like focusing on that aspect of it and having those individuals who wanna contribute in some way. A lot of it we had a lot of volunteers that what can I do? How can I help? And so a large part of that for us was that resource that you were talking about of you have to, a part of that was educate yourself first because we wanna make sure that yes, by well intentioned, even some of the most well intentioned volunteers can unfortunately inflict harm. And that's not to say that it's definitely not poor intention, but it's just not necessarily realizing the ways that things are communicated or they come across. Or if you have been indoctrinated to believe certain things, then you know, that may not necessarily be portrayed in the way that you
Josie:want it to be. That's where the gift too of being made visible of that is also, I think if you have something. For example I fell victim to that of feeling Oh, if something's wrong in my community, I gotta call the police at the first stop. That's part of my socialization. And at first when I found out about that, oh man, I was writing waves of guilt. To know the real impact of having that be the frontline response was somewhat debilitating. But in a way, whenever you have those visibility come aware to you, it's kinda like you have a cut on your body. If you're dissociating from it, you dunno what's there. But once you see it and you can feel it, there's a gift in that because you can that's a place where you have agency. That's a place where you can act right away. Once you get brought visibility to it, it's something where you don't actually have to go to any gatekeepers or go through some different layers of approvals. You can start working on recalibrating that in the moment. And we can work from feeling that guilt or feeling those negative emotions we talk about navigating a disorienting dilemma and or connecting folks to some resources so that they can feel supported. While some of, like you said this really emotionally stirring as we face our collective history together. Our history is very complex. It can be as tragic as it is. Amazing. It's all part. Of the fabric of America was really sewn from seeds of paint and disconnection. We all have a lot of intergenerational trauma work to do. But I just wanna bring up that part of this is moving through those emotions of awareness where we had been indoctrinated, socialized in ways that aren't helpful. Once we find out they're not helpful, that's great information. Cuz now we have immediate action that we can take to recalibrate and learn from the dialogue. So when people give us feedback about where it's hurting, especially as therapist, wow, what an amazing and immediate action step that we can take to repair the system around it. To know we're part of the system means we also are part of the change that can happen from the awareness of where things can be done differently.
Lauren:Yeah, no, I definitely agree with that and I think that's something that I definitely motivate volunteers to do and that's like why we do what we do and the sense of there are a lot of people that struggle with guilt and that I don't know how to move forward from this place. And yes, it is like again, having that self-awareness is, I'm proud of you for even getting to that point of knowing that, acknowledging that those feelings exist within yourself and then, okay, what does that next step mean for you? Does it mean reeducating yourself? It means unlearning and relearning some of like how we engage with certain populations in a way that's productive, in a way that's culturally conscious, in a way that's going to have some of these interactions that these genuine interactions moving forward. But then how do we bring that back to our immediate communities? So it's like, how, what does that look like? Are we having these hard conversations? What does that look like when we engage with, when we go back to work, when we engage with our families? How do we continue to bring that work into all of our spaces that we work with then? So it's like transforming that and sitting with those feelings. Absolutely. Cuz that's, you have to do that. You've, if you've known something for 20, 30 years, it's really hard to take a week to unlearn. That's gonna take time. And we're not ignorant to that.
Josie:No one is storing dilemma process and it's a beautiful, reflective process. And I think too, what I've heard from you is that especially with us being positioned in this as the. I feel like there's always an opportunity to increase the accessibility as our own awareness gets broadened, we can consider what can I, who else might be marginalized from accessing this opportunity or this space? We often have a lot of we have a lot of privilege in these systems, even though sometimes it doesn't feel like it. Where we can think about how can I use this now new awareness that I have to connect others to this opportunity or to highlight other voices that might not have had the opportunity to be expressed yet. That's part of the gift is seeing where as we get more of the picture visible, we can use that as a flashlight to unfold. There's so many different layers of systemic exclusion that once you take your awareness, think that of that as a gift to keep broadening how we can make this more exclu inclusive, more accessible, and that we can start bearing witness to some of the pain to work through in the community.
Lauren:And then also, how does that advocacy look like for the individuals that we're serving? What does that look like in terms of amplifying their voices? And how do we do that in a way that's meaningful, in a way that's not performative and we're not virtue signaling, but in a way that's genuine to them, in a way that we're putting their needs at the forefront. And so I think that's something that I bring from my work as a school psychologist and working in schools too, is that. I advocated extraordinarily hard for my students and a lot of that comes from these frameworks. A lot of that is understanding the community that I'm in, understand the needs of that particular community, understanding my own unlearning and relearning and because I was from that community, but everyone there is an acknowledgement of bias on all fronts. So it's like acknowledging and confronting those and being able to work through those in terms of how am I gonna continue that advocacy work on behalf of these communities and in support of these communities as a therapist, And what does that look like moving forward? And how do I hold my coworkers accountable? How do I hold these other, these systems accountable? What does that look like? So open
Josie:questions, you find too though, like I found in trying to do that work, especially in the school context where, you know, just as harsh as the pushback is, Cool shows is possibly even harder in school based settings, or it can get really real when it's part of our day to day job. The systems that we're working in, and a lot of those that are in this course right now, they're working in school based practice settings. They're working in mental health settings. Sometimes OTs are working in in incarceration and forensic settings in hospitals. All. Really hot frontline points where some of these social determinants are happening that are creating these adverse incomes. For example, if anybody's here on this call and you haven't heard of the school to prison pipeline that is a really key place to expand some of our awareness and to think about the role that we play as frontline helping providers. And again, I'm not saying to take action on any of this now we're just bringing awareness and we're bringing community. Part of my initial impulse in, in starting this conversation is saying what I've noticed when I've been on those front lines is I've, I think I've really needed support. When you're going through pushback in these systems or you said, Oh, how do I hold myself accountable? How do I hold my coworkers accountable? I just wanna maybe use this as a lens of talking about the importance of interdisciplinary partnerships and building lenses of how other clinicians, other people that are in the system, how we really need support each other and this work. And I don't know if you've been on school teams where it can feel like school psychologists versus the speech therapist and versus the occupational therapists or parents versus the administration. And we can get in a thinking about our professions as ways. Pull us apart. And this course is challenging to think of us first and foremost as like human beings. And maybe, like I will say a lot of my allies haven't been within occupational therapists that I work with in school based practice cuz I'm really interested in utilizing my position to reduce say behavioral referrals or make sure that we can try to get students of color that it maybe aren't getting pla flagged for the need for medically necessary services that are maybe delivered to more of a punitive approach than a more of a rehabilitated one. Or in the same vein you have somebody that maybe is overly medicalized or something to have those conversations. I might be more likely to be an allyship with you as a school psychologist than maybe even some of my occupational therapist. I guess I just wanted to open up the conversation of what do you think about the need to build. Diverse partnerships within the organizations that we work with that think a little bit differently than our little siloed wheelhouses sometimes. And how we go about advocating for ourselves, the students we work with, the clients that we work with the importance that it is to build community around taking on some of these systemic challenges.
Lauren:Yeah, I think that's something that was at the forefront of the work that I did in the schools. And I worked really hard to create partnerships with the ot, pt, the slp, just like all of the acronyms, but all of these different clinicians in terms of we're all working towards a common goal. We're all here to support our students and our families. And yes, it's really easy to sit in our offices and stick to our caseloads and get stuck in that and wrapped in that and think there's nothing else that goes beyond that. But there's also, there's power in numbers and there's administration can ignore one person. They can't ignore 10. So if we're saying collectively as clinicians, this is something that is impacting our students and so something that's impacting our families or this is something systemically that we need to do differently to benefit our students, it's a lot more challenging them for them to ignore that. When we have the support of each other, we have the support of our departments to say that this needs to change. And that's something that I worked really. I worked against. And I had a lot of challenges with that at my school because there were systemic issues and it was a lot, it was harder for me as one person Okay, that's just her saying this so we can push that to the side. It's not really important. But when you have the SLP and you have OT also saying, Yes, no, this particular student is being impacted in this way. How can we as a team come together? Because again, we're working to benefit this student. How can we as a team come together to strategize, create the system of care? What can we do to support this particular student? So it's making sure that we might have disagreements in terms of like services or in terms of that's, A given, but ultimately we are working towards a common goal supporting our students. So what does that look like? It's making sure that overall we're on the same page and we're advocating for their news as best as we can across, Sorry to cut
Josie:walk. No, it's fine. I just think too also that question of knowing if you find others that are interested in utilizing more of that social justice lens in your practice as a therapist and creating space for that to be meaningful. Cuz really it is a pressing question anywhere in the globe, but particular in the United States. It, you will explore together some of the history of the United States in particular. Systemic racism, systemic sexism acknowledging the genocidal practices that sort of were part of coordinating the foundings of the, so the institutions that are now currently in power in this country, that's present every setting that we're working in. So whether or not you wanna work on politics, whether you wanna work on justice or not, we can't escape it. And if you really look at the history just like you look at the history of quilting, the history of arts and craft movement, you're gonna see some sort of controversy. You're gonna see some sort of tension. You're gonna see some sort of pu politic political context that gave rise to why we're even here. I, if you think back to the disability rights movement you don't have the disability rights movement. You don't have school psychologists, you don't have school based occupational therapists that arose because you had coalitions built. From people with disabilities themselves speaking on their own hip path and acknowledging their own humanity. That's what gave rise to us here. So you might be thinking, there's no place for politics. There's nothing here. We're all working in policy. We're all talking about IEPs. We're talking about federal law, we're talking about state law. We're talking about county budget. There's no escaping it. So one of the things that we can consider in looking at this systemically is also how do we support our fellow clinicians, our fellow parents, our clients, to sustain in the emotional labor of this work that you're talking about? And I think it's really important to think about how we can support each other to sustain when you notice somebody's getting scapegoated or there is some triangulation going on at your district, there might be a school psychologist that needs your support and your encouragement. And that's a good way to show up and really support the evolution of our systems is also looking at how we. Support each other across our different lenses of a situation. Cause if we really do have the same goal, it's good to just look out, find those people too. The teachers that can be in different contexts. And you can even imagine, it can even be the custodial staff that are wanting to start correct some of these imbalances in our system. And if you can source'em out and then you can resource each other too. So some of it is you can feel alone in this. I don't know if you've ever felt that way, Lauren but I've sometimes felt really alone in taking on justice work. And we don't have to do it alone. We can make visible some of this work and support each other.
Lauren:And I think that's a large part of it is you. Just communicating with your team. It's and it's really and truly just building that, that team in the sense of like you're saying, disrupting some of these things. But it's really easy for us to sit our offices. It's really easy to focus or it's really easy to say I have to do this by myself because no one else understands. But it's having those conversations of how can we support each other, Whether it's be emotionally, whether that be we both need to go talk to administration together, whatever that looks like. But it really is bridging that across the different disciplines because it's really hard to take on that work by yourself and come up against an entire administration in departments like that is extraordinarily, It's not impossible. What is very challenging to do. And it can be very isolating because you feel like I'm the only person fighting on behalf of my entire school system. And I, there's only so much I can do as a human being. There's only so much I can shoulder there's and still take care of my caseload and still show up to IEP meetings and still talk to parents. That's a lot for any one person. So it's building those connections with your team and making sure that you're on the same page of, yes, we understand that systemically there are some issues that are impacting our family, our school community. How can we work together to and work with administration, work with the school community? How can we work together to eradicate some of these issues? And I'd say it's gonna happen overnight. We recognize that. But what can we do to create systems to lessen the impact? That these issues are having on our school community. And that comes from building some of these. And whether, like you said, it could be teachers, it could be custodians, it could be parents, it could be parent volunteers, whoever it may be, whatever part of your school community. And the sense of kind like repairing the impact of these systems for the benefit of our students and for ourselves. Cause we have to work within those systems and that's challenging
Josie:to work within. I kind of wanna call myself out or call myself in too, even in framing that one of the things I love about Social Justice Sewing Academy and also where the developments of our field are challenging us to go as we take on systemic justice challenges. I think just about every professional organization, hopefully, if not that's a good fame of advocacy. Most of our professional associations are making a commitment to address systemic imbalances, especially around racism through not just the passing of Trayvon Martin, but also we're bringing awareness to the victims of police violence is systemic imbalances everywhere. It's a great impetus for all of us to join together in this work. But what's most important too is centering who we are trying to be the beneficiaries of our services, right? So the power of the disability rights movement was that it was. Led by people with disabilities in that moniker. Nothing about us without us. So really our most important partnership and coalition building is on the students that are receiving our services. The fa the families that aren't accessing our services. So how do, It's not just the connections that we can make within the system with the different professionals that are at play, but are we making space to listen? To who is receiving our services and what's genuinely of interest to them, which you can only discover from something like the Social Justice Sewing Academy or creating space to listen to new concerns that we haven't even heard of. Because lot of the things that come from us from a professional context get filtered through several levels of systemic bias by the time it's the product of our academic literature, of our best practices it could be 30 years away from the initial people that inspired the development of that project. So I think what I, part of what I love about Social Justice Sewing Academy it's in lifetime, listen to the voices and the stories of folks that our systems often don't see. And that can be one of our most important partnerships to start building. And we can start small. And I I wanna be mindful too of time, I hope. Do you have space for 10 more minutes or so, Hopefully. Okay. I wanted to share my screen with you briefly. Let me share here. So let me make this bigger. So this is Medicare's guidelines for what is considered a covered service for occupational therapy providers. And I just wanted to let the folks on the screen know that this is something that Medicare covers, this is our medical side of our field. And it say it includes the planning. Implementing and supervised of individualized therapy activity programs as part of an overall active treatment program, say for patients diagnosed with psychiatric illness, such as the use of sewing activities that require pattern recognitions to reduce confusion, restore reality orientation, schizophrenic patients. So that's right there straight from Medicare. The thing that drives everything in the medical side of what's considered a covered service. And right there it says Sewing activity. And we are all about using purposeful, meaningful engagement and client centered activity. And you'll know as part of this course that Occupational Therapy Association has committed to a occupational justice framing and that we have ethical guidelines that drive our use of activity. And I don't have the documentation. Here in front of me, but we all know that occupational therapy as a federal ruling can work with folks with fine motor challenges and fine motor skill sets that are often needed to access and participate and meaningful school activities. So one of the things when I found out, Lauren, that you're a school psychologist and when I found out that a lot of these social Justice sewing Academy workshops are being facilitated in schools and it was, Oh wow. We don't actually really have to change this system around us to start doing this work as occupational therapists because we can all think of probably at least 30 kids on our, in our caseload that would have trouble accessing that workshop and participating with their peers. So I just wanted to bring this up to maybe inspire therapists that are interested in looking at social Justice sewing Academy and thinking and imagining even spaces where this work, where they haven't been able to expand to yet. I'm sure even you as an organization would love to do more work in settings where incarceration is taking place. Maybe institutions where folks are tracked away from K through 12 institutions are in more alternative school environments. Maybe students with disabilities or multiple diagnostic profiles. Today there are maybe. Individuals and systems that something like the Social Justice Sewing Academy would be interested in growing from some of that fertile soil that you right now could be a catalyst as an occupational therapist and without even having to changing the solution. You could work on scissor skills, you could work on shape and orientation cuz I don't the, for the, for a typical Social Justice Sew Academy workshop. It probably involves some of the skills of cutting, coloring, shaping. In order to get the idea from what's in your mind, you would probably have to know what the concepts are, which might require adapting some of the instruction even too, to be graded for say if you have an individual with an intellectual disability. What does it mean to relate to the history? And weren't you saying too, Lauren, that you're have more interest, like expanding the lens of disabilities a frontier that you guys haven't fully taken on.
Lauren:And that's something that I'm definitely interested in, especially as a school psychologist, but, and especially as one, someone that has a background in working with individual disabilities across a variety of different capacities. So Absolutely. And that's a huge part of our workshops. So would love to be able to build SSA out in that particular way.
Josie:Absolutely. If any OT is thinking, Oh, I you got me, I'm interested in social justice, I wanna connect my clients to this, but the system's just against me. I can't do this. Or we have to wait until we get funding for this source. What I'm seeing right now and learning about what Social Justice Sewing Academy has done, more as a grassroots effort. I can see how I could partner with somebody like Lauren or maybe build relationships with a school psychologist and social workers or teachers, and try to invite doing a workshop at the school that I'm at. And if I'm working on fine motor skills, and if you get questioned about it, you can er or the ethics guidelines that we're showing you, we can defer to the literature that's published from Occupational Science and Occupational Justice where you could contextualize this is why you're talking about it, but at the end of the day, you're working on fine motor skills, and access and participation. So we can think strategically and build partnerships. And I imagine, I don't wanna imposition you, but I'm sure that Social Justice Sew Academy would be open to occupational therapists, occupational therapy assistants, and even students. You don't necessarily, you can even support a project like this just in your own time. As a human being without it being connected to your work. Sometimes that's a great way to sustain in social justice work is de tethering it a little bit from where you're getting your income. Maybe being more of a social justice approach person. Some people do that more on their off time than at their work. That could be a strategy that you use, right? But this is accessible. This is present, this is today, and it's part of our legacy as being inheritors of the arts and crafts movement. We could actually pick up where that left off and even expand and broaden the definition of who gets included. Cause the beginning, it didn't include a lot of racial identities other than folks of Caucasian descent or European immigrant descent. We have an invitation now to pick up where they left off and maybe going a little bit further than they dare to go. Maybe it's a little bit safer today than it would've been a hundred
Lauren:years ago. Absolutely. And we let's like construct curriculum around that. Like I'm very much open to that, especially as a school psychologist and thinking about, talking about social skills and frustration tolerance and all of those things. There's so many ways you can build this in to the skills that students need and particularly students with disabilities. And so it's thinking about like how we can bring that into the schools a little bit more. Would love to do that and we'll love to do that work.
Josie:Yeah. I think it's so compatible. Don't you think because oftentimes you're like, Oh, there's just no funding for that or there's no things, but it's just like within the structures that we already have in place, we can probably. Find a way to inch forward and even I'm thinking if I was still in the schools when I learned about this a lot of the students I work with might not be able to execute a full block within one workshop time period. But we could maybe work on that as part of their project in one on one OT services that they build off each step at a time. Or maybe we can adapt the curriculum to be delivered at a more like slower pace. Something that I noticed and when I was in the schools is a lot of students didn't even know what their disabilities were, let alone like what the disability rights movement was. And I think if I was a related service and you were partnering with the school team maybe you could get inspired by a curriculum like this and build relationships with different scholars or other disability studies folks too, and figure out how do we adapt a curriculum. And maybe when I come and visit the class, we'll do one little micro lesson on the disability rights movement and then have a breakout activity that's similar to building a quilting block. Something like that. Weren't you guys doing a Train the trainer type program too?
Lauren:Yes, we are. We're still. Yeah, so we're actually like re-igniting that in the next couple of months. And so that's like an online course you become like a certified ASSA facilitator. And what that looks like is you can either have blocks created that come back to us, so we put them into our community quilts or their blocks that you just keep and you can hang them up in your classrooms. You can hang them up in your community. So necessarily be in a quilt, but you'll be able to continuously reflect on the art that the individuals in the community have made. So those like the two arms, the facilitators, but that is a program that we will be restarting in the next month or.
Josie:So could you see I was just throwing that out in the air, but maybe folks that connect to this work, do you see that being something that maybe you guys would be open to building partnerships about is maybe you'll go through some of the students in this course can, once that's launched, go and get certified, learn the approach that they've used that's been really effective in partnering with these more marginalized communities. And then thinking about it more from an occupational lens or adapting it within your school based occupational therapist or I just showed you that Medicare guidelines allow for sewing. Routines what's really stopping you from taking this into your post-acute care and utilizing the lens of quilting in your setting. We can be in partnership with organizations like sj Social Justice Sewing Academy and bring this curriculum into spaces that it hasn't accessed before. And you're like, I think you're the executive director. I think there would be buy-in for adapting this curriculum to reach different spaces that you could be in. So I, that's why you were one of the interviews that I was the most excited to include in this course, because I think it's such a present moment today with our current. Infrastructure around ot we can partner to do really amazing social justice work that isn't even emerging practice or controversial practice you've seen right now. This is directly tied to the roots of what started occupational therapy. Existing was resistance to the harm caused by industrialization and imperialism and colonialism. It's just, right now we have an invitation today in the 21st century to extend that impulse for meaningful repair to our community from these systemic harm. We today as a lot of us are white, Midwestern women. We have the invitation to not just let that mean white. And to not just mean same people, to not just mean able bodied people. We have everything at our exposure to build community and healing, to creating different quilts for what's American history can say. That was one of the last things that I feel like I'm dominating the discussion right now, just cause I'm so excited about this topic. But one of the amazing things about quilting is it is a history that you can't deny some of the best documentation that we have of what's transpired and who's been involved in US History is conveyed through quilts because they don't decay at the same rate that paper does, and you can't lie with them in the same way. So there's something about creating and sewing a labor of love and Investment and intention. I don't know if anybody's had that subjective experience. I've put a quilt on and felt a hug of knowing that someone labored for that. It has an impact in a way that can't be denied. And we're making the invisible visible. It's such a, an amazing power. And I'm sorry. One of the last things I'll share real quick too is the reason that I got connected with quilting is I was interested in doing some processing work, which white culture doesn't have a lot of lenses that you can. You're a high vulnerability as a Caucasian person to appropriate other cultures because we've so suppressed and denied having mediums of community healing. So I went back to quilting because I thought I wouldn't appropriate an art form from another community because I knew that there were folks that in my lineage, likely engaged with quilting as part of their settlement in this country. And I guess that's where it's, what is optimistic too, if you're another white person like me that's nervous about not wanting to appropriate another culture. The thing about quilting is it's something that's really accessible to everyone, and it is can become. A way to build community through art that is welcoming and is what you make of it because you get to be part of that expression and social justice. So academies proving that to this day, that it's an inclusive art form, that we can show our interest in making solutions out of nothing and showing and making space for community where it hasn't existed.
Lauren:Yeah, absolutely. So I would definitely encourage any of you to think about this through the lens of occupational therapy and if something that you're particularly interested in, I would be more than happy to think through curriculum or changes or how reimagine how we do our workshops, especially workshops that we do in school settings. Because I would want to be able to reach more populations than we do and from a different perspective than what we currently are. And so I'm very much open to that. And thinking about systemic issues in general and not wanting to gate keep at all these workshops from youth and just being mindful of that as much as possible. So I'm definitely welcoming that from any of you that wanna come at it from an OT or discussion
Josie:individual. Yeah, there's so many different ways to get involved that I've noticed. What I would love to do is, I've connected you to the website below this module here. So definitely go to the website. How would you, What I'm thinking too is I'm gonna create an open forum as part of our course community so that all of us that maybe are inspired by this project and wanna think about what we can offer as your own thing. But particularly if you're interested in the question of curriculum and your work site. Why don't we get that conversation started too in our form too? Cause I wanna respect the emotional labor of Laura and we don't need to bombard her all once necessarily. But maybe we can find each other too and see who has shared interest on this. And then process and think about that. And then social justice sew cam meets not going anywhere. So it's gonna be, and it can be available to us even as an explore an inspiration. There's so many different directions that this can go in. And I wanna also to convey that hopefully we get a lot of OTs that are interested in doing social justice work too, and know that we wanna be a resource to Social Justice Sewing Academy and have this not be too straining on either end of us. Thank you so much for joining in this discussion. And I, is there anything else too that got missed that you would love to that feel like you got missed or anything like that?
Lauren:I don't think so. I think this is really comprehensive, but I am really excited if any of you are interested to continue this conversation and potentially work with some of you on developing this moving forward. So
Josie:I would love that. Wonderful. Thank you so much for taking the time outta your day and just your investment in this project. I think it's something that just, it gives me so much excitement to know that these voices are documented and are part of the fabric of what American history can mean moving forward and just proof that sometimes these really rigid structures and belief systems that there's always gonna be space to make changes. And if something as I don't if anybody's ever. Been involved in some of the quilting stuff, sometimes that can be really rigid and really particular. And if we can create openness and change in that space there's hope. And one of the themes of this class too is even if you can't, if it's too head close to start bringing some of these changes into your work setting, it's so important to create a space in some area with your life where you can start playing around with these concepts. Even if it's maybe a little bit too scary to think about doing one of these workshops in your school based practice setting, maybe think about making a block for yourself. Maybe think about connecting just with one patient that you work with or if you've embroidered before something volunteering to be somebody that's there, just start in a way that does feel comfortable. You don't have to push yourself. Way in the deep end where you're retraumatizing yourself or something. We just need to create space where this conversation can start to happen. At least that's a place to play from and then trust the process over time. It might
Lauren:grow from there. Absolutely. Absolutely. But thank you so much for having me. This was an absolute pleasure.
Josie:Yeah. Awesome. I'm excited to continue supporting you guys and I know we'll keep having those conversations but hopefully we source broader interest too. Have and a wonderful rest of your Thursday. I'm just gonna stop the recording now.