Main fundraiser photo

Lulu's 2013 Summer Trainings Fund

Donation protected

Artist Photo by Naomi Ishisaka.

UPDATE 6/20/13:  I just found out I was accepted into Generation Waking Up "GenUp Northwest Leadership Training" 
for networking with other change makers that focuses on intergenerational collaboration; social justice, healing & holding grief; ecological literacy & empathy; and consciousness from June 24-26 on The Widbey Institute.  I received a scholarship and have to pay tuition.
---------------------------
I am excited to be one of 20 applicants accepted into the week long intensive Ping Chong Company Summer Institute (June 9-15, 2013) "Ping Chong Company produces theatrical works addressing the important cultural and civic issues of our times, striving to reach the widest audiences with the greatest level of artistic innovation and social integrity." The summer training is based on an art project called Undesirable Elements, "an ongoing series of community-specific interview-based theater works examining issues of culture and identity of individuals who are outsiders within their mainstream community." These "Master Classes" will be led by Ping Chong, who is an internationally acclaimed theater director, writer, multi-disciplinary artist and is a key figure in the Asian American Arts Movement. In collaboration with Green Bodies Arts Collective, I will produce a show that focuses on women of color trauma, healing, and reclaiming bodies & history.

I am honored to build upon my eight years of work integrating community engagement, art, and oral histories. I will learn more about ensemble-based oral history work connecting social justice issues and collecting oral histories accountably. I hope to build stronger relationships across communities through storytelling. My attendance will help me develop my skills in my current role as Caretaker at the historic building, Washington Hall, since I was contracted to collect oral histories from Seattle's dynamic ethnic, artistic, and activism communities. I hope you will support me, so that I can come back and apply the training within community organizations and communities of color, low-income, queer, women, immigrant/refugee, homeless, and youth within Seattle and King County, WA.

While on the east coast, I will visit community organizations, such as the Audre Lorde Project, in New York City area (June 16-19) that work on innovative practices and transformational ways to end all forms of violence in "marginalized" communities, such as homeless youth and LGBTQ youth of color. Next, I will attend the 15th Annual Allied Media Conference (AMC) in Detroit, MI (June 20-24) to meet organizers, trainers, healers, and artists collaborating on national projects that focus on media, technology, and history. This conference teaches new strategies on transforming and healing communities while developing practical and tangible skills to bring back to your local areas.

All three of these summer projects will support and advance the work and organizing that I have done around issues of trauma, violence, healthy relationships & communities, youth, queer people of color, non-profit work, arts, culture, community, and social change. My other skills and experience include: transformative collaboration, anti-oppression curriculum & training, volunteer management, collective action, facilitation, healing justice, dance, hiphop, artist development, music promotion and production, and poetry among other things. The summer training, research, and conference will help me build the foundation for work with Uzuri Consulting & Productions and the Green Bodies Arts Collective, both of which I founded.

My vision is to find sustainable community organizational and business practices that support the healing and transformation of myself, my family, and all my communities that I have supported, loved, worked with, and learned from through art, storytelling, trauma, resilience, media, music, and culture.

If you would like to know more details about the trainings, the trip, or other ways to support, please email me at uzuri dot consulting dot productions at gmail dot com. Please contact me for a vita, resume, and/or bio as well along with more information about specific projects that I have engaged in.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BIOGRAPHY

Luzviminda Uzuri Carpenter (pronounced Loose-b-min-dah ooh-zir-e car-pen-ter) aka Lulu, works for Historic Seattle as Caretaker and Consultant on the Oral History Project at Washington Hall. Recently, she founded Uzuri Consulting & Productions and a collective called Green Bodies Arts Collective with other fierce womyn of color and KnowMades (a youth solidarity organization). She serves on three advisory boards, Zenyu Healing Center, Women Who Rock Community, and Allyship
and in 2013 was appointmented by the Mayor's Office of the City of Seattle to the LGBT Commission. Lulu has worked with Hidmo, Ladies First Collective Organizing Committee (an anti-rape collective), and Pinay sa Seattle-GABRIELA. Carpenter has also worked in the fields of intimate partner violence & sexual violence with the Asian Pacific Islander Women and Family Safety Center, Communities Against Rape and Abuse (CARA) and recently through YouthCare Orion Center. She has honed her passion and skills for youth advocacy and mentorship for the past 8 years at YouthCare, Franklin High School Political Science & Public Service Academy, the Service Board, Seattle Young People's Project, and Seattle YouthSpeaks.

PUBLICATIONS
JusMoni brings locally grown vocals and vision to Washington Hall (the Seattle Globalist, May 2013)

OuterSpaces tour unites voices from the margins at Washington Hall (the Seattle Globalist, November 2012)

A day of remembrance - and resistance (Seattle Gay News, November 2012)


Youth Demonstrate the Power of Gender & Fierceness
(Seattle Gay News, November 2012)

GREEN BODIES MISSION
Green Bodies is a performance-based transformative arts collective created by women of color to heal the wounds of oppression in our communities. Through theater, song, dance, poetry, storytelling, multimedia, visual and experimental arts, Green Bodies creates medicine to free our individual and collective bodies from trauma and inspire others to do the same.

UZURI CONSULTING & PRODUCTIONS MISSION
Uzuri* Consulting & Productions is dedicated to the empowerment and actualization of individuals, communities, and organizations that are centered on youth, low-income people, people of color, LGBTIQ, and those that have been placed on the margins that seek access to resources and understanding.

Through networking & cross cultural communications, arts & educational presentations and event planning & production, Uzuri* Consulting & Productions contributes to the upliftment, enrichment, and holistic development of all people to reminds us all of our beauty, our survival, and our collective history.

* Uzuri means beautiful in Swahili and was given to the first born daughter of a Filipino migrant woman who married an African American US military man. It was given to her along with a Filipino name, so that through her birth, development, and education, her parents would not forget their roots, their journey, and where they came from.

Donate

Donations 

  • Tera Oglesby
    • $20 
    • 11 yrs
  • Anonymous (Airplane Voucher)
    • $200 (Offline)
    • 11 yrs
  • Lynda Turet
    • $20 (Offline)
    • 11 yrs
  • David
    • $50 (Offline)
    • 11 yrs
  • Lillian Hewako
    • $5 (Offline)
    • 11 yrs
Donate

Organizer

Luzviminda U. Carpenter
Organizer
Seattle, WA

Your easy, powerful, and trusted home for help

  • Easy

    Donate quickly and easily.

  • Powerful

    Send help right to the people and causes you care about.

  • Trusted

    Your donation is protected by the  GoFundMe Giving Guarantee.