Community Building at the Power of Words Conference

The Power of Words conference is committed to creating a gathering place for people from diverse communities to not just learn more about Transformative Language Arts, but to make community together, integrate what we’re discovering as we’re discovering it, and find more direction in our life’s work, education, community commitment, art and activism.

Workshop Tracks: We offer workshops in five tracks:

• Right Livelihood: Making a living in concert with our gifts, callings, and communities
• Narrative Medicine: Learning from the stories and guiding narratives in our lives that relate to illness and health, individual and communal healing
• Social Change: Community-building and change to shift our culture toward greater peace and justice
• Engaged Spirituality: Pathways for putting religious and/or spiritual practices, questions and beliefs into action
• Ecological Literature: Connecting with, protecting and restoring the other-than-human world, learning about ecosystems and place, environmental justice and related topics

Many Ways to Connect

• Talking Circles: Participants meet with the same small group each morning of the conference to share responses and questions, integrate discoveries and express themselves in a safe, confidential space.
• Open Mics: Two open mic sessions of our Coffeehouse of Wonder allow you the opportunity to share poems, stories (excerpts), songs, dances or other expressions of the arts aloud with one of the best-listening and most attentive audiences anywhere around. This is a great place for the seasoned performer as well as the person ready to do his/her first reading.
• Large Group Keynotes & Performances: Together, we experience magic and connection, witnessing astonishing stories, songs, talks, readings and more.
• TLA Network Council Meetings: We invite you to join the open sessions of the TLA Network’s governing council, a non-hierarchical body that meets monthly by phone to help guide TLAN, and we invite you to consider joining us on the council or one of the committees.
• Opening and Closing Sessions: Many conference-goers experience the opening and closing sessions as the highlights of the conference. In each session, we cultivate an atmosphere of community, connection, deep listening and powerful sharing. The opening sessions features several powerful performances, and the closing session allows us to speak as we feel so moved about what we’ve experienced and what we’re bringing home with us.