Pacific Northwest Jam 2023
Quick info:
- Applications are here!
- Priority deadline: July 10, 2023
- Application deadline: Sunday, August 1, 2023
- If you need more time or any accommodations to submit an application, please let us know as soon as possible so we can support you. If the deadline has passed and you are still interested in applying, please reach out by email first to confirm if we can consider your application. We can be reached at: PacificNorthwestJam[at]gmail.com.
- September 7-10, 2023
- Location: Seabeck Conference Center in the beautiful Hood Canal of Washington
Come join us for an exploration of the space between personal and social change at the 3rd Pacific Northwest Changemakers Jam! Our 3.5 day in-person gathering in the Hood Canal, from September 7-10, will bring together 25-30 activists, advocates, parents, social entrepreneurs, environmental justice workers, storytellers, educators, high-tech wizards, community members, organic farmers, those affected by environmental and social problems, and anyone passionate about community in the PNW. You need not be an expert– there will be some with more experience and others new in their journey. We encourage folks from Black, Indigenous, Latinx, AAPI, POC, immigrant and refugee, and LGBTQIA+ communities to apply.
We gather to know ourselves more deeply, build a community together, reconnect with Nature in a profound way, and find renewed vision and purpose in our work in the world. In a time that is often filled with burnout and division, the Jam is a space for us to be real and share all of ourselves – our struggles, frustrations, and joys alike. It is a space to learn from each other, especially across differences including gender, race, ethnicity, class, religion, age and more. It is a space to inspire each other and find intersections for future collaborations. It is a space to connect the dots between changemakers across the Pacific Northwest. We will engage, co-create, tangle & untangle, challenge & be challenged, support, connect, and dream in ways we can’t even predict.
Why the PNW Changemakers Jam Now?
So much is alive, in flux, and in need of attention in this moment. In the face of incredible injustice, pain, rage, numbness, and grief, we are also seeing incredible leadership and transformation across the PNW and beyond. As the coronavirus pandemic has painfully laid bare our society’s inequities, mutual aid networks have been stepping up to redistribute critical resources. Movements for racial justice are advocating for abolitionist and more equitable futures. As wildfires upend livelihoods and damage this region’s landscape, communities come together to alleviate each other’s burdens. With these crises, we witness the unsustainability of our current world and imagine what a new world could be. We are also feeling a collective need for healing through community and connection. The purpose of this Jam is to slow down together in order to meet the urgent challenges of our world in interdependent, grounded, intentional, and strategic ways.
We are hosting the Jam in order to:
- Build the kind of community of practice we need to sustain ourselves in the beautiful and heart-bending work of making change.
- Give time and attention to nourishing our stories and collaborative ways of leading and being that are emerging in our lives and work.
- Support each of us in cultivating the courage and resilience to take purposeful, clear, and conscious action in response to violence and injustice.
- Find the heart wisdom we need to unearth old stories that must be shed – in ourselves and our communities.
The Jam is not a retreat from the world; instead, it is an opportunity to face it in ourselves and with each other. It calls us to show up for exactly what is alive: in ourselves, in our relationships, in our communities, and in our world. We jam to meet the world as it is, and we jam to help get closer to the world we want to see.
**It is our deepest hope that we will gather in September in person in a safe way for everyone. If you have any concerns around Covid that you would like to share with us, please do mention it in your application and/or write to us at pacificnorthwestjam[at]gmail.com, and we will follow up with you directly.
What is a Jam?
In music, a jam is a creative, live gathering of musicians who together spontaneously create a new sound, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. When musicians get together to “jam,” they get to share their unique skills and knowledge, as well as listen deeply and learn from other musicians. They get to hear and experience other styles of music while expanding their own horizons. When musicians come together and improvise, they create music that no one has ever heard before.
YES! Jams are places where diverse leaders and visionaries bring together their passions, openness, and unique perspectives. Through facilitated activities and spontaneous connection, we weave layers of experience, wisdom, heart, and spirit to create some real magic. The Jam asks that all the participants are present and ready to listen deeply to each other. This allows us to explore transformation on the personal, interpersonal, and systemic levels.
The Jam is guided and supported by a team of facilitators, and it is co-created because the content of the Jam comes directly from participants’ responses to questions in the application. It will grow and shift based on what emerges from the group during our time together. We hold ample time outside of sessions with equal importance: personal reflection, being with nature, creative fun, slowness, and bringing the Jam to the rest of your life and work.
The PNW Jam hopes to be a space to explore questions such as:
- What are your many connections to the PNW as a region and how have they evolved? How have these connections impacted and been impacted by your identities, your relationships, your communities, your work?
- What questions are alive for you in your life right now? For your community? For this region and beyond?
- What are the core points of healing and transformation for you? For your community? For this region and beyond?
- How have your experiences of power and privilege in this region impacted you and the visions, questions, hopes, and fears you hold for the future?
- How do we build a grounded foundation in the face of homelessness, displacement and the restlessness some of us feel as transplants?
- How do we co-create cultures where we are in generative relationship to the land and the indigenous peoples of the PNW?
- How can our connections form the foundation for powerful, collective movement toward healing and transformative justice?
What are your questions? Bring them to the Jam!
The Jam is not a conference, seminar, or meeting — it’s unique. There is dedicated time to think and feel deeply about social change in our world, in our communities, and in ourselves. There are transformative conversations and there is a lot of fun, art, and creativity. There is group explorations, and co-creations, as well as solo time and internal reflection. Every Jam is an open space where the gifts and needs of the people who show up can emerge.
YES! Jams have been happening since 1999. YES! collaborates with other like-hearted peers around the world to co-create Jams where diverse visionaries and social changemakers combine their inspirations and skills to create something greater than the sum of their parts. To date, more than 200 Jams have been held on six continents and online, bringing together young and intergenerational leaders from more than 85 nations.
Who Should Attend the PNW Jam
You! We welcome anyone who is excited to co-create a community that celebrates our unique experiences.
If you’re wondering if you’re “qualified enough” to be a part of something like this, or if you “know enough,” “do enough” or are “good enough”… take a deep breath and trust that you are. Our group of organizers have a wide variety of backgrounds and life pursuits, and showing up with vulnerability throughout the planning process has allowed us to create closer connections across those differences. We would love to bring you into that dynamic and learn from your individual wisdom of this region. We deeply value diversity across race, class, gender, sexuality, age, and ability. And whether you’re a member of the PNW’s indigenous communities, a restless transplant, a longstanding and embedded resident, and/or somewhere in-between, we would be grateful for your presence.
What Will Happen if I Go to the PNW Jam?
Jams are as unique as the people that take part, so it’s hard to say exactly what you’ll leave with. It’s much more useful to acknowledge that you will simply grow.
During a Jam, participants stretch and flex in and out of their comfort zones while learning and co-creating new ways of relating. Each day together we honor our personal experience as a pathway to collective regeneration. We explore how we can help each other step more fully into our own selves so we can show up more authentically in our work, community, and relationships.
Joy and struggle and everything in between are often a part of peoples’ Jam experiences. Like a musical jam, sometimes things are in flow, and sometimes they are a little out of tune. As individuals and as a community, we keep working our way to listening and synergizing as much as we can.
While many aren’t quite ready to say goodbye when it’s over, it’s not uncommon for Jammers to leave more ready to tackle whatever obstacle they were grappling with before. This readiness is a by-product of previous days spent sharing community, forming new friendships, and building a network of support that crosses state lines and international borders.
If you come to the PNW Jam you could discover a deeper capacity to bridge the divisions you encounter on your walk through this world.
LOGISTICS & COST OF ATTENDING
This Jam will take place over the course of three and a half days, from the afternoon of September 7, 2023, to the morning of September 10, 2023. The location is Seabeck Conference Center in the beautiful Hood Canal of Washington: seabeck.org. Participants will lodge in single and double rooms with shared bathrooms, and food will be provided by our hosts.
The at-cost price per person for this Jam is $800. Broken down, $375 covers food, our chef, lodging, and supplies, and $425 covers honoraria for the organizers and facilitants. We are also happy to share our line-item budget with you in full transparency.
We never want money to be a barrier in participating. If even the reparative rate is prohibitive for you, please contact us and we will do everything we can to make it work for you to attend. We are also happy to work with you on a payment plan.
Travel costs are the responsibility of the participants, though we will help in arranging carpools from the Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver (B.C.) areas.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to write to us at pacificnorthwestjam@gmail.com
Priority deadline: July 10, 2023
Application deadline: Sunday, August 1, 2023
APPLY NOW!
Organizer
Gremily or Emily Zionts has been living in Portland, Oregon for the last 9 years. She earned a M.A. in Peace Education and has an incomplete PhD in Sustainability Education. She is a Transformative Educator with 15+ years of experience in facilitating, creating curriculum, mentoring students and teachers, consulting, and designing programs for participants of all ages. Over this time, Gremily has been deeply committed to crafting a career specifically focused on education for social justice, self-awareness, environmental sustainability, and community leadership. Emily’s passion is helping students to identify their unique gifts to find ways to contribute to healing destructive systems that threaten our social and environmental wellbeing. Since early 2020, Emily’s career has been on hiatus as she navigates the devastating health effects of Long COVID. During this time of rest and debilitating illness she has been immersed in learning Dream Work, and exploring the fields of Disability Justice and Restorative Justice.
Anisa Khoshbakhtian is passionate about breaking barriers, scheming for the greater good, and bringing people together through creative channels and shared experiences. Throughout her life, this passion has led her to actively contribute to various communities through her involvement in art, nonprofits, spiritual organizations, music and entertainment, and technology. A couple months after she attended her first Jam, the 2019 North America Leadership Jam, she landed her dream job in local government in Seattle – her work is focused on bringing more diversity to the technology and creative industries in Seattle by supporting local BIPOC youth in their education and access to jobs and BIPOC professionals in their career journeys. Anisa is a proud Iranian-American with a strong spiritual connection to her roots, and given the modern day complexities of the Middle Eastern and North African diaspora experience that herself and many others are experiencing, she is co-leading the efforts to get the first in-person Middle East Diaspora Jam up and running!
Carson Keene is a long time counselor educator and learner who has been living in Portland, OR for the last 15 years. As a camp counselor, wilderness educator, NOLS faculty, public school teacher, and now therapist they have solidified and strengthened their desire to be in community with folks and formed a deep connection to many places. They grew up in Texas, Michigan, and Ohio, went to college in Vermont, lived and worked in the Utah wilderness,and have taught at three public schools in Portland, including an environmental school. Moving frequently as a child taught Carson how to make new friends, and also, how to experience identity and place dissonance, creating significant anxiety and unhealthy coping mechanisms. Dogs, good books, natural bodies of water, sun, laughter, and learning feed their soul. Last year Carson finished graduate school at Lewis and Clark College studying addictions counseling, another passion of theirs, believing in the innate goodness and resiliency of humans, and the transformative power of supportive community.
Dove is an herbalist living and learning on the traditional lands of the Puyallup and Steilacoom people where she participates in community-building projects and works as a caregiver. As a restless ‘grown-up’ who has transplanted herself across many states and borders, land and plant-tending is Dove’s soul-rooter and community connector. Her love for plant medicine grew out of a desire to connect deeper with the traditional practices of her ancestry, a journey that deepened during the pandemic when she began studying Afro-indigenous herbalism. Her goal as an herbalist is to strengthen the thread of continuity between us and the Ancestors, help the body be a place where Spirit thrives, and build community so our roots can flourish. She continues to look for ways to grow as a facilitator and community-builder and is overjoyed to engage in that work with Yes! At the Pacific Northwest Changemakers Jam.
Jovan Julien currently makes home in Atlanta, GA. Before beginning in their role as Alignment and Storytelling Integrator at YES!, Jovan played a variety of roles. They continue to be involved in a variety of projects in their familial homeland of Haiti and recently completed an advanced degree in Operations Research. Currently Jovan’s academic pursuits are focused on sustainability through democratic decision making processes. Passionate about photography and storytelling, they continue to pursue innovative ways to marry math with their lens. Jovan has nurtured a fascination with the history of the Pacific Northwest and its connection to the Southern history with visits and friendships.
Shilpa Jain is currently rooting herself in Oakland/Berkeley, CA. For 11+ years, she served as the Executive Director of YES!, working with social changemakers at the meeting point of internal, interpersonal and systemic change, and aiming to co-create thriving, just and balanced ways of life for all. Prior to taking on this role, Shilpa spent two years as the Education and Outreach Coordinator of Other Worlds and ten years as a learning activist with Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development, based in Udaipur, India, where she served as coordinator of the Swapathgami (Walkouts-Walkons) Network. She has facilitated dozens of transformative leadership gatherings with hundreds of young leaders from over 50 countries. She is passionate about dance and music, organic and natural farming, upcycling and zero waste living, asking appreciative questions and being in community. A focus on healing, forgiveness, compassion, love and wholeness permeates all of her work and life.
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