This workshop will ask how we can use the wisdom of our diasporic folk traditions in service of community and cultural resilience during climate change. We all carry stories of leaving and losing home. Our song and story traditions hold them as well. In this workshop for tellers, singers, and carriers of any tradition, we will workshop how to transform these stories into stories not of migration, forced removal, diaspora, and departure, but instead the current day story we all are facing: that of our home places changing beneath our feat. And, yes, being forced to consider having to leave again. Bring your keens and your laments, your songs for dear lost loves and dreams for a better future in America, and together we will begin to adapt them to this new world we all share, so that our descendants can have the stories they need to understand these times.
Diana (community/stage name Zia Ruta) is a lifelong performer, and also a researcher and educator in the fields of folklore, history, and civic engagement. She is the creator of many workbooks for creative researchers, including “Stories for Our Times,” in collaboration with the History Cambridge (Massachusetts) with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She has been scholar in residence at the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Festival and has told stories to groups of children and adults in Massachusetts and California. She is also an Irish sean-nós dancer and a tradition carrier of San Francisco Italian foodways.