SeaCHANGE Conference: Spaces Where Creators Feel at Home with Diannely Antigua and Najee Brown

Transcript (lightly edited for clarity)

Beth Tener:

Today we’re going to be talking about spaces where creators feel at home. With me, I have Diannely Antigua and Najee Brown in our series about Belonging and What it Means to Feel at Home Here.

When we think of artists and creative expression, finding the courage and the commitment to bring forth your own creative gifts is not an easy path. Today we’ll be exploring “how could we bring the power of community to truly support artists? And this idea that all of us have creative potential. How can art and artistic expression contribute to our communities and those working on social change in these times?”

I love this quote from Toni Cade Bambara, which is “The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.” In this time where so many of the current systems are not working, and we’re fed up, how do we dream into new ones together?

Part of what brought the three of us together is a conference called the SeaCHANGE Conference. This was created two years ago. Najee and I are on the hosting team of these conferences. They’re pretty amazing. We created a space to experience “how do we create a home for people that are interested in the arts and healing and social change?” We’ve done two of them and the next one is coming up in September.

I’m going to use that experience as an example today to talk with my guests about what works and what we experienced in that space. I’d like to welcome both of you.

Diannely Antigua:

Hey, thanks, Beth, for having us.

Najee Brown:

Thank you for having me.

Beth Tener:

A little background on each of them: Najee Brown, as I mentioned, was one of the founders of SeaCHANGE Conference and he is a playwright, and a photographer and he also founded Theater for the People, a BIPOC theatre group in New England. He’s also the Artistic Director at the Cambridge Multicultural Art Center. He’s both an artist and also really gifted at producing and supporting other artists and sharing their work.

Diannely Antigua is a Dominican American poet and educator. She’s the author of two poetry collections, Ugly Music and Good Monster. In 2022, she was proclaimed the 13^th Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She’s the youngest and first person of color to receive that title. Diannely also hosts a podcast called Bread and Poetry, which seeks to make poetry accessible in a way that nourishes the soul. Diannely was a participant in the first two SeaCHANGE Conferences, both speaking on a panel and offering poetry workshops. So, she’ll kind of bring the perspective of a participant to this conversation.

So Najee, I can start with you. Can you share a little about your path as an artist and a creator? And what drew you to create the SeaCHANGE Conference?

Najee:

Yeah, so I’m originally from Brooklyn, New York. It was the greatest place for artists in the world. I realize I’ve been the artist for a long time, but I’ve always been more of a producer. Even though I was a dancer growing up, I grew up in a black tradition of the black church. In fact, I went to a mega church, which at the time had 37,000 members. If you ever been to a black church, the arts are the center of the black church. Most artists that you know –  Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, to name a few – gained their chops in the church and then they go on into the world and become these master superstars. But it all is honed and created in the black church. And it’s really because the black church is the foundation of black arts. This was where the one day a week where slaves or the enslaved people were allowed to be themselves and to congregate outside of their masters supervision. So it naturally becomes this place where art is developed because it’s the one place where we were allowed to kind of be ourselves.

So I grew up in this church with tons of ministries, there was a photography ministry where I learned photography. I don’t think many people understand the concept of mega churches unless you’ve been in one. First of all, it’s a highly educated place. Everyone there either has a master’s or doctorate, so they’re very educated. But at church, they volunteer on these ministries. If you’re on a photography ministry, nine times out of 10 your ministry heads are people who have shot in fashion magazines, if you’re on the music ministry, these violinists or saxophone players are playing for Dancing With The Stars on the weekdays, and they’re playing at my church. You had Denzel Washington, who was a member… these kinds of people, you’re rubbing elbows with them on a consistent basis. So it’s the best of the best in the art, they just all like church.

That’s where I learned how to dance, is where I learn how to produce events, they allowed me to produce events at a very young age, I think I’ve choreographed my first dance there when I was 15 or 16. I produced my first events there. I was traveling all around the world with them and did all this stuff before the age of 18, when I kind of started to move away from the church, but they allowed me to do so much there. That’s what kind of honed my craft. Everyone that’s from the church is now doing something great, but I’m talking about like 25 people who are out there doing amazing things. Because I grew up in a creative environment, where we all with each other and under religious context, it’s my longing to create with people again. I don’t want to do it in under religious context maybe, but I love creation.

Honestly, for me, when I moved to Maine, it was very isolating, going from New York City, where I had that even outside of the church, being involved in the Lite feet movement, which was a dance style and the underground music movement in New York City. Coming to Maine, I didn’t know where I could find that until I went to Portsmouth and saw there was a lot of creativity going on. But it felt like for me, there was no central place for me to do that as an artist of color. Where it is happening, it does seem like a lot of it is geared towards young white artists or art.

So for me, the spirit of SeaCHANGE was making a home and a place like that for people of color, but also providing a space for me where I can just kind of be myself and create with people or engage with other artists while I was living up there in Maine.

Beth Tener:

That’s great. You really helped me understand. You’ve told me about the church before, but I got further that you already had lived it in your own… the qualities of a space where people can feel themselves and can be creative and talk with other creators and be inspired by other creators. And we’ll say more in a little bit what how we organized SeaCHANGE. But that’s very much the spirit that we were able to create in the conference so far. So I love hearing the much deeper roots of it. Thank you for that.

I also just wanted to mention one other creative talents of Najee is that he records music, and so we’ll be featuring Najee’s music in the podcast today.

Beth Tener:

How about for you, Diannely? Could you maybe share about your path as an artist and one of the themes of SeaCHANGE is often around “how can arts be used for healing and social change?” So just curious, like what drew you to attend when we asked you to join us?

Diannely Antigua:

Absolutely. I guess I should start off with why I’m a poet. Why am a writer, an artist. I started writing in journals when I was nine years old. My sister gave me my first journal for Christmas that year and it just so happened that that same year was the year that my family started going to a church in my hometown. However, different from now she has experience with religion, this was a very damaging religious experience, very cult-like, and for me, my journals were the only place where I could express myself, where I go could be creative. This particular church was all about conforming to this one way of living to standards and there wasn’t much room for creativity.

Yes, we sang in church, and I also played flute in church, but I played their songs, I sang their songs, I wasn’t allowed to really write something for myself, it always had a religious undertone. So my journals were the place where I could escape and I created that space for myself when there was no space.

I started experimenting with different genres, I started writing fiction, writing short stories, and I also wrote poems, and poetry was just the genre that stuck with me. Once I decided to go to college, which in this religious system, women attending college was not encouraged in any way. However, the pastor of this church encouraged me to go to college to get a degree in education, so that I could come back and teach in the church school. Even my degree was something for someone else. But I kind of skirted around it in a way and decided to study writing, thinking that would appease him in some way, if I studied writing, and then I could be an English teacher at the school. Mind you, this school was not paid, it would have been volunteer basis and a lot of the women ended up teaching. So that meant there was a lot of unpaid labor.

So it was just such a challenging time for me to make space for myself. But as I continued to take classes and go to college, I was able to in a way escape from this cult-like environment with the help of poetry. I think what poetry helped me do was learn who I was as a person and to discover the things that meant something to me. All the while I was having a difficult time with my mental health, and I had been since I was a child, but I think specifically because of this cultic system and having grown up in an abusive household, I needed something for myself. And poetry ended up being that for me.

Out of all of my siblings, I am the only artist, at least one that decided to do it as a career, and it’s meant everything to me. I ended up going to NYU to get my MFA in poetry and that was absolutely life changing. Right before I went to college, I had gone through some very serious bouts of depression, where I was in and out of hospitals and psych wards and the ICU, and it was my determination to make poetry, you know, my life that saved me. You know, I told myself that if I wanted to study poetry, I had to stay alive. I had to be here on Earth in order to do that. And that’s what gave me the power, the strength in order to be here. And then I like I said, I went to NYU. And then kind of the rest is history.

Beth Tener:

It sounds like it was really a lifeline, the way the arts for you, you know that poetry was absolutely a lifeline.

Diannely Antigua:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think you mentioned how arts can be used for healing and social change, and I’m a firm believer in that. Again, it’s how I survived. It’s how I’ve learned to heal, and it’s been my life’s mission to help create that space for other people, especially in places where that space hasn’t been made for them.

Beth Tener:

I remember at the conference, Diannely, you were on one of our panels I think about art and healing. I remember some of the conversations afterwards. I was really struck by how many stories of people in the room who are creative, who for them arts were that space they could have to themselves or the space that helped them come out of the difficult circumstances. It was like their bridge to get there, and I felt like the way you opened up that conversation really allowed a lot of people to go to that more honest place with each other.

Diannely Antigua:

Yeah, I think that that’s what’s most important to me about poetry: allowing it to be a conversation or an open door for vulnerability.

Beth Tener:

Beautifully said. Najee, anything you want to build on?

Najee Brown:

Well, first of all, I will say, the spirit of SeaCHANGE did become different when you were vulnerable and opened up, Diannely.

I remember that day like it was just today. Honestly, during the conference, you never know who’s going to come. You know, we were planning this for years. And until Beth came, we didn’t know exactly what we were doing and how to accomplish it. You are not sure about the people. Coming in that first morning, you’re wondering if what you’re presenting is enough to keep people engaged for three days. And that was the first three-day program that I’ve ever done. I know Green Acre has done plenty of that, but not like this.

And from the moment you started that conversation, I remember I think Sandy was on that panel, too. She was like, “Whoa, I think I need to reshare because we’re going deep here.” And that carried us the entire three days. And the following three days, into the next year.

Your vulnerability and your ability to go deep. The next day, people were crying. It just continued on; it was a ripple effect. But it takes one person, especially in New England, where you have this very, you know, stoic, restrained, they don’t really share their emotions. People are religious here, weirdly, but not expressive, like Puritan. You just allowed us to feel so comfortable. Your testimony and how brave you were in sharing it. You just did it with such confidence that no matter who heard it, this was your story. I had known you at that point for almost two years and didn’t know any of this about you. So, thank you.

Diannely Antigua:

Well, I think SeaCHANGE helped make that space possible, where I could feel comfortable being vulnerable. And then my vulnerability then invited others to be vulnerable. And I guess, Beth, tell us your story. Tell us your path to art and the conference.

Beth Tener:

Oh, sure. Thanks. Well, we were talking about where this was held was in Green Acre, which is in Eliot, Maine, which is right on a big tidal river that separates New Hampshire and Maine near Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

I had gotten to know some of the folks working there and this center is pretty remarkable place. I want to name that as part of the story because the land and the space is, to me was as much a part of what made the magic of that gathering.

Green Acre was founded over 100 years ago by a woman visionary named Sarah Farmer, who had a vision of this beautiful white inn on a hill overlooking green lawns going down to a river. She wanted this to be a place where people of all backgrounds and religions, and identities could gather and talk about peace and the issues of the day. So that has been in place for over 100 years, it’s now a center of Baha’i learning.

So Najee and some of his colleagues there, they reached out to me, we’ve been getting to know each other working on some antiracism work together.

I would say, part of what my creativity is about is about creating conversation spaces and weaving communities and people. I love connecting people and ideas and designing ways for people to be together that create a sense of safety and a belonging, so that completely different things can happen than would normally happen at a cocktail party where the conversation stays superficial or a workplace where it’s the same boring meetings. I feel like so much of what we’re doing now is just going through the motions and the incredible depths and truths, and aliveness and creative gifts stay dormant. It doesn’t come into spaces of conferences because it’s mostly everyone sitting and listening 98% of the time, and then the coffee hour is the exciting time.

I like understanding the patterns of nature and of life and of indigenous practice and many cultural practices that are around. How do we gather and create spaces for people to fully be themselves but also be more together? Like in your story Diannely, we are inheritors of many generations of very toxic community practices. I ask, “okay, we know that’s the bad but what’s the upside? What is it possible as creators? How do we create spaces where we get to experience something profoundly different, like what you shared Najee, from your childhood with the mega church?” I think we’re so individualistic, we often don’t even realize what we could be doing in the same space of an hour or three hours or three days together. We could use that time very differently.

So when folks at Green Acre approached me about wanting to do this conference about the arts, I was like, “Yeah, let’s do it.” And I already had a lot of the methods and ideas and had done this kind of hosting. So it became a really natural collaboration. And we did it very creatively, thinking through, what are the questions we want to explore together and coming up with those.

So Najee, I’d like to send it back to you in terms of, you know, when you think about that first year, like help the listeners understand, like, what is a typical day of the conference?

Najee Brown:

Yeah, I’m not giving so much backstory about the conference because I know we have another episode on it. So I don’t want to repeat information here.

But the typical day of a SeaCHANGE conference is you come in around 9am. There’s coffee and snacks waiting for you, and you have your coffee hour and get to know people who are there. Everyone’s very friendly. If you come on the first day, or the second day, it’s different. On the second day, which is where things really get started, you start off with a movement meditation, which kind of centers everyone together. Honestly the most important thing is to get moving. It’s really beautiful for those who have been artists but are uncomfortable with their bodies or haven’t been used to moving with their bodies… it really wakes something up for you. After that, we take a break and then we start off with another Fire Starter conversation, which is different from a panel conversation, because the whole purpose of it is to generate conversation with all of us. So we start the Fire Starter conversation, there is usually one host and one facilitator and three people who are not necessarily experts on the question, but they’re sharing their findings through a personal story. Then after that, we do something like a 1-2-4-All, which allows you to think privately about what you just heard, pair up with a partner then pair up with a group and then we all come together and share our findings. Then there’s usually a lunch.

The beautiful thing about Green Acre is you have the ability to be inside or outside, which is really beautiful. After lunch, you break into workshops. So that can be a poetry workshop with the Diannely, a dance workshop. You can go through a vocal workshop. It’s so many incredible workshops, and they’re not there to teach you anything specific, but there to kind of reignite that fire that you had. You find artists who have been scared of poetry or who probably had a bad experience with poetry. So they just did dance, then joined Diannely’s workshop, and walk away feeling like” Wow, I feel like I can write a poem again.” So allows us artists who are used to one medium experience another medium.

Then we do one more thing called an Open Space, which allows you to have further conversations about anything you wanted to discuss. It’s like having your own conference within the conference. After that we will have anything from a bonfire to a dance party to an open mic to say anything you’d like. It just allows you to become closer and get to know more about the people you’ve been with for the three days.

Beth Tener:

Thank you, Najee, for sharing that. I think what you’ll hear in that is a lot of the conference is the audience connecting with each other in a lot of different combinations. So it’s this idea of cross pollinating a lot of conversations. I would just add that one other part of the design is that each day has one question that is the overarching theme. I love that it’s a question. So like, for example, one of the questions was, “how can the arts be used as a way to grow and experience empathy?” “What would it take for our community create a resource rich environment for artists?”

So they’re kind of big juicy questions and I would often see these small new friendships, even just from the whoever ended up talking in a small group. You’re able to meet people and talk about something you all care about in a way that’s so different than just, you know, Q&A with a keynote speaker.

I’d love to hear Diannely, your experience of it.

Diannely Antigua:

Beth, you mentioned friendships and that’s something that’s been really important for me and my experience with the conference. I think, being an artist of color, and in a primarily, you know, white state, it’s hard to find, like-minded people, and also hard to find other people of color, too. So I was really glad that Najee asked me to be a part of the conference. And it’s has been really life changing the friendships that I’ve made because of it. One of my friends that I made, I remember, we saw each other across the room while we were doing a movement, and dance workshop. And I just knew that person will be my friend. That’s how I met Andrea.

Then there was an open space conversation that we had about hair. I was a part of that group and we talked about curly hair and the struggles, the beauty. That’s where I met Ben and Elizabeth from NH Panther. I’ve since then partnered with them on various events, and I wouldn’t have ever been able to facilitate those connections on my own, I didn’t really even know where to start. I didn’t know where to look. I felt like SeaCHANGE took out the guesswork of where to look for your people and brought all the people there to one room. It was so easy to make those connections with everyone and the space was ripe for that right for friendship, and ripe for true, genuine connection.

I think there are spaces that feel phony and the way that they manufacture connection. But this felt so genuine and true. It just excites me. Every time that I go to the conference to see these people that I’ve met over the course of these two years, I’m excited to see who shows up this year. And, you know, will they take my workshop again? Like Najee mentioned, you know, someone’s like, “hey, I thought I couldn’t write poetry”, and then they take my workshop and then they say, “Oh, okay, I can write a poem.” That’s truly the magical part of the conference…  just everything that it brings to you, and you don’t have to necessarily work to find it. The SeaCHANGE conference brings that to all of the participants and the facilitators as well. Like, I’m sure, Beth for you and Najee, it’s everything that you glean from it. I can only imagine how beautiful and wonderful that is.

Najee Brown:

It’s beautiful to hear that because as a facilitator, I find that the participants probably get a lot more. Because we’re making connections, and there is small talk but we’re really holding the space. The connections that you guys make… I’m seeing people hugging with tears in their eyes on Sunday, or we’re in the middle of something and two people have to leave, and everyone stops, all 35-45 people stopped to just say goodbye to those two people. It’s very touching.

You’re right, I have to agree. Like what I experienced the first time when I moved up to the Seacoast was loneliness. I had never felt lonely before. I felt an abundance of love coming from New York City. You know, even when I wasn’t a part of the church anymore, the connections that I had, I still had them. So there was always places I can go, I can always go to my grandma’s house. She will cook me a bunch of food, family would just show up and it was just always this abundance of love. I didn’t feel that when I moved to the seacoast, I felt very lonely. But I love the fact that the SeaCHANGE conference can provide a space for people where they don’t feel lonely anymore.

And that phony love is something that is very, very strong everywhere because you have these transactional relationships where, “Wow, you’re a person of color. You’re a poet. Oh, okay, I’m doing this poetry event, and we need diversity. Please come and do your poem.” And you kind of feel like almost like a product, not necessarily like a person and I’ve experienced that so many times… just feeling like I’m the answer to someone’s diversity quota. I just want to feel like a person again and allowing an environment like this to exists… nobody even really talks about what they do. Unless you’re doing the workshop, you can walk away not knowing what someone’s creative avenue is until they do the talent show. It’s just about artists coming together. Then after that we can do business together, but this way the relationship is first. So it feels less transactional, more transformational because you’re putting the relationship first. You’re getting to know the person first, not necessarily what they can do for your life.

Beth Tener:

Yeah, it really true, Najee. I’ve been thinking a lot about this idea of transactional versus relational. And, in my work as a facilitator, I do a lot of kind of work with nonprofits and people working on social change. So I’m often on contract, and we are designing gatherings, you know, we have a particular transactional purpose to get work done.

In New England, there is that Puritan work ethic. And so it hangs over our ability to be in community spaces because we have to be using every minute to be productive. “What is this leading to and what are the desired outcomes?”

What is so beautiful in SeaCHANGE is we are all advancing our inquiry into these fundamental questions we all care about, right? So there’s a bigger purpose of learning together about arts and healing and social change and learning from these other creators and being in their midst. But there’s also just a spaciousness and a freedom. Partly why I love open space, which you were mentioning, Diannely, about the conversation about hair. It’s also a freedom, that the people in the room can bubble up what’s most on their minds and meaningful in this moment, and invite, “hey, I want to talk about this. And it’s like, alright, anyone who wants to go talk about that, join Diannely on that corner of the porch.”

“Anyone who wants to talk about this, someone else raise that issue or that question, and it’s your freedom to go join whichever one you want, or none.” And then if you’re in one, if you no longer feel like you’re learning or contributing, you can fill in permission to go to another one. So to me, there’s also a freedom in the design of the space that is not common in most of the gatherings that we put together, or spaciousness, I guess. But curious, your thoughts on that, Diannely? Najee?

Najee Brown:

All of that? You’re absolutely right. It is that freedom. Also, just the freedom to just walk around the campus, the most important ingredient to SeaCHANGE is the space that you mentioned, the history of the space, once you’re driving down that lawn, it’s like a breath of fresh air. And to leave a conference, to just to walk around. I’ve seen a lot of people say, “well, that conversation was very heavy for me, so let me just go sit somewhere and relax.” And you can’t do that at a hotel. You can’t on some manicured lawns, just put a blanket down, look at the clouds… like you really can’t do that.

I must say that the number one thing that I love about Green Acre is that a lot of organizations are doing this for money, a lot of organizations are doing this for recognition. Green Acre does things out of the spirit of just making the environment a better place. It’s very spiritual for them, and it’s also the meaning of Green Acre. That’s what Sarah Farmer wanted the space to be: a place where we have the conversations of the day. And they really do their best to live up to that. You feel that. You feel the relaxation of this place is not in it for the money. They’re not in it for the notoriety. They’re just in it because they want to. They want people to be there.

So we do provide financial assistance to some people who may want to experience the teacher conference, but don’t have the financial ability to do so. So it just takes a load off. I know a lot of artists who can benefit from, especially being in Boston now, there are a lot of artists that can benefit just from having conversations like this. And if they haven’t experienced this I’ll be inviting them and if they need financial assistance, it’s good to know that Green Acre is able to do that.

Diannely Antigua:

Yeah, I think I’ll just maybe add a little bit more on that. I’ve attended several different conferences like throughout my professional career like writers’ conferences. And this conference is very, very different. The space that we create is unlike any other, truly. When I’m at these other conferences… there’s this competitiveness to kind of flaunt your knowledge and it’s very overwhelming, you know? “I need to prove to the other professionals in the space that I know poetry, that I’m just as much a scholar as they are.” And that’s really exhausting to have to prove yourself over and over again, every time you go to another writers’ conference, at least in my case.

I already struggle with impostor syndrome. For me, going to these conferences just makes me want to retreat even further into myself, as opposed to the SeaCHANGE Conference where I don’t need to prove to anyone I’m a poet. It’s just “oh, she’s a poet. Cool. All right, like, that’s it.” I don’t need to even talk about my publications. That’s not important in that space. I mean, it’s important, but it’s not necessary, I guess is more what I mean.

I think people just take each other at face value, you say what you are, and I believe you. And that’s a really beautiful thing… that we can enter a space and just exist and we don’t have to prove to one another, our value, or why we should be there. It’s just, you’re there. And you’re there in community with others. That’s what matters about the experience. So I’ve been really, really grateful for that opportunity to just exist in a space. And my imposter syndrome is not allowed to come with me to SeaCHANGE. She stays at home. And I don’t need her there. She doesn’t belong there. And I’m really grateful that I can leave her at home.

Beth Tener:

That’s beautiful. I’ve heard several stories of people who came who were quietly creative, but would never ever name themselves as an artist, and that being around so many other people that are like them, and that they can see in their full humanity who are… you know, that sort of the mirroring and “oh, wow, look what she’s stepping into, right?” That following SeaCHANGE, they really like stepped into their gifts like Victoria Carrington, right? She’s just did a TED Talk with you, Diannely, and opened her own design business. And that night, she helped me with my logo, like, I see that as it sort of like courageously amplifying, giving people the courage to see that pathway for themselves.

Najee Brown:

It’s interesting, because we were doing a constellation on SeaCHANGE and we were talking about giving from an endless well. And that’s the spirit of SeaCHANGE right there. Like everyone’s giving from this endless well… we’re all just giving without the fear of not having enough, without the fear, we’re just giving of ourselves, sharing our knowledge. And no one is more important than the other.

For me, as an artist’s administrator, the most important thing when working with artists is looking at them and treating them like people first. That is the most important thing: seeing them and connecting with them as a person. You’re not what you create. That’s why most celebrities don’t want to even be around regular people… because they see the art and they put them on the pedestal. It’s like, you’re right, it doesn’t matter. You wrote two books, it’s great. I’m very happy for you. But your heart matters first, you know, the condition of your life matters first. And sometimes when you see art as a commodity, or something to be sold and bought, you’re not looking at the person, you’re not looking at what they need. And that’s what I love about SeaCHANGE. We’re giving from an endless well, like Green Acre’s giving the land, the artists are giving. And anyone that comes in feeling like a know it all… they’re stripped away from that once they feel the vulnerability of other people. You slowly melt away. You’re like, wow, I could let my hair down here. I can be funny here. It’s a beautiful thing.

Beth Tener:

Yeah, it reminds me of an exercise. I forget where I learned it. But I sometimes do it with groups where I have people mill around, and I say “okay, now I invite you to just walk around this room, like you’re an expert.” And then they walk around for a while, like they’re an expert, they have all the answers. And you know, often you see the chin going up a little bit. And then we switch, and we say, “okay, now I just want you to walk around as someone who is curious.” And it’s just you know; you feel the whole energy in the room change. And there’s people are smiling at each other, and they’re more drawn to look at the other people. And so that shift from having to prove your expertise or show up with all the answers as opposed to showing up with a conversation about the same question. Each of us might have part of the answer. It’s that spirit, right? Or we may discover something new together.

Diannely Antigua:

Yeah, absolutely. Curiosity really is the key, I think. It’s thinking about curiosity. It’s one of the foundational aspects of this particular type of therapy that I do. It’s called internal family systems. And you know, talking about art and healing, and that connection alone, for me is so, so important. How walking around the room with curiosity versus walking around the room thinking that you’re an expert… there’s such a difference in that. And when we are curious about other people, we allow ourselves to be more curious about ourselves, as well. And I think that’s the key to healing and, and that’s the key to art as well is that curiosity.

Beth Tener:

So as people listen to this, of course we want to encourage people to come to SeaCHANGE! So if you’re so drawn. It’s September 13 to 15^th this year (2024).

The questions we’ll be exploring this time are, “how can we design spaces where creators feel at home?” Which is a lot of the theme of our conversation today. “How can the arts be a bridge between different cultures and promote new understanding and healing?” And “how can the arts help us grow healthy and generous communities that we want to live in?“

So September 13 to 15^th in Elliot, Maine, and I’ll have the links in the show notes about how you can register.

And I guess I would just ask both of you, you know, as we think about today’s conversation, and the listeners who might be listening from all different places, how could we create more of the spaces that have the spirit of SeaCHANGE, like for creators and artists in our communities? What do you think are the key themes that people could try at home? It’s just one of our Living Love Podcasts. Orientations is always like; how can you pick this up and learn from it and try something?

Diannely Antigua:

You know, you don’t need a conference to do this, to create more spaces like this, I think you could create a space like this, even with just one other person. It could be someone that you see quite often, it could be the bartender at the bar, or it could be someone that you see at a bus stop, or someone that’s a dear friend of yours, it could be a stranger or someone that’s a beloved, and just start a conversation. I think that’s how we begin to create more spaces like this so we can feel at home. And similarly, to what I said about curiosity, I think if we bring curiosity to all of our relationships, and all of our connections, I think that we’re inviting that fundamental feeling that SeaCHANGE creates into our lives. That’s how I feel like we can try this at home, even just with a friend to start sort of vulnerable conversation with them. Truly ask them about their day. You know, it’s not like just “oh, how are you? Oh, good, good, good.” No, like, “where’s your heart today? Tell me about that. Where’s your heart? How’s your heart feeling today?” Just changing the question is like the key to it. Really?

Najee Brown:

Oh, I love that. I do. I’ve been in the creative marriage with my best friend. Since I was maybe 17 or 18. I’m 33 now. So 15 or 16 years. We didn’t start off as best friends. We kind of started off working together, being videographers, photographers for the first company I ever started called Mindless Thoughts. And now he has his own business. I have my own businesses but he lives in LA and I live in Boston. We’ve been meeting up in New York at least three to four times a year. We see each other, we create together, we’re still creating together to this day. He’s the number one person the moment I do a photo shoot, I send all my work to him. He looks at it, tells me great job. I do the same exact thing for him. And now we’re at the point where we’re just saying “Great job” back and forth to each other. But having that creative marriage, it’s like iron sharpening iron. I don’t exist without him. He says to me, like he got this job for TMZ. And I commented on his Instagram posts, and he said, “You’re responsible for just helping me grow.” And honestly, there were times I taught him photography. I stopped doing photography. Then I rejoined. If he never would have continued on when I rejoined photography, I would have never had made it because he taught me everything that was new about photography when I came back to it… just having that marriage. It just makes my life so much different. Because I know he’s going to tell me the truth.

No person can create alone. You start to hate what you’re looking at if you’re constantly creating on your own. Even when I’m writing a play or taking a picture, or editing something for a long period of time, I start to think it’s crap, until I give it to someone else. And they say, “Wow, this is beautiful.” I think it’s important. And one of the things that you can do at home, is honestly find that creative marriage partner, that’s just going to tell you the truth, that’s going to love you, that’s going to help you grow, that’s not going to get jealous of you, you can’t have someone that’s jealous of you, you have to have someone that you can share both good news and bad news with. That is the number one thing that has made me successful: not necessarily me, it’s who I’ve been in partnership with and who I decide to have that communion with (in terms of my creativity). It is so, so important. And I see creative marriage is developing in the SeaCHANGE circle. And that, for me is beautiful. And like what Beth has with Green Acre, that’s a creative marriage.

Beth Tener:

I love that: creative marriage. I haven’t heard that term before.

Between first and second year, we created a role for me at Green Acre called the Community Artist in Residence. So all about the art of weaving community, and we were able to take a lot of elements of SeaCHANGE, and bring them to a lot of the other conferences that they did and then just continued to evolve it. And so part of what I’ve been seeing being really rich, and it’s maybe a practice within a creative marriage or friendship, like you’re talking about Diannely, is these cycles of reflection of action and then reflection and like cooking up the next thing, and then you try it, and then you debrief about it and then you try again.

In the background of what makes SeaCHANGE really special is that we have a design team that’s really close and tight. We spend a fair amount of time before the event, thinking what we want it to be. And so even if you’re doing a dinner party, where you want a different quality of conversation to come in, having a team to hold it with you, it’s like a beautiful way to co-create and learn together and build friendship. Often I think people do book clubs and things where it’s like, “Let’s gather and talk about something, talk about ideas.”

But there’s something to the friendships that develop around the creative process, where you’re talking about your intentions and what you want to do, and then doing stuff, and then circling back and reflecting and having the same group of friends or one friend or group of friends that hold that together, I think is also really powerful. I think of it like the nest in nature. If nature grows anything, there’s a nest, and then there’s the eggshell and then there’s the warm bird on it. It’s not just an individual out there in the cold individualistic environment. We need to nest and support each other like that, with the warmth of the community.

Najee Brown:

Absolutely right.

Diannely Antigua:

Well said.

Beth Tener:

Well maybe that’s the note to end on. Would each of you might like to share where folks want to learn more about your work, any websites or anything we can we’ll put stuff in the show notes, but anything you want to name here that you’d like to share?

Najee Brown:

As Beth said, I’m a photographer and playwright, I do work with an organization called Theater for the People. So you can go to theaterforthepeople.org.

I also am the Artistic Director of the Multicultural Arts Center located in Cambridge. We do a lot of diverse artistic programming; everything from Afrofuturism fashion shows to Indian classical dance. You can literally come here every week and see something totally different in the space will be completely transformed. This is the best job I’ve ever had. And it’s amazing to help grow the arts community on the Sea Coast and now I feel myself doing the same thing in Massachusetts and Cambridge and the Greater Boston area.

Also, I’m a photographer with 20 years of experience, you can find my work najeevisuals.com or you can find me on Instagram at najeevisuals.

Beth Tener:

Or see him at SeaCHANGE!

Diannely?

Diannely Antigua:

Yeah, well you can also find me at SeaCHANGE this year. So that’s one place you might be able to chat more about poetry and other things.

But you can find more information about me and my work at diannelyantigua.com or my Instagram at nellfell13. And my podcast is Bread and Poetry. You can listen to that on all streaming platforms.

I had a second book that came out called Good Monster. You can find that online at some, you know, independent booksellers as well. Bookshop.org is the website that I always recommend.  If you’re going to buy books online, please buy them from there. My book, Good Monster just came out, and I’ll be doing events throughout the next year, maybe even a city near you, you can find more information on thatdiannelyantigua.com/events.

Beth Tener:

That is great. Thank you both.

You can also look up SeaCHANGE Conference. Seachangeconference.org is the website for the conference itself, that is where you can register for this year.

So with that, I want to thank you both. This has been a wonderful conversation and brought out other things I’d never thought about. So I really appreciate this.

Thanks, again for being here today. And I do hope you’ll dig into the show notes. I have a lot of great links there.

So hope you’ll be here next time, we are going to be talking about “what it means to find a sense of home in a new community.” With me will be Kile Adumene. She is someone who has the experience. She was on an earlier podcast, but she grew up in Nigeria in a village environment there and had to come to the US as a refugee. So she’s has the experience both of African culture in the village but also then what it means to integrate into America and does a lot of work now bringing together immigrants and others in community in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Also Elisabeth Romero will be with us in dialogue and she’s someone who has a mother who has an immigrant multiracial background. And she was someone who moved 13 times as a kid. So she really understands “how do you come into a new community? And what does it mean to find a sense of home?” And so really interesting insights for those in those positions. And then also those of us who are like “how do we make our communities more welcoming to newcomers and integrate people in so everyone can feel a sense of home.”

So I look forward to seeing you next time and thanks again for listening.