Ching-In Chen receives 2020 BIPOC Seed Grant Award on Intersectional Sustainability

IAS faculty member Ching-In Chen was awarded a BIPOC Seed Grant on Intersectional sustainability: Imagining solutions to racial and environmental injustices from the University of Washington Resilience Lab in partnership with the Campus Sustainability Fund. The seed grants support resilience and compassion building initiatives that foster connection and community, educate the UW community and spark dialogue. The selected projects proposed solutions to environmental and societal problems that have a disproportionately negative impact on communities of color, and in particular Black and Indigenous communities.

The grant will fund a UWB cohort of story circle organizers (graduate students and advanced undergraduate students) to help organize and lead virtual story circle conversations for Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) students at UWB in Winter and Spring quarters 2021.

Story circles are a method used in community-based theater to host conversations within communities to surface important community topics and to build relationships across communities. The goal of the UWB story circles are to share experiences and build community and solidarity around environmental and social justice and healing.

In addition, story circle organizers will make creative work reflecting back those conversations for a public performance and installation project, with a goal to create an interactive ritual for community participation.

The grant will fund stipends and materials for story circle organizers, outreach for story circle participants and documentation of the story circles.