Monday, February 24, 2020

CALL for collaborative participants


RE-cultivating Compassion

a creative symposium


How can we cultivate Compassion in a time where empathy abounds 
and Compassion seldom found?

On JUNE 14th  - 16th  (SUNDAY through TUESDAY) 2020, we invite you to explore ways in which we might answer this question through art, movement, music, object making, writing, discussion, activism, and repair.

This multi-day event will consist of a meet & greet session followed by a series of 1 to 2 hour-long focused workshops. On the final evening, all workshop participants will gather to share what they have done in the workshops in a mix and mingle, fluid, happening-style event at which we invite all attending to take part.

(An excerpt of a previous collaborative happening-style event in Berlin, Germany can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/t5mSzmxebys )


The events are held at THE REPAIR ATELIER
located at 16 Church Street, in Providence, RI.

THE REPAIR ATELIER is an art/ design workshop that investigates and activates ideas of repair and reuse. A collaborative space to rethink and reuse discarded and broken objects, ideas, and relationships, transform them and in the process 'repair' not just objects and ideas, but also the communities that form around them.

Repair Atelier website:
Instagram:



Call for collaborative participants:

We are currently seeking individuals and groups interested in sharing ways they cultivate Compassion in their lives and the world through the above mentioned, or perhaps other means, and are interested in exploring this further by facilitating a short workshop.


Please email:


by MONDAY MARCH 30th 2020.

Send a brief description (100 words or less) of what you do and how you understand this as a way of RE-cultivating Compassion.
We will announce a tentative program by Friday May 1st – at which time we will also begin taking RSVPs for workshop participants.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us with any questions.


Meet the production team:

Co-organizing 'RE-cultivating Compassion' are:

Markus Berger (Director of The Repair Atelier and Visual Artist/ Designer)
Markus Berger is a teacher at the Rhode Island School of Design and founder and director of The Repair Atelier. He co-founded and co-edits Int|AR, the Journal on Interventions and Adaptive Reuse, that encompasses issues of preservation, conservation, alteration, and
interventions. His work, research, writing, and teaching is a critique of the modern, pristine and new in architecture and design, and focuses on forms of change such as art and design modifications and interventions in the built environment. Markus is also co-founder of the Full Circle Collaborative, an interdisciplinary group that embraces the circular material economy, thinking for its potential to connect the socio-economical and physical links and appease conflict.
Markus Berger

https://www.risd.edu/people/markus-berger/


Robyn Thomas
Robyn Thomas is a Providence-based artist with an interdisciplinary painting practice.
Presently, she is completing practice-based doctoral research on the impact of personas applied as tools in her painting practice with the University of Plymouth, UK. She has studied Art History, Philosophy, and Pedagogy at the University of Karlsruhe [KIT], was a guest student in the Insitute for Art and Media Theory at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design [HfG], received an MFA in Creative Practice from the University of Plymouth, UK and a BFA in Studio Art/Painting from Kent State University.
Robyn Thomas


Personal experiences and recent world events lead me to consider the difference between empathy and Compassion; how an abundance of 'feeling with' but a deficiency of 'feeling for' others has led us to become devoid of Compassion. From this philosophical contemplation, I have sought ways of cultivating my ability to become more compassionate through my painting practice.


Cilla Vee

Claire Elizabeth Barratt (aka Cilla Vee) is an interdisciplinary performing artist. She is the founding director of Cilla Vee Life Arts, established in the Bronx NY, 2002 – now based in Asheville, NC. Her professional training was received at the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance at Goldsmiths College and the London Studio Centre of Performing Arts in the UK.
She held an apprenticeship with the Isadora Duncan Dance Foundation, NYC, and obtained an MFA in Creative Practice from Plymouth University UK, via the Transart Institute of Creative Research.
Claire is the creator of the Living Art performance pedagogy.
She teaches, performs, and collaborates with artists of all disciplines nationally and internationally.
Claire Elizabeth Barratt


The embodiment of Compassion has been a gradual process in my work. Originating from an aesthetic search for suitable project material, it arrived in the form of the Hindu deity Tara – Goddess of Compassion. Over the years of adopting this role (the Golden Goddess), Compassion has begun to reveal itself to me. I am finally beginning to find ways to direct explorations of this state of being.
Cilla Vee - as the Golden Goddess (Tara - goddess of compassion)

cracks in the atelier walls reveal an underlying layer of gold!


CALL for collaborative participants

RE-cultivating Compassion a creative symposium How can we cultivate Compassion in a time where empathy abounds  and Comp...