The Clownful Quaker: Strengthening Our Imagination in Service of the Beloved Community

If you are seeking funds or alternate payment options to participate in this program, please wait to register and first complete our Financial Assistance Application.

More and more uncertainty looms in our future, and our minds and hearts are pulled towards despair, apathy, and separation. As a 400-year-old faith tradition rooted in transformation, the Religious Society of Friends has been called by our belief in a more liberated world to not rest in hopelessness. Instead, we are called to allow our hearts to break open from what we see and feel, to let our lives speak, and to listen to that of God in ourselves and those around us.

Our imaginations are going to be key in this next chapter of our individual and collective journey, and being spiritually fortified as active agents of our imaginations and creativity is becoming more and more essential. In this workshop, join Quaker clown Dwight Dunston in activities, conversations, and embodied practices that give voice and movement to your highest dreams, and stretch you to go to the edges of your creativity, as we build the Beloved Community.

If you would like to join us for dinner after the event, please sign up at least 24 business hours in advance.

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Leader

Dwight Dunston is a West Philly-based facilitator, hip-hop artist, educator, and activist who has brought his creativity, care, and compassion to schools, community centers, retirement homes, festivals, and stadiums all over the country and internationally. He is the host of Pendle Hill’s podcast, The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope, and a teacher of Pendle Hill’s Spring Term.

Donna Oblongata, who will be supporting the facilitation of this workshop as an elder, is a critically-acclaimed performer, social practice artist, and award-winning writer. Her work has been described as, “big, bold, and endlessly impressive” – Baltimore City Paper and, “balancing on the thrilling precipice of pleasure and danger” – New Orleans Box Office. She has performed at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Ars Nova (NY), and shared the stage with Mikhail Baryshnikov in Slava’s Snow Show. As a writer, she has received a MacDowell Fellowship and won awards for her short fiction. Her protest art in support of Gaza was recently acquired by the Jewish Museum in Washington D.C. Her social practice project Vote By Pal can be seen at VoteByPal.com. As a performer, she has toured her own work extensively throughout North America, Europe and New Zealand for almost two decades.