What is Culture Tending?
(Some) Emerging Definitions & Characteristics
These emerging definitions and characteristics were crafted by Crystal Mason, Vanessa Rodriguez Minero, Wendy Martinez-Marroquin, and Jason Wyman (aka Queerly Complex) through deep listening, appreciative inquiry, iterative application, and pluralistic meaning making over a period of 10 months. They represent a multi-generational, inter-racial, cross-territorial approach to the cultivation of collective wisdom, which honors the complexity inherent to intersectional coalition building. Our deepest understanding is: There is no one way; there are many ways. And (still) we must discern (over and again) what we desire to cultivate.
Over the course of our combined lives on this abundant planet, we have co-created with frontline COVID responders across California facilitating equitable access to vaccines; Black, Brown, Queer, and Trans laborers organizing their unions; Black, Immigrant, Queer, and Trans artists and creatives seeking peer-based personal and professional development; intergenerational, multi-racial, cross-geographic youth media practitioners collectively (re)defining media, literacy, and co-creation towards pluralistic understanding. Our intersectional communities and innovative approach towards Culture Tending ensures that our praxis is highly participatory, adaptive, and generative, resulting in wider and deeper understanding and meaning-making.
We invite you to read, question, reflect, and make your own meaning inspired by (Some) Emerging Culture Tending Definitions and Characteristics. We know they become stronger, more adaptive, and wider spread the more each of us contributes to our personal and collective understanding.
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We will be publishing short videos and adaptive resources, facilitating peer exchanges, and hosting a day-long virtual retreat in 2025. Our goal is to co-create a small, engaged community of diverse, intersectional Culture Tenders and harness our collective wisdom towards articulating a pluralistic Culture Tending Praxis of collective liberation.
SOME EMERGING DEFINITIONS
Culture Tending
Culture Tending is both a concept and a set of emerging, adaptive practices (aka a Praxis) that aid individuals, groups, and organizations in reflecting upon their current culture, dreaming of ones they desire, and co-creating pathways towards cultures that foster mutual exchange, care, and support.
Our practices of Culture Tending cultivate safe, valued, and connected environments through establishing shared values, norms, and practices that counteract White Supremacy Culture. In our work individually, collectively, and with our clients, we have witnessed how intentionally tending to our culture leads to spaces that encourage vulnerability, conversation, meaning-making, cooperation, and pluralism. This, in turn, helps us face these often chaotic and constantly changing times in ways that affirm:
We All Belong.
Our Culture Tending Praxis integrates participatory action research, peer-based education, somatics, and social practice art making into a process that disrupts biased thinking and patterns, facilitates introspection and reflection, and generates collective dreaming, wisdom, and growth.
It helps our diverse, intergenerational, and multi-racial group and clients navigate complex social dynamics and empowers all to apply these practices in our daily lives.
The resulting tools and frameworks are adaptable and foster the creation of braver, safer, more accessible spaces that prioritize equity, care, and respect in our personal lives, with each other, and in our communities. By continuously tending to our culture, we co-create sustainable, generative, more inclusive environments that move us further and further away from the harmful norms of White Supremacy Culture.
Praxis
Praxis is a process of articulating personal, familial, cultural, and / or systemic behaviors, beliefs, values, knowledge, and practices and applying them towards personal, collective, and / or systemic change, actions, and / or outcomes. Praxis can be represented as a path with guideposts that aid you (singular and / or plural) in understanding when or where you may be veering away from who or how you desire to be. Praxis offers opportunities and mechanisms by which to pause, dream, and be, so that you can move from reacting to change to responding to it in ways that deepen understanding and better align intentions to impact.
White Supremacy Culture
White Supremacy Culture is a culture of racism centered around the belief that whiteness is superior to all. It is defined by a legal system designed to privilege white people and their rights to property (land, intellectual, and otherwise) in education and research, health and wellness, politics and economics, norms and standards, arts and culture, and storytelling and history.
It is maintained by characteristics of:
"fear,
“one right way,
“either / or & the binary,
“denial & defensiveness,
“right to comfort & fear of conflict,
“individualism,
“progress is more & quantity over quality,
“worship of the written word, and
“urgency."
We believe and know that everyone has the capacity to perpetuate White Supremacy Culture, and undoing White Supremacy Culture begins with acknowledging its existence and naming how and where it shows up in our personal lives, organizations, and society while simultaneously co-creating / re-creating ways of gathering and be-ing in community free from White Supremacy Culture.
This definition was crafted for AllThrive Education’s Virtual Dream Retreats for The Center at Sierra Health’s COVID Vaccine Equity Cohort.
SOME EMERGING CHARACTERISTICS
Honoring Personal Experiences & Pluralistic Expressions (aka Whole Being)
We believe that we show up as whole people with unique, personal experiences that are expressed in a multitude of ways. Sometimes there are synergies between our personal and collective expressions. Other times there are dissonances. Both offer opportunities to practice how we more wholly make collective meaning and expand or deepen our understanding rather than reduce, silence, or shrink. By honoring both personal experiences and pluralistic expressions, we unflatten perspective and cultivate possibility.
This can be an antidote to White Supremacy Culture because it addresses its characteristics of “one right way,” “either / or & the binary,” and “individualism.”
Co-Creating Space & Time to Pause, Dream, & Be
We are constantly on the go. Our attention is always being demanded by our relatives and neighbors and friends, our jobs and bosses, our society and its mores, our media and technology, and our internal world. Everything around us demands we consume, consume, consume. We know this is manufactured as a means to keep us distracted and divided, constantly hungry while full on empty calories.
We believe taking a moment to pause makes space to dream, which gives us time to (simply) be. This can be an antidote to White Supremacy Culture because it provides an opening to disrupt feelings of “fear” and “urgency.”
Facilitating Reflection, Introspection, & Intentionality
When we have time to be, we can better reflect upon who we’ve been, who we are, and who we want to be. This process of introspection facilitates identifying intentions that can aid us in better articulating a path towards our desired futures and collective dreams. When practiced together, reflection, introspection, and intentionality can aid us in better understanding when the impact of our actions is not reflective of our intentions.
This can be an antidote to White Supremacy Culture because it reduces reactionary “denial & defensiveness” and it eases its characteristic of a “right to comfort & fear of conflict.”
Naming Power Structures, Cultural Dynamics, & Decision-Making Processes (aka Discernment)
Power exists everywhere, and its structure and enforcement has numerous cultural dynamics that play out in how we consider and then make decisions. By better knowing the path we are on and where we want to be heading, we can more clearly see and name when power structures and cultural dynamics may be influencing our decision making. The act of naming something is a way of creating the possibility to change it. This is also known as discernment, or as Crystal Mason reminds our collective, “A lot is put into our mouths, and we get to choose what we swallow and what we spit out.”
This can be an antidote to White Supremacy Culture because it undermines its characteristics of the “right to comfort & fear of conflict” and “progress is more & quantity over quality.”
Willing to Change, to Create It & Be Changed by It
White Supremacy Culture is a constant because it is in every structure we come into contact with. Change is also a constant. When we walk a path / way towards liberation we must be willing to change, especially when we notice characteristics of White Supremacy Culture asserting themselves. An unwillingness to change simply reinforces its characteristics and advances it. A first step then is to not just be willing to change, but to both create the change you desire and to be changed by that change.
This can be an antidote to White Supremacy Culture because it undoes its characteristics of “one right way,” “either / or & the binary,” and “progress is more & quantity over quality.”
Moving at the Speed of Collectivity
While change begets change, which can instigate a process of being, introspection, and discernment, it is also crucial to remember the purpose of Culture Tending: to actually co-create change. That requires taking collective actions. Moving at the speed of collectivity means that while we desire to cultivate trust and ensure mutual understanding through consensus-informed approaches, sometimes the best way to discover both resonance and / or dissonance is to take action. Then, respond to the ripples of those actions. This means sometimes we move slowly with deep intention and lots of space for pluralistic understanding to develop. And sometimes we must act quickly in order to meet a deadline or get something created that we all can then edit, modify, or adapt. There is no one specific speed to collectivity. Rather, speed is informed by the guideposts set on our path / way.
This can be an antidote to White Supremacy Culture because it uproots rugged “individualism,” abolishes “one right way,” and dispels “fear.”
BIOS
CRYSTAL MASON
Crystal Mason (one half of Tree of Change) is a dedicated activist, artist, cultural worker, mediator, and consultant committed to fostering spaces for envisioning and realizing a more just and equitable world. With over three decades of experience, Crystal's work traverses the intersections of race, gender, class, ability, sexuality, art, and culture. With a wealth of experience and a steadfast commitment to equity and justice, Crystal Mason continues to inspire and empower through their multifaceted activism, artistry, & advocacy.
VANESSA RODRIGUEZ MINERO
Vanessa Rodriguez Minero is responsible for coordinating the AllThrive Education team and developing a healthy work culture. Prior to AllThrive Education they worked in city government as a constituent liaison, led recruitment efforts for a national storytelling campaign on IPS and DACA, and supported grants processing at a philanthropy.
They studied government and Mexican American Studies at UT Austin and learned about community care and vulnerable strength from their time as an undocu youth organizer. They believe that the tools and strategies for collective liberation already exist: in the hearts, wisdom, care, & imagination of BIPOC communities.
WENDY MARTINEZ MORROQUIN
In 2018, Wendy Martinez-Morroquin co-founded AllThrive Education in direct response to first-hand discrimination and violence she experienced as an unaccompanied, undocumented immigrant, and in gratitude of the healing and support she received from community organizations. Wendy has 7+ years of experience facilitating empathic learning spaces that enable courageous self-inquiry and holistic growth. She has trained hundreds of city employees, educators, and prospective adoptive parents in equity, inclusion, implicit bias, and cross-cultural relationship and trust building.
Wendy holds a degree in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of California Berkeley, a certificate in teaching Yoga Therapeutics & is a trained Restorative Justice practitioner.
JASON WYMAN
Jason Wyman, also known as Queerly Complex (and one half of Tree of Change and a consultant with AllThrive Education), was born upon the Land of 10,000 Lakes on what E is coming to know as Turtle Island, who has settled on Yelamu, which is also called San Francisco.
Jason's name means healer, or so he's been told since a young child, and they did not believe it until Eir father, Michael (Mike) James Wyman, and him mended their selves and one another as Mike died of mantle cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma across a screen and a country over all of 2020. What E has come to understand as the significance of his name is that healer does not mean healed or (even) healing. Rather, it is a positionality within the cosmos that allows one's self to change & be changed by all that unfolds.
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