CFM’s new year-long popular education program & social justice project incubator begins this September. Designed for emerging & established grassroots leaders, it provides participants with resources that support the sustainability & power of their work, while also building deeper cross-issue understanding & solidarity through the intensive cohort model.

The first 9 months consist of weekly workshops in social movement history & analysis, the arts, healing practices, and practical skills (full workshop list here: www.creatingfreedommovements.org/workshops.html), followed by 3 months of mentorship as participants cultivate projects that increase justice & joy in their communities. Projects can contribute to existing organizations or be new, based on community priorities.

The projects incubated through our program allows us to go wide in our impact, while the program year allows us to go deep, building the kind of cross-issue relationships that are crucial to deep societal transformation. Interlocking systems of oppression are good at keeping us apart, but by spending substantive time together on a weekly basis for a year, participants in our program build meaningful relationships with people different than themselves in multiple ways, thus strengthening the local activist ecosystem and the collaborations needed to grow our collective power. (We just accepted our first cohort: 28 people who are truly diverse in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality, age, issue areas they’re passionate about, level of experience, and modalities through which they work (direct action, education, service provision, the arts, policy, organizing, etc.) - we are excited to embark on this transformative year with them!)

Finally, alongside deepening our understanding & relationships, and supporting actions that increase justice, our workshops focus on cultivating joy. We believe joy is the antidote to overwhelm and paralysis, prevents burnout, and attracts more people into this work.