Beyond The Mic.
A restorative movement rooted in Hip Hop activism.
Education. Elevation. Collaboration.
“Beyond The Mic.” is more than an initiative.
It’s a movement to promote ongoing individual and collective restoration so that we can all thrive authentically and be great as one.
With creativity as the driver, individuals are emboldened to utilize personal skills as a means to address social obstacles, create collaborative solutions, and overcome challenges together!
We vow to:
Educate: Inform one another, sharing cultural, experiential, intellectual and social capital as a means of communal wealth.
Elevate: Pour into one another, lifting each other up along the way with grace and truth.
Collaborate: Work together across the community, honoring the diverse talents and contributions being cultivated and offered to strengthen the communal infrastructure.
Services
With an educational background in Sociology, as well as 8 years of restorative work experience with schools, community organizations, and government agencies alike, Se’Anna’s mission to serve underserved, underrepresented, historically excluded communities is still a prominent part of her ongoing journey. Along the way, she will always be committed to helping other community-focused institutions and organizations thrive in their service to these communities – whether it be through direct programming or sustaining a healthy, diversified and equitable work environment.
Voices in Verse
(A one-time creative writing workshop; suitable for all ages 12+)
Each of us have a seed of creativity within, and this is the perfect workshop to help water that seed and evolve in the skills necessary to bring out your most authentic creative self.
Participants will go through writing exercises to loosen up their inner-creative before utilizing their newfound skills to draft their own written art based on randomly selected prompts and moods. Participants will then have the opportunity to present their original works to the group and collaborate with others for constructive feedback and inspiration.
Great for group relationship building!
The He[ART] of the Matter
(An SEL-centered creative writing course for school-aged youth)
Creative writing allows us to make sense of the world and generates a unique range of emotional resonance & connectivity between human beings. During this cycle, participants will focus on how creative writing centers identities (who we are), perspectives (How we view and understand the world around us), values (What we need), and purpose (what we’re doing & where we’re going). Participants will choose songs and poems from a pre-selected collection and dissect the central messages of those pieces as a group before taking the time to create their own individual written art based on the knowledge that they obtain.
A Word of the Wise
(A creative writing workshop for seasoned community members aged 55+)
Creative writing allots us the opportunity to tell beautiful stories, make sense of the world and deepen relationships in the name of art. During this 4-week cycle, participants will tap into their best creative selves by learning the basic skills of creative writing and explore the art as a recreational means to stimulate cognition, amplify their voices, sustain self-esteem, and relieve stress. At the end of the cycle, participants will have the chance to invite peers and loved ones to an open-mic style celebration to share their original written art.
Vision Restored
(Community-Centered; Adults, Youth Ages 14+)
Making a plan is the easiest part of resetting and restoring our vision, but if we don’t understand how our perspective contributes to our ability to thrive then we’re liable to remain stagnant.
Throughout this presentation, participants will analyze the power of socialization in how we see ourselves, our roles, and our functional purpose within the social systems that we inhabit. Participants will also reflect on the basis of how personal values, direct relationships, support systems, social environments, resources and having a plan are the strongest contributing factors to our ability to operate in our greatest functional purpose.
Derived from the framework of the guided journal (“Write the Vision, Make it Plain”), this goal-oriented workshop is designed to help individuals create (and re-create) the perspective of what it means to see, solidify and thrive in their greatest functional purpose while setting a foundation for actionable steps.
