TALMBAT Co-Creation & Imagination Program + Meet Saachi Gupta!
🤝 Now, we build! 🤝 Time to gather for our community-building coalition and *finally* meet each other!
Hey! How are you feeling? Are you taking good care of yourself this season?
The world is in such a constant state of turmoil and tragedy. While we continue to grieve, fight, advocate, survive, and mobilize, please make sure that you are taking time to pour into yourself as well.
If you haven’t yet, take a moment to grab some water and something to eat. When you’re ready, come on back! I have some exciting news to share about the first TALMBAT Co-Creation & Imagination Program!
As the seasons change and we prepare for moments of gathering, it feels like the perfect time to really start building our space together.
Last year, while having the first one-on-one conversations to build TALMBAT, I asked members to imagine your dream community. The responses were beautifully detailed and will help inspire the future of our organization.
💭 Here are a few of them to keep in mind as we begin to co-create our communal oasis:
“A community of creatives whose work I am inspired by and truly love… and diverse creatives, whether that means diverse in the way we create and the kinds of stories we tell, and the kinds of ways we choose to tell these stories. … A group of people who have the same kind of mindset, but are not afraid to be tested and not afraid to be open-minded about their own beliefs.”
— Selani “Fran” Thomas (@selanifranchesca) (OG TALMBAT Member, 2022)
“I think to find a group of friends that you feel so safe and so loved in, like the fact that you can forget [that] the world outside exists. It’s just so beautiful…because I know that they accept me for who I am.”
— Saachi Gupta (@saachisassified) (OG TALMBAT Member, 2022)
“A dream community would be any that’s build on collaboration, that’s built on [a] kind of mutual respect and courtesy. People would be present for each other. They would be aware of each other’s needs as well as their own. People look out for each other.”
— Kosi Daniel (@afroresonance) (OG TALMBAT Member, 2022)
To continue envisioning our community spaces, and designing our upcoming platform, we will be having our first series of the TALMBAT Co-Creation & Imagination Conversations — the Coalition Building Edition. It will be an opportunity to connect with TALMBAT members and fuel the foundations of our platform through collective conversation. A chance for you to share your dreams for storytelling as we meet with fellow members around the world, talk about your work/ideas/passions, and help to craft the foundation of TALMBAT as we prepare for the coming year. The group conversation will be in real-time (via video conferencing) to create plans for our 2024 TALMBAT Community Launch.
Please, as soon as you are able, take a moment to complete this poll with some times that you are available so that we can find a time that works best for everyone to meet within the coming weeks! It would be amazing for all of our members to be in attendance, and to see everyone’s faces and hear your voices!
So excited to see you all soon! As always, let me know if you have any questions.
Comment below to let me know if you plan to be there, or just to say hi!
Now, for our first community spotlight…
Community Spotlight: Saachi Gupta
Saachi Gupta (she/they) is a writer and artist from Mumbai, India. She is also the founder of Moonflower COVID Relief and Push up Daisies. Her writing, which centers her experiences as a queer woman based in India, has been featured on Malala Fund, Dismantle Magazine, The Wire, and more. An extensive list of her work is available on her website.
What does storytelling and community mean for you as a member of TALMBAT?
From a young age, I have believed that art is a collaborative process: every project I participate in has always centered and seeked out this sense of community. When I first started writing professionally at 16, it was to share my experiences as a young queer person in India, and find a place within the queer community. To this day, I continue to do this with my writing, which revolves primarily around culture and identity. My magazine Push up Daisies aimed to normalise grief and community grieving by sharing stories and art about loss from around the world. Moonflower COVID Relief—a series of creative events I organised in 2021 to raise funds for marginalized communities in India—also had community at its heart. Storytelling, I believe, is the best way to preserve and sustain communities: it is what we as a species have been doing for centuries. When we share stories, we make art out of the mundane. When we share stories, we inspire empathy, love, strength, and fierceness.
Saachi is truly a force — such a talented and passionate human being — and we are so incredibly proud to have them be a member of our community (a TALMBAT OG Member at that!).
Would you like to be spotlighted as a TALMBAT community member? Fill out our Community Spotlight Survey here!
Thank you for reading! So excited for what’s next for our community as we imagine and build the future of storytelling together.
(P.S. Stay tuned for a BIG announcement coming up in our next newsletter! 👀)
Take care!
— Jasmine Lewis, your Founder & Chief Community Vanguard