Despite all the struggles and stressors of life in lockdown, from teaching and parenting, cooking and cleaning while home-schooling and working from home, a few surprises have made this shelter-in-place brighter.
The latest, an invite from Veronica Montes and Marianne Villanueva to co-facilitate a workshop with The Digital Sala. “The Spark: history and the filipinx imagination” set for this Sunday 3 May 2020, 5:30 PM (PST) via Zoom includes short reading from Montes, Villanueva, and yours truly, along with activities and discussion to generate new work with some engaging prompts. We ask if you can spread the word and hope to see you this Sunday evening!
The Digital Sala is a virtual Filipinx literary festival happening on various platforms throughout April 2020 and most likely beyond. The Digital Sala is a collaborative, decentralized, and grassroots effort initiated by writers, artists, and organizers committed to supporting each other and our broader communities. The Digital Sala is a radically flexible, build-as-we-go-along, open-ended effort. Thus far, we’ve hosted organizing strategy sessions, readings, an artist conversation, and a pop culture hour; we’ve supported and publicized open mics, workshops, and other aligned events happening in our communities; and we’re looking forward to an expanding calendar of casual, impromptu, formal or informal sessions, readings, workshops, writing groups, panels, and other types of gatherings. The Digital Sala keeps a wide-open and ongoing invitation to you, your ideas, your needs, and your dreams, and we encourage you to show up, gather, co-build, co-create, and hold space for our communities. We’re all here to support each other, and we plan to archive these events and experiences and build resources toward future initiatives and collaborations. The Digital Sala is a peoples’ project, a collective labor of love. We still need as much help as we can get to grow and sustain this already dynamic and crucial space. We recognize and respect everyone’s varying capacities. We welcome your support in all aspects of building and sustaining The Digital Sala: logistics; programming; online security; design; publicity; social media; etc. The Digital Sala is here for all of us!
Rashaan Alexis Meneses 