Home / Away from Home
Project Description:
Home/Away from Home is a community arts project focusing on local aging, addiction, mental health, and homelessness issues, as gates for compassionate understanding of our own communities in relation to the current global displaced persons crisis.
Through open-ended creative work and focused storytelling practice, Home/Away from Home empowers local schools, community activists, senior centers, congregations, and other groups to become agents for creative engagement with important questions:
Facilitator:
Julie Püttgen is a teaching artist and meditation teacher, and a juried member of the NH Arts in Education and Arts in Healthcare Rosters. Also trained as a hospital chaplain, she is passionate about exploring the intersections of embodied well-being, contemplative practice, and experiential arts. As a first-generation immigrant to the United States, and an avid traveler, she believes deeply in the healing power of diverse & heartfelt dialogue.
Events:
Home/Away from Home is a community arts project focusing on local aging, addiction, mental health, and homelessness issues, as gates for compassionate understanding of our own communities in relation to the current global displaced persons crisis.
Through open-ended creative work and focused storytelling practice, Home/Away from Home empowers local schools, community activists, senior centers, congregations, and other groups to become agents for creative engagement with important questions:
- what are the felt, embodied qualities of Home?
- what might it feel like for you to be thrust into the reality of displacement from Home, through aging, illness, economic duress, persecution, military or humanitarian service, natural disaster, or war?
- if you were displaced, what are the objects, stories, and habits you would want to bring with you? what are the objects, stories, and habits you would want to leave behind?
- what are acceptable and unacceptable losses?
- what are your family’s displacement stories? what are your own?
- how did your ancestors come to live where they did? how did you come to live where you do?
- who are the most recent people to arrive in your community? what are their stories? where did they come from, and what are their reasons for arriving in your community?
- when you despair that there is no place for you in this world, what are the antidotes and resources available to you?
- how are addiction and homelessness related?
- in a settled society, how can we honor the wanderers among us, and the wanderers within us?
- what do displaced people have to teach us about our own lives, in the present moment?
Facilitator:
Julie Püttgen is a teaching artist and meditation teacher, and a juried member of the NH Arts in Education and Arts in Healthcare Rosters. Also trained as a hospital chaplain, she is passionate about exploring the intersections of embodied well-being, contemplative practice, and experiential arts. As a first-generation immigrant to the United States, and an avid traveler, she believes deeply in the healing power of diverse & heartfelt dialogue.
Events:
Light the Way at the Church of Christ at Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH. Jan 20-22, 2017
During the weekend of January 20th to 22nd the Upper Valley Refugee Working Group (UVRWG) will host Light the Way, a space of refuge to raise community awareness of the needs of those seeking shelter among us: refugee families arriving in New Hampshire and Vermont during the coming year, as well as those families seeking refuge already present in our communities. We also wish to acknowledge, at this time of transition and great change, our shared resources in the refuge of community, understanding, and generosity.
On a practical level, every household needs a lamp--or two--to brighten the home! As a gesture of welcome and hope, Light the Way will collect gently used table and floor lamps to be given to resettling refugee households to brighten the years ahead. Do you have one to share? (Other refugee and community household needs will also be posted, and we will be collecting financial contributions for the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program and the Upper Valley Haven.)
Friday, January 20th
5-6:30PM Opening Illumination with "light" refreshments.
Saturday, January 21st
12-1PM Conversation with Wendy Grace, Refugee Liaison for Episcopal Diocese of Rutland How can we help?
1PM Moment of Silence in Solidarity with marches everywhere
1:30-3PM Social Presencing Inauguration with Julie Püttgen and Karen Ganey exploring exile, refuge, and community through embodied movement, art and shared reflection. What do YOU want to inaugurate into the world this weekend? How does exile and refuge play out in your life? What are your commitments towards those seeking refuge in our communities, and the refuge-seeking parts of yourself?
3-3:30PM Inauguration Tai Chi Walk with Carla Kimball on the Hanover Green
3:30PM Refuge Yoga with Kerry Doyle
4PM Presentations & Reflections by Dartmouth students of Prof. Irene Kacandes who are involved in refugee work
6PM Potluck Community Dinner
7:30PM Refuge Dance
Sunday, January 22nd
11AM till 12:30PM Closing event with photographer Becky Field, whose book, Different Roots, Common Dreams, documents refugee families who have settled successfully in NH. Becky will be signing and selling books. Proceeds go to NH refugee nonprofits.
During the weekend of January 20th to 22nd the Upper Valley Refugee Working Group (UVRWG) will host Light the Way, a space of refuge to raise community awareness of the needs of those seeking shelter among us: refugee families arriving in New Hampshire and Vermont during the coming year, as well as those families seeking refuge already present in our communities. We also wish to acknowledge, at this time of transition and great change, our shared resources in the refuge of community, understanding, and generosity.
On a practical level, every household needs a lamp--or two--to brighten the home! As a gesture of welcome and hope, Light the Way will collect gently used table and floor lamps to be given to resettling refugee households to brighten the years ahead. Do you have one to share? (Other refugee and community household needs will also be posted, and we will be collecting financial contributions for the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program and the Upper Valley Haven.)
Friday, January 20th
5-6:30PM Opening Illumination with "light" refreshments.
Saturday, January 21st
12-1PM Conversation with Wendy Grace, Refugee Liaison for Episcopal Diocese of Rutland How can we help?
1PM Moment of Silence in Solidarity with marches everywhere
1:30-3PM Social Presencing Inauguration with Julie Püttgen and Karen Ganey exploring exile, refuge, and community through embodied movement, art and shared reflection. What do YOU want to inaugurate into the world this weekend? How does exile and refuge play out in your life? What are your commitments towards those seeking refuge in our communities, and the refuge-seeking parts of yourself?
3-3:30PM Inauguration Tai Chi Walk with Carla Kimball on the Hanover Green
3:30PM Refuge Yoga with Kerry Doyle
4PM Presentations & Reflections by Dartmouth students of Prof. Irene Kacandes who are involved in refugee work
6PM Potluck Community Dinner
7:30PM Refuge Dance
Sunday, January 22nd
11AM till 12:30PM Closing event with photographer Becky Field, whose book, Different Roots, Common Dreams, documents refugee families who have settled successfully in NH. Becky will be signing and selling books. Proceeds go to NH refugee nonprofits.
Community Gathering and Calais Fundraiser in White River Junction, June 25th, 2016
About 40 people gathered for a family-style meal made of donated ingredients, in the tradition of "stone soup." Some ingredients came from participants' gardens; some were extra from Willing Hands (a local gleaning non-profit); and others were donated by members of the Upper Valley Refugee Working Group, who gathered ahead of the event to cook together. Julie Püttgen made a presentation about her time volunteering in the La Linière camp outside of Dunkirk. All assembled participated in small group discussions, reflecting on what they would bring with them if they had to flee their homes suddenly. And then: we danced to a special Exile & Return themed playlist.
About 40 people gathered for a family-style meal made of donated ingredients, in the tradition of "stone soup." Some ingredients came from participants' gardens; some were extra from Willing Hands (a local gleaning non-profit); and others were donated by members of the Upper Valley Refugee Working Group, who gathered ahead of the event to cook together. Julie Püttgen made a presentation about her time volunteering in the La Linière camp outside of Dunkirk. All assembled participated in small group discussions, reflecting on what they would bring with them if they had to flee their homes suddenly. And then: we danced to a special Exile & Return themed playlist.
Home/ Away from Home Mural
I was commissioned by the Arts Alliance of Northern New Hampshire as Artist in Residence at a residential facility for young people court-ordered out of their homes. We made this mural together, reflecting on what the artists would wish to bring with them for a long journey: Pants! Watermelon! a Turtle! And how they would want to carry it all: a polka-dotted suitcase in a Little Red Wagon.
I was commissioned by the Arts Alliance of Northern New Hampshire as Artist in Residence at a residential facility for young people court-ordered out of their homes. We made this mural together, reflecting on what the artists would wish to bring with them for a long journey: Pants! Watermelon! a Turtle! And how they would want to carry it all: a polka-dotted suitcase in a Little Red Wagon.
Home/ Away from Home Service at the Upper Valley Unitarian Universalist Church
I worked together with a friend from the local UU congregation to create a service combining music, meditation, and a talk about the local relevance of the global displaced persons crisis.
I worked together with a friend from the local UU congregation to create a service combining music, meditation, and a talk about the local relevance of the global displaced persons crisis.
For additional project information, or to book a visit, please contact Julie Püttgen.