COMMUNAL CURES.
MAKING OUR OWN MEDICINE

Do you remember the tea your grandma used to make you when you were sick? Do you know which plants that you pass by daily can be a helper when you feel unwell? 

We invite you to a workshop where we want to learn some medicinal techniques together. We find it important to keep learning from our own diverse experiences and knowledges. Practising them, we want to carry these long standing traditions into our futures. This idea deeply resonates in the context of traditional healing practices, where there is much to be learned from the wisdom of our ancestors. Through building a community healing bank or a self-made medicinal archive, we focus on our roots to employ traditional healing techniques. The creation of such an archive of knowledge will not only preserve invaluable traditional practices but also foster a sense of community, collective identity and sharing. By including natural recipes for ailments, personal strategies for managing pain and chronic conditions, and communal healing techniques – sharing ways of healing from the families and places we have come from. This workshop will be in two gatherings. 

You are invited to a journey of healing and heritage! Join us as we delve into the rich interconnectedness of traditional healing practices with our upcoming two-part workshop.

15.05.2024
At the first meeting we will exchange knowledge about medicinal plants, their uses as well as family and personal stories related to them. Then, we elaborate on herbal oils and tinctures of the plants we decide to work with. Another part of the workshop will be guiding each participant to work on their own medicinal herbarium, where we can note and remember details important to us. The tincture will need to “rest” for at least three weeks in a dry and dark place till our next gathering. 

05.06.2024
We will come together again to speak about the properties and dosage of use of the tinctures and herbal oils we have prepared before and repackage them in small containers for personal use. In this gathering, we will use the phototype technique (developing images using sunlight) with natural colourants to print on paper. We will also use different flowers and plants to print.

Our two gatherings will be facilitated by Chepita, who is an Abya Yala person and a member of the health collective Casa Kuà in Berlin. She has been learning about plants and food since her early childhood as part of everyday life and family interactions. She likes to be close to nature and enjoys sharing spaces with people who are involved in issues related to food and collective knowledge. She is intereseted in community care, health, climate and social justice and the interconnectedness of these issues in the “red de la vida” (networking of life). She proposes these two workshops where in a playful way and through small collective and daily actions we recover our health sovereignty.

Impressions of the first part of the workshop by Matthew Hansen.