FacultyMeet advaya’s teachers
Advaya’s global faculty blends science, practice, and story bringing localised, multidimensional wisdom to a shared learning space.
Bayo Akomolafe
Sophie Strand
Satish Kumar
Vandana Shiva
Veronica Strang
Manda Scott
Beloved Sara Zaltash
David Abram
Dr Andreas Weber
David Whyte
Helena Norberg-Hodge
Dr. Predrag Slijepcevic
Charles Eisenstein
Aisha Paris Smith
Brontë Velez
Brontë Velez
Brontë is guided by the call that “black wellness is the antithesis to state violence” (Mark Anthony Johnson). As a black-latinx trans-disciplinary artist, designer, trickster, and wake-worker, their eco-social art praxis lives at the intersections of black feminist placemaking and prophetic community traditions, environmental justice, and death doulaship.
Brontë is guided by the call that “black wellness is the antithesis to state violence” (Mark Anthony Johnson). As a black-latinx trans-disciplinary artist, designer, trickster, and wake-worker, their eco-social art praxis lives at the intersections of black feminist placemaking and prophetic community traditions, environmental justice, and death doulaship.
They embody this commitment of attending to black health/imagination, commemorative justice and hospicing white supremacy through serving as creative director for Lead to Life design collective, media director for Oakland-rooted farm and nursery Planting Justice , and quotidian black queer life-making ever-committed to humour and liberation, ever-marked by grief at the distance made between us and all of life.
course
Rewilding Mythology
Reawaken ancient myths and their transformative power to reconnect humanity with nature, culture, and collective wisdom for modern times.
course
Kinship: Being Together
Explore the vital role of community, fostering deep kinship and shared experiences that create a foundation for collective well-being and connection.
course
Foundation Course
Embark on a spiritual homecoming, reconnecting with your cultural roots, inner wisdom, and the deep sense of belonging to the earth and all beings.
film
Augury as disruption to the attention economy
In Module 5 of Rewilding Mythology, Sophie Strand and brontë velez discuss ecological literacy as a form of literacy that gets us free. One form of this is augury, the practice of acquiring and understanding omens through the observation of birds, alongside bird sits and practising bird language. brontë shares about this radical practice, what it looks like, and why it can be such a disturbance to the attention economy we live in. How can we think with our whole web of kin, as Sophie would ask?
film
Politics of relationship
A video of highlights from Week 2 of the online inquiry Kinship: An Exploration Into Being Together, with Douglas Rushkoff, brontë velez and Justine Epstein. In the session we look at how relationship is inherently political. We explore how certain relationships are conditional, and how relationships can both serve and extract. How are our relationships being influenced or controlled? We want to ask the question: "who do we (really) mean when we say "we"? As collective action is called for - who is called to take action? Who is included/excluded? Does kinship bring with it a sense of responsibility for the "other"? Does the "other" necessarily imply "othering", or can we view the "other" as crucial to relationship itself?