Practice Groups
Practice groups are facilitated gatherings that include a robust and dynamic overarching theme or question that lives at the center of the group and inspires thoughtful and creative inquiry and exploration. Different from workshops, practice groups are designed to be less hierarchical and instead draw upon the wisdom and embodied creative experiences of everyone in the room while remaining open to the surprises that arise when people learn and create together.
There comes a time in everyone's creative process when we need to expand our resources and find inspiration from peers. We see practice groups as spaces that hold vulnerable exchanges within intimate settings of experimentation and exploration. They are invitations to share the parts of our practice that we may not often get the chance to share. Practice groups are containers for new work and new ideas that encourage both the facilitators and participants to stretch and grow within their creative practice.
At the end of each practice group, facilitators and participants create a Circle Back that gleans the group's collective learning and offers it back to the wider community during one of our Wednesday night gatherings. Practice groups are also welcome to create online galleries or other creative offerings to share on the Kinship website.
Before joining a practice group, please familiarize yourself with the culture of Kinship. Practice groups also include access to an online platform for participants to share their process and stay in dialogue with other participants through our community platform Kinship Circle.
May 14th - June 18th.
Meets every Tuesday 7 pm - 9 pm EDT via Zoom for 6-weeks
Getting stuck in your head and spiraling about all the creative decisions one has to make in art can bring your practice to a standstill. This group is geared towards artists who would benefit from a little relief in the creative process–by sharing the burden of creativity with one or more creative partners. Together we’ll practice short exercises & shared governance by blurring the roles of artist, editor/curator and audience. Artists stuck in the middle of a project & those just looking for like-minded potential collaborators are encouraged to join. 6 week workshop, meets once/week.
May 9th - June 13th, 2024
Meets every Thursday from 5 pm - 8 pm EDT (except 5/23: 6 – 9pm EDT) via Zoom for 6 weeks.
Human activity has impacted every corner of the globe, including remote areas where human beings aren’t physically present. Is it possible for contemporary photographers to tell visual stories about the natural world without referencing humanity; human history, activities, folklore, industry?
In this six-week practice group, we’ll explore ways to extract human beings from the landscape and create projects that tell stories of place independent of human impact. And we will debate whether this is even possible.
April 4th - May 9th
Meets every Thursday from 6 pm - 8 pm ET via Zoom for 6 weeks.
How can we dissolve the concrete edges of what we consider individual bodies through photography? This practice group begins with us asking where the edges of our bodies, the edges of our relationships, the edges of human and more-than-human, are seen and felt. Can a more relational perspective shift those edges, or even dissolve them? How does that change the way we photograph and engage with the bodies around us, the bodies that are us?
March 5th - April 9th, 2024
Meets every Tuesday from 6 pm - 7:30 pm ET via Zoom for 6 weeks.
This practice group will explore what’s between us and the realization of our ideas—designed for the stir-crazy artists who feel like we’re consistently approximating resolution. This group will use photography as a starting point for discovery, but all forms of expression will be encouraged, including writing, sound, and mixed media. Weekly prompts and exercises will be offered as ways to push against the limits of our medium and our own limitations.
January 25th - February 29th. Meets every Thursdays 7 pm - 9 pm ET via Zoom for 6-weeks
Getting stuck in your head and spiraling about all the creative decisions one has to make in art can bring your practice to a standstill. This group is geared towards artists who would benefit from a little relief in the creative process–whether that be through collaboration or an injection of randomness.
January 24th - February 28th. Meets every Wednesday from 12 pm-1:30 pm EST via Zoom for 6-weeks.
Many of us yearn to deepen our intimacy and connection with the natural world, contemplative photography offers us a path. By reimagining photography as a relational medium, we can explore the subtle and often profound exchanges happening all the time between our bodies and the earth’s body. When practiced well, photography becomes a powerful tool for inspiring curiosity, humility and wonder. Here, photography blossoms as a language of gesture and reciprocity, opening the doorway to new ways of seeing, knowing, and caring.
January 23rd - February 27th. Meets every Tuesday from 6 - 8:00 pm EST via Zoom for 6-weeks.
Is there a visual language for loss and grief? Can photography capture what is already lost or prepare us for future losses? During this practice group, we will explore loss in its many forms, whether of a person or place, a way of feeling or being. During this lightly facilitated six-week group, we will practice paying attention and dwelling in our own experiences of loss—offering us time to build community and a shared understanding of the many ways grief and loss gets into our bones.
January 25th - February 22nd. Meets every Thursday from 7 - 8:30 pm ET via Zoom for 5-weeks.
Where do our bodies end and other bodies begin? How does our understanding of the edges of our being influence us? A Complex Definition of a Body is a practice group that aims to add layers of complexity to our understanding of where we end and the world begins.
Asynchronous Practice Group - Starting Jan 14th on Kinship Circle
We’ll begin this first season of Between Bodies 2024 with a 12-week, asynchronous exploration of what it means to photograph from the body, using all of your senses, open to the whole community. Beginning Sunday, January 14th, Kim Manley Ort will provide a reflection and prompts every two weeks in the Circle space. Together, we’ll explore the question, “What does it mean to photograph from the body?”
Monthly Practice Group - Starts March 7th and meets on the first Thursday of each month from 6 - 8pm ET via Zoom for 9-months
What defines a body of work? What holds it together? When is it complete? This monthly practice group will be led by Anna Gage Norton and Eric William Carroll.