- XY’LAI
Follow me!
✨NEW! The Spring Up Market✨
The Spring Up Market is a yearly capsule collection highlighting the works of creatives in our community through an exclusive collaboration with Spring Up. Drawing inspiration from our four pillars: Imagine (air), Support (water), Create (fire), Build (earth). This summer collection features body scubs, body butters, herbal teas, crystal jewelry, and botanical perfumes. Shop the limited edition products & bundles here:
Air
IMAGINE:
To actualize anything, we must first imagine it.
We practice liberatory education at bluelight academy of the liberatory arts.
Water
SUPPORT:
We support ourselves and each other to survive and thrive into the future we are imagining, creating, and building together.
We practice transformative justice personally and collectively in our classes and with our Patreon community.
Fire
CREATE:
We create tools and models of possibility rooted in what we imagine.
We create zines, books, videos, art, and learning spaces rooted in our analysis of consent, gender, and power.
Earth
BUILD:
We build with communities and organizations to implement transformation and practice our shared values.
We provide equity and accountability training and consulting to mission driven organizations and collectives.
Our current classes are:
Transformative Justice
(Sliding Scale)
Our Transformative Justice Class is an opportunity for folks to learn more about everyday transformative justice tools, the roots of this philosophy & praxis, and build community around abolitionist, consensual, and liberatory ways of being.
Resilience + Revitalization
(Free)
Resilience + Revitalization is an invitation to imagine and create an abolitionist vision of tomorrow. We invite you to deepen your relationships to what it can mean to be accountable to your needs, desires, and healing.
Consent, Gender, Power
(Sliding Scale)
Our Consent, Gender, Power class is an opportunity for community educators, advocates, care providers, and people impacted by gender based violence to explore the roots of violence and frameworks of prevention and response.
GET STARTED
Transformative Justice Workbook
This workbook is a collection of frameworks and resources Spring Up has developed over the past decade to understand and intervene in systemic, institutional, inter group, interpersonal, and internal harm and violence. We have especially focused on gender based violence (sexual harm, intimate partner violence, relationship abuse, homophobia and transphobia) and how GBV intersects with and is compounded by other systems of violence.
Cultivate Consent Workbook
This zine is complete with key learnings/tools we determined over a period of time as most transformational for our participants in our trainings, workshops, and fellowships, including our consent toolkit with information to analyze power dynamics and coercion, practice open and ongoing communication, and utilize trauma-informed survivor response strategies in our relationships.
Liberatory Education Workbook
This workbook is created by Spring Up as a space for us to reflect on our pedagogy and tools for liberatory education as solidified in our online school platform, bluelight academy of the liberatory arts, after 10+ years of development through community, youth, and organizational education spaces. A great reference for designing liberatory learning spaces in community or in formal education settings, this workbook includes scenarios about how to put your principles into practice when it comes to disability justice, LGBTQIA inclusion, countering anti-Blackness, and more.
Resilience & Revitalization Zine
Resilience + Revitalization is an invitation to deepen our relationships with what it can mean to be accountable to our needs, desires, and healing. What and who do we draw upon for strength? How do we grow toward resiliency in a culture that forces many of us to choose constantly between immediate and long-term survival and safety? What can it mean to explore accountable, loving, and sustainable relationships to self and others? This zine explores what it can mean to engage our relationships with our bodies, minds, and spirits in ways that honor the vulnerability required to show up for ourselves and our communities.
Book a coaching session
Are you looking for more support in dealing with conflict, accountability, and boundaries in your life? Spring Up coaching is a peer-based, flexible, non-therapy offering to help you clarify your goals and build your self-care and communication skills.
Our collaborative approach to coaching is based in a non-hierarchical relationship that is solution focused — coaches recognize that clients are experts in their own lived experience. Coaching is strengths-based and culturally specific in that coaches help the client enhance their inherent strengths, skills, and resources accessible to them. Spring Up coaching has an expectation that the client is ready to engage in further learning and implementation of that learning outside of the session.
-03.png)
About our coaches
Mara (they/them)
Mara is a mixed queer artist and community organizer living in the occupied Tongva lands of Los Angeles. They focus on healing justice for survivors, pleasure activism, land rematriation, DIY mental health, decolonial facilitation, and mutual aid efforts beyond borders. Coaching style: Integrating transformative justice practices in your daily life or in your organization, strengthening capacity for change and conflict, navigating accountability and more.
-05.png)
About our coaches
Brianna (she/her)
Brianna is a grad student and social worker based in unceded indigenous land known as Chicago. She lives with her wonderful partner and two hilarious hounds named Maurice and Blaise. She is passionate about care work, prison abolition, and puppies. In her free time, she likes to hike, stretch, nap, and read. Coaching style: Supportive and facilitative; you can expect many questions and opportunities for feeling/ reflection/ embodied observation.
-09.png)
About our coaches
Gayatri (pr: Gah-yuh-tree) / Gaya (they/them/theirs)
Gaya is a dancer, organizer, bodyworker, and facilitator based on the contemporary and ancestral Anishinaabe homelands. Their work centers the remembrance and accessibility of our first medicines- love and water. Coaching style: my approach to coaching is inspired by an abolitionist org in minneapolis (repformn.org) that teaches folks to ‘love each other to the next step’. my hope is that coaching sessions feel like drinking a cup of tea- healing, transformative, a moment that is safe and strong to hold a pause.
-08.png)
About our coaches
Amanda (they/them)
Amanda is continually learning how to nurture generative conflict, and deepen their own understanding of consent-based change-work. They endeavor to live life with integrity, kindness, and maximal fun. Amanda lives in the Northeast with their partner and dog. Coaching style: Pragmatic and grounded. They utilize questions to surface client wisdom, and are comfortable with messy and outside the box thinking.
-02.png)
About our coaches
rj (he/him)
rj is a Black cisgendered father and educator who fell in love with the pursuit of liberation through education after teaching high school math and then training teachers in public schools. He lives a nomadic lifestyle (currently in Maryland) with partner Kelli, twins Kai and Jordan, and pup Yadi. Coaching style: Facilitative and encouraging, serving as a partner in problem solving. rj specializes in coaching teachers, parents, and men who are unlearning patriarchy.
-04.png)
About our coaches
Thanh Mai (pr: tah-n m-eye) (they/them)
Thanh is a community health educator, organizer, plant tender, storyteller, and auntie rooted on Tovaangar (Tongva land). As a mixed, queer Indigenous person, Thanh seeks to foster new relationship models, address intergenerational trauma, and steward land-based relationships with communities across disaporas. Coaching Style: ‘Everything we want is on the other side of fear’ - is a guiding tenant to the sessions we will have. Guided questions that explore, open, and affirm specific questions and areas of confusion, and a space to workshop how we bring abstract/theories into our lives and practices.
-12.png)
About our coaches
Stas (they/them)
Stas is a Queer, Nonbinary, Black-Italian based on Ute, Arapaho, and Cheyenne unceded lands in Denver, CO. In addition to being a Co-Founder of Spring Up, Stas is also our “Imaginatrix” and Lead Curriculum Designer. Coaching Style: Untangling the patterns and root causes of challenges through storytelling, power analysis, and creative practices. Creatively designing accountable organizational systems and engaging, accessible curriculum.
-11.png)
About our coaches
Leander (they/he)
Leander is Spring Up’s mythematician and co-founder. He lives on Ute, Arapaho, and Cheyenne unceded lands in Denver, CO. Leander is a systems thinker and conflict strategist who enjoys supporting organizations in building shared power and decentralization. They also love supporting founders in organizational design. Leander is a European-American (white) transmasculine settler committed to learning and unlearning in the service of collective liberation. Coaching Style: Deep listening, asking questions, and supporting you in getting unstuck and finding clarity and a path forward.
-10.png)
About our coaches
shaïna (they/them)
shaïna is a Black, Haitian, queer artist and abolitionist living on Sisspahaw and Cheraw land in Greensboro, North Carolina with their spouse & house full of fur babies. They are a creative who is passionate about the transformative power of art, design, and the imaginative process. Shaïna uses their creative practice as a tool to access liberation through healing and resistance. Coaching Style: Art forward, creative, & intentional. They look to foster a space for dreaming and imaginative thinking to use to birth meaningful design to your brand or org.
-07.png)
About our coaches
Juli (they/them)
Juli is a mixed, queer femme who walks the red road, born amongst the sacred mountains and rivers of the Northern Andes Mountains located in so-called Colombia. Juli’s path has involved serving community as an educator, facilitator, healing artist, restorative justice practitioner, certified trauma-informed yoga and meditation instructor. Coaching style: Processing and healing, listening while also asking poignant questions. Juli makes for a strong, yet compassionate accountability partner.
-06.png)
About our coaches
Natasha (she/her/ella)
Natasha is a fat, queer, disabled, cis-gendered, Latina, healer, and survivor working hard to de-colonize herself and connect to her Taíno and Yoruba roots. Natasha has over a decade of experience in restorative practices, transformative justice and healing justice, community organizing and advocacy, and youth development. Coaching style: Natasha seeks to inspire exploration of self and the systems we exist in, learning and unlearning ways of bbeing in the pursuit of liberation and healing by stepping into power in brave and authentic ways.
ART + MERCH
Explore what's new in the shop!
The Liberatory Facilitation retreat is structured around the questions, “What does it take to be free together? And, what is the role of the facilitator / educator in supporting that freedom?” The daylong retreat is great for anyone who facilitates learning experiences, whether they are teachers, trainers, community accountability facilitators, or leaders. Through dismantling notions of what ‘should’ happen in facilitated spaces and how people ‘should’ learn, participants learn skills to lead people and spaces towards differentiation and self-directed learning
Liberatory Facilitation on Friday, June 14th
The Conflict Analysis retreat is a six-hour event for organizers, leaders, mediators, coaches, therapists, and more--anyone who is interested in deepening their understanding and analysis skills of conflict. Within the retreat, participants will examine fictional scenarios and engage with tools to support empathy building, understand and map power dynamics, investigate the scale of the harm, and discuss the choice points available throughout the conflict.
Conflict Analysis on Friday, June 28th
Harm is pervasive in communities and institutions, how an organization responds to the harm is its accountability in action. The one day Harm Systems Design retreat is great for organizational leaders, people from Human Resources or community accountability teams or entrepreneurs thinking about how to create systems in their endeavors.
Harm Systems Design on Friday, July 12th
WHO WE ARE
"Cultivating a culture of consent & liberty for all"
Leander (they/he), Stas (they/them), and shaïna (they/them) founded Spring Up in 2013-2014 to build a community of practice embodying consent and liberation within our relationships, creative practices, and daily lives. For 10 years, Spring Up has used fiction, art, role play, and community education to popularize the skills and frameworks necessary to be free together. We have grown into a collective of 11 creatives, care workers, liberatory educators, transformative justice practitioners, and an alumni community of over 1500 people.
Spring Up hosts liberatory learning spaces through online classes at bluelight academy of the liberatory arts, print materials and curriculum, retreats, and coaching. We are a worker coop with 8 other members on the journey to co-ownership: Mara, Brianna, Gaya, rj, Thanh, Amanda, Juli, and Natasha. Our core values are Consent, Accountability, and Transformation.
Estamos felices de proveer algunos recursos en Español y estamos continuamente traduciendo nuevo contenido. Esta página contiene los recursos y servicios que proveemos en Español al momento.
OUR CORE VALUES: C.A.T.
Consent
Consent is a practice to collaborate equitably across difference. When practicing consent we strive to co-design a path forward in a way that honors everyone's boundaries and balances varying needs while having explicit conversations about expectations. Consent is an embodied knowledge of what we want to attract, what we want to move away from, what we are excited about, and what we can tolerate. It is a living and breathing feeling that is constantly evolving and being influenced by our surroundings. In order to practice consent we need to be able to adapt to shifting conditions and boundaries through continuous opportunities to exchange feedback without fear of coercion, shaming or retaliation. Having agency over one’s consent is a key part of liberation. Oppressive forces in history and the present have normalized lack of consent and therefore many of us are returning to the knowledge that we have consent over our bodies, our dream space and more. At its core, consent is about self-determination, mutual negotiation, and reciprocity.
Accountability
Accountability is a politic of community care and integrity. It is about honoring our commitments and taking responsibility for the impacts that our (in)actions and ways of being have on ourselves and those we are in relationship with. As a strategy, centered-accountability offers more seats at the table for how systems are designed, how relationships are experienced, and how repair from harm can be done. Practicing accountability means seeking and listening to feedback, taking steps to address values and boundaries misalignments, and committing to ongoing reflection and dialogue to make sure our strategies address root causes rather than depend on quick fixes.
Transformation
Spring Up is a meditation on transformation. Our commitment to transformation is grounded in the belief that everyone should have the opportunities and avenues to grow; to unlearn misaligned conditioning, alchemize trauma, re-imagine our relationships, and open doors to liberated realities that were previously locked. We strive to bridge theories and abstract ideas with our lived experiences through the creation of sacred containers for conscious evolution that honors what has been, faces what is, and collaboratively manifest what is to come. A self-aware process of transformation is an act of deep listening and receptivity to sharing power with others by adapting to feedback in order to expand and layer rather than discard or start over. It is embracing process over outcome, not aiming to arrive at a “perfect” conclusion but instead being curious about a lifetime of iteration that balances adaptability with consistency through the interwoven practices of consent and accountability.
Zines & Workbooks
Upcoming Webinars
May 17, 2024, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM EDTWebinarJoin Stas and Leander for a free webinar on Spring Up’s new theory of change. Over the last year and a half we collaboratively edited our theory of change in order to reflect how we actualize our vision of popularizing the skills necessary to be free together.
Self-Guided Classes
Transformative Justice Mini Class
This course is an introduction to the basic principles and frameworks of Transformative Justice. It will introduce you to the values of Transformative Justice, its history and roots, how you likely already practice transformative justice in your everyday life, and some strategies to apply TJ to the different relationships, communities and organizations you are part of.
Cultivate Consent Mini Class
This course is an introduction to the basic principles and frameworks of Consent. It includes 8 of our collective members going through the core content of our Cultivate Consent workbook, the first workbook we ever released, and talking about the roots of gender based violence, boundaries, harm reduction, verbal and nonverbal communication, and visions of a consent based future.
Resilience + Revitalization
Resilience & Revitalization is an invitation to deepen our relationships with what it can mean to be accountable to our needs, desires, and healing. What and who do we draw upon for strength? How do we grow toward resiliency in a culture that forces many of us to choose constantly between immediate and long-term survival and safety? What can it mean to explore accountable, loving, and sustainable relationships to self and others?
FOR GROUPS & ORGANIZATIONS
Private Webinars
If you are interested and would like to request our collective members to participate in a panel or serve as a speaker for an event, please reach out to us with the event logistics (including: the dates, the budget, and any topics or main ideas of conversation to address). Webinars and Question & Answer (Q&A) sessions are two great ways to get an introduction to the ideas of our curricula by engaging with our collective members. examine how to translate the concepts into their practices. Webinars are scheduled for sixty to ninety minutes each and provide an overview of the topic. Our current webinar offerings for groups:
-
Everyday Consent
-
Everyday Transformative Justice
-
Safety & Care
-
Organizational Accountability
We strongly encourage you to consider getting both a webinar and a Q+A with our team. Many of our clients have found this to be the most supportive way to dive into the content because it allows you to get to know us better through our philosophies and practices, you as a group get to develop shared language and a set of tools, as well as time to get customized private access to us in order to troubleshoot and talk through the specific challenges your community is facing.
Private Retreats
Book any of our current retreat offerings as a private event for your group. Choose from three different retreats on 1) Liberatory Facilitation, 2) Conflict Analysis, and 3) Harm Systems Design. Upon completing a one-day retreat, participants will leave with both theoretical frameworks and concrete resources to support their work within their community.
The Liberatory Facilitation retreat is structured around the questions, “What does it take to be free together? And, what is the role of the facilitator / educator in supporting that freedom?” The daylong retreat is great for anyone who facilitates learning experiences, whether they are teachers, trainers, community accountability facilitators, or leaders.
The Conflict Analysis retreat is a six-hour event for organizers, leaders, mediators, coaches, therapists, and more--anyone who is interested in deepening their understanding and analysis skills of conflict.
The one day Harm Systems Design retreat is great for organizational leaders, people from Human Resources or community accountability teams or entrepreneurs thinking about how to create systems in their endeavors.
Group Coaching & Mediation
Group coaching is an integral part of our consulting services. These can be ongoing team relationship building and co-learning spaces, or can be limited to 3 sessions with a specific goal outcome. These coaching sessions will utilize restorative justice circles and design thinking tools to collaboratively map out your stakeholders and accountability commitments in order to strengthen your shared commitments as well as discern between interpersonal and strategic conflicts.
We offer mediation around interpersonal conflict in a four step process. First, we will do a free intake to determine if the conflict is a good fit for us to handle. If so, we will determine where on our sliding scale your group fits and enter a mediation agreement. Then, we will conduct a preconferencing conversation with each participant in the conflict. If both participants consent, a mediated conversation (typically 3 hours) using restorative justice practices takes place between the Spring Up facilitator and the two participants. An agreement is typically reached in that space, and then the facilitator will have a follow up conversation with each participant after 3-6 months for closure. This can be a standalone intervention, or can lead into group coaching or training to address the issues that contributed to the conflict.
Support us on Patreon
Joining our Patreon community means you’re supporting the work of the Spring Up collective and our community-based impacts. We’ve created this space to provide access to low cost coaching, community resources, as well as a place to build a mutual aid fund for our collective. Funds from our patreon also allow us the ability to provide scholarships for bluelight academy courses & retreats as well as print our zines and fund our annual market collection where we uplift the work of makers and creatives in our community.
In 2023, we extended $11,175 in scholarships to 49 students who are formerly incarcerated, Indigenous, disabled, Black, and/or from the Global South with the support of the Life Comes From It giving circle and our 150 Patrons. This includes groups working on stopping violence against Native women and children, rebuilding community after incarceration, creating peer support resources for the Autistic community, and exploring how TJ frameworks apply to LGBTQ people in South Africa.
Follow us on social media
