Every donation goes directly towards the creation of LICHEN CENTER, along with our ongoing channels of reciprocity and scholarships. We deeply appreciate your support and thank you for being part of this community. Any amount is helpful and greatly appreciated! We also strive to move ever-closer to a post-capitalistic model and are grateful for carpentry, garden, and other non-monetary tending help. Please be in touch if you wish to offer your time and skillsets to our ever-growing list of tending needs.
The intention of LICHEN is to hold space for the marginalized peoples in the traditional territory of the Penobscot people, currently known as Blue Hill, Maine. LICHEN is a meeting and weaving space centering interconnection, queerness, animism / deep ecology, and non-appropriative land based spirituality, with hope that these seeds will be planted within and tended by those who visit. LICHEN CENTER wishes to hold space for the tending and mending of the human nature split; to practice listening and exploring how we may be in relation with this land in a deeply rooted and respectful way. LICHEN is a place to reweave and remember our relations.
With this foundation, the center wishes to create and hold space for experiences and offer teachings in service of collective liberation. The intention is to host programs and events that are accessible to a spectrum of marginalized communities; disabled, neurodiverse, BIPOC, Queer, Trans. A large part of this year’s offerings will be based around helping tend to the lack of general resources and accessible programs within the marginalized communities of Unceded Wabanaki Territory / Maine. The first offering, the "Death and Transition Series," is a collection of classes, non-appropriative ceremony, and workshops that hold space for the death and transition so very present in this time.
Respectfully tending land and finding self-sovereignty within growing food is often inaccessible for those who do not have access to money or education, are marginalized, not able-bodied, neurodiverse, or who grew up in unsafe and unwell households. Further, gardening and farming trainings revolve around the need for individuals to be fully able-bodied and “neurotypical”, which inhibits so many from access to hands-on experience with land tending opportunities. LICHEN intends to create a literal and figurative bridge over this gap to hold space for people in the rural Unceded Wabanaki Territory / Maine community who feel overlooked, undervalued and often forgotten within ableist systems centered around nuclear families and capitalistic models that prioritize efficiency and conformity over diversity.
With this vision, LICHEN is looking to find co-tenders who can help bring this space to life. This will entail a need for ongoing funding to begin the process of creating accessible buildings for visitors and tenders. LICHEN received a grant this year from Kindle Project to create a wheelchair accessible outhouse, which is now underway. Next will be an accessible garden shed, accessible raised beds, and then an accessible greenhouse. In the coming years, the hope is to create a wheelchair accessible indoor meeting space to serve as a hearth for conversations, workshops and classes.
In this, I wonder if you would consider supporting these financial needs in the coming years?
The garden and land are bustling, bringing a serenade of crickets, bullfrogs, song birds of all kinds, raven, crow, red winged blackbird, beaver, and porcupine. The quiet ones are also emerging in great numbers; black eyed susan, evening primrose, milkweed, apple and service berry. The comfrey have taken their hearty place in the garden and the ticks, deer flies and mosquitos are out and hungry. We have arrived in the rush of the season's awakening and with that classes and workshops are arriving too. You can read more about the center and the vision here.
Sincerely,
Heather (caretaker at LICHEN CENTER)