Whose Earth (Day) Family Event: Water is Love and So Are You

For the 4th annual Whose Earth (Day)? event, will offer a fun, educational family event outdoors at The Ivy!

Michele Minnick and Sanahara Ama Chandra will take participants through some arts integrated learning, including a sensory walk of the Ivy grounds, where the Jones Falls runs at the edges of the property. We will take a look at water globally and locally, explore water as the source of all life, learn a little bit about our city’s watersheds and our local ecosystem, and express some of what we learn through movement, song, and imagery. Finally, we will learn the “Participatory Dance” from Global Water Dances All ages welcome. The educational aspects of the program may be more accessible to kids 6 and up. 

2025 is a year of Water, Community and Care for Vital Matters, and this event is part of a series of spring events that started with a showing of the Film Water is Love as part of Mutual Aid Mondays, and Culminates with the international event Global Water Dances on June 14th. This event  brings together dance and activism to raise awareness and inspire action around water issues in locations around the world.

Books related to water, the environment, climate change and more will be available at the event.

If you can’t make the Ivy event, but would like to get involved with Global Water Dances or other family friendly Vital Matters events, please email us and let us know you are interested: [email protected]

Vital Matters, which was launched in 2021 with Winter Seeds, a Climate Change Theatre Action event, is an arts-based interdisciplinary laboratory for change, that uses the arts to connect people with one another and the Earth around the pressing challenges of climate and environmental justice, and other themes that pertain to all people living a just, equitable, and green future. Follow Vital Matters on IG for updates: @_vital_matters_

Michele Minnick (she/her), founder of Vital Matters, has been a practicing theatre artist and educator for over 25 years. She has taught at universities internationally, including New York University, Towson University, Kennesaw State University, Rose Bruford College in the UK, and UNIRIO in Brazil. Currently, she works as a teaching artist in Baltimore City and surrounding counties through Arts for Learning Maryland. Recently, she has also become a somatic movement educator and therapist, and works at Metta Integrative Wellness in Hampden. She is co-author of the book Inside the Performance Workshop: A Sourcebook for Rasaboxes and Other Exercises, wrote her doctoral dissertation on trauma, performance and somatic practice, and takes a trauma-informed, abolitionist approach to teaching, healing and art-making. She lives in the Sabina-Mattfeldt neighborhood of Baltimore, down the street from the Ivy.

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