May 22nd is Give InterPlay Day! Interplay Pittsburgh is celebrating its 17th year!

Who would have guessed? During a pandemic, when we have been stuck at home and unable to go outside to play, it has worked well to use InterPlay tools to play and connect online.  Since most of our projects have been virtual, we’ve been able to collaborate with folks from all over the country, and beyond. And through the openings and closings due to COVID, we’ve found ways to play, in person, masked and social distanced, in Baum Garden at nearby city parks and masked in large rooms with high ceilings.

Often in collaboration with other InterPlay leaders, we have offered and continue to offer:

• A live online Friday morning InterPlay class where we take whatever is happening in our lives and use InterPlay tools to play with it. 10:00 am – 11:00 am eastern has been taught by Sheila K Collins and attended by folks as close as Pittsburgh, and as far away as Israel and Jakarta Indonesia 
• Weekly Radical Self-Care While Caring for Others 11:30 am – 12:30 pm ET With Christine Gautreaux and Sheila K Collins https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84685370328?pwd=a3g3cHVndEZ4M3pjUjY4NnpyTTZ4UT09
• Elizabeth Jett Downing, InterPlay Pittsburgh’s talented musician is continuing organizing and hosting creative performances that feature and involve collaboration with InterPlay. Her Into the Underworld costume party and potluck last October invited people to learn some InterPlay forms and become part of the performance. This April we will be collaborating again on another of her Song Studio performance events. 
• Leader Toni McClendon has presented the tools and forms to community-based organizations such as Legacy Arts Project, Ujamaa Collective, and Pittsburgh Brown Mamas. Recently, Toni became a “Creative in Residency” for the Black Transformation Artist Network (BTAN), taking InterPlay and creative movement to Special Needs Students and English as a Second Language students at one of the high schools in  Pittsburgh, a hub for international/immigrant/refugee students.  Furthermore, she is doing InterPlay with Senior Citizens at a local Senior Center, who have stated that InterPlay provides a great way to get us moving and thinking. She is looking forward to leading more in-person sessions at local libraries, community events and celebrations, and looks forward to leading more in-person sessions in more communities. One of her dreams is to conduct a Secrets of Leading/Life practice program for BIPOC people in the Pittsburgh/Allegheny County regions.
• In collaboration with InterPlayers from around the country, Wing and a Pittsburgh Players  have performed in 5 online courses offered this spring on the Reimagine platform on the theme of The Art of Grieving. 

Funding ask:

• InterPlay Pittsburgh wishes to expand our capacity to bring the Tools and Forms of InterPlay, as well as the gifts of the Spiritual Practices to more organizations and communities, especially to communities of color and younger people emerging from their own isolation. Supporting more people of color and young artist to become leaders will allow us to serve more communities. We ask for funding to support this effort.
• This spring, in addition to online offerings, InterPlay Pittsburgh will be returning to sponsoring in person collaborations and events with people and organizations we have partnered with in the past. We ask for donations to be used for room rental fees, event promotion expenses, and InterPlay artists’ and leaders’ stipends. 
• Our international organization, Body Wisdom has a quite liberal policy in providing payment plans as well as some scholarships for trainings. As travel is becoming feasible and events and training are beginning to be held in person, we ask for money to assist Pittsburgh leaders in making it to training and other events outside of our region.  

Click the DONATE BUTTON ABOVE to support a thriving and growing Pittsburgh InterPlay community.