adrienne maree brown
adrienne maree brown is:
– a writer (author of Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds)
– a sci-fi/Octavia Butler scholar
– an organizational healer
– a pleasure activist
– a facilitator
– a life/love/relationship/work coach
– a network weaver
– a speaker/singer (including wedding singer) and
– a doula
living in Detroit.
adrienne maree brown is a writer. She attended the Clarion Sci Fi Writers Workshop and the Hedgebrook Writers Residency in 2015, and Voices of Our Nation in 2014 as part of the inaugural Speculative Fiction Workshop. She was a 2013 Kresge Literary Arts Fellow and a 2013 and 2015 Knights Arts Challenge winner, writing and generating science fiction in and about Detroit. She was the Ursula Le Guin Feminist Sci Fi Fellow, and a Sundance/Time Warner 2016 Artist Grant Recipient.
adrienne is the author of the radical self/planet help book Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds published by AK Press in 2017. She is also the co-editor of the anthology Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements with Walidah Imarisha, published by AK Press in 2015. She has helped to cultivate work and thinking about Octavia Butler and Emergent Strategy, gathering a loose knit network of people interested in reading Octavia’s work from a political and strategic framework.
In terms of writing, adrienne blogs regularly on this site, writes the Pleasure Dome column at Bitch magazine, and is a contributing editor for YES! magazine.
adrienne was the facilitator of the founding year of the Detroit Narrative Agency (DNA), supporting Detroiters to shift the narratives of the city towards justice and liberation. DNA just announced it’s 2016 Cohort.
adrienne is in Somatics Teacher Training to deepen her healing, doula and facilitation work. She is part of the Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity team, at the intersection of political education, community organizing, somatics and black love.
She facilitates the internal healing and visionary development of organizations throughout the movement (most recently BYP100, Movement for Black Lives and Black Lives Matter. She has also worked with Building Equity and Alignment for Impact Initiative, Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health, Chorus Foundation, Correctional Association of NY, Young Women United, Positive Women’s Network, Black Mesa Water Coalition, INCITE!, the Young Women’s Empowerment Project in Chicago, New Orleans Parents Organizing Network, ColorofChange.org and Detroit Summer).
adrienne was a co-facilitator for the Detroit Food Justice Task Force, facilitator for Detroit Future, and the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition, as well as part of the faculty for the Center for Whole Communities. She partnered with Engage to facilitate a year-long Community of Practice on Networks and Decentralizing Leadership, 2011-2012.
adrienne was the executive director of The Ruckus Society from 2006-2010, and sat on their board through 2012. She was also a National Co-Coordinator for the 2010 US Social Forum.
adrienne is on The Ruckus Society board, and is proud to have spent time on social justice organization boards including Allied Media Projects, Third Wave Foundation, and Common Fire, as well as many others.
A co-founder of the League of Pissed Off/Young Voters and graduate of the Somatics and Social Justice Cohort, Somatics and Trauma year-long, Rockwood’s Art of Leadership year-long training, and Robert Gass’s Art of Change year-long training, adrienne is obsessed with learning and developing models for action, community strength, movement building and transformation.
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Emergent Facilitation and Organizational Development/Healing, Coaching
adrienne maree brown will work with your group (network, organization, collective, business, self) to support the emergence of your vision, purpose, relationships, structure, goals, and best possible work process. This can include creating systems for every aspect of your organizational work.
This can happen through one-on-one or group coaching, a day or weekend-long facilitation, or an extended process with a group over months.
adrienne’s work is to highlight the deep, foundational patterns that are keeping you (as an individual or a group) from knowing what to do, and/or how to do it.
This also includes work around cultural dynamics within organizations (race, gender, ability, sexuality, age, and more!), conflict resolution and accountability methods.
If you and/or your group would like to learn facilitation skills, you can book adrienne to develop and lead a facilitation training (usually 1-3 days).
On a one-on-one level adrienne can support you in self-transformation, healing and life change work, bringing order to your life systems, or going through life changes in relationship, family, or work. She can hold space for you to find the right next steps to take, and unearth the root causes of struggle and transformation in your life.
Talks
Topics include (but are not limited to):
- Science Fiction and Organizing
- Octavia Butler and Emergent Strategy
- Pleasure Activism
- Media Justice and Media-Based Economies
- Economies based on relationships (Moving Beyond Capitalism)
- Transformation (personal, organizational, movement-wide)
- After Oppositional Politics
- Environmental Justice (Ecological and Economic Justice)
- Arts and Organizing
- Social Forum Processes and Importance
Other topics may also be available on request!
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Testimonials
“I have experienced adrienne brown as one of the best facilitators I know and I know quite a few! She manages to organize agendas, facilitate meetings, take notes at meetings and keep everyone focused, on task and able to complete the work on time. Meetings led by her are inclusive not only of work to be done but of participants’ well being.
“adrienne is very creative and adds or invites right brain pieces, rituals and movement to balance meeting content and attend to the whole person. She is able to show and share her sensitivity not only to the individuals in the group but also to the overall sense and ‘feeling’ of what is happening in the meeting, and addresses these appropriately and invites others to deal with issues, conflict in a manner that helps all and moves the work forward. She has a sense of humor and generously shares her professional skills in a very personable manner.”
– Gloria Rivera, Great Lakes Bioneers, Detroit Food Justice Task Force member
“I’m passionate about facilitation, it allows us to create better ways of being-with, to actually begin to live in the world we are trying to build. adrienne maree is one of the best facilitators I know, I often flatter myself by calling her my “work soul-mate.” She has an intuitive understanding for what it takes to “hold-space,” she is bold and courageous, witty and brilliant, honest, transparent and rich with soul. I think that people like Adrienne hold the key to a better future for us all, that they can facilitate our journey home – I am glad to be her conspirator and her friend, I’m looking forward to a lifetime of being in movement with her.”
– Gibran Rivera, Interactive Institute for Social Change
“Our organization worked with adrienne to help us launch a national network of HIV-positive women, the US Positive Women’s Network (PWN). The goal of the PWN is to increase the strategic power of HIV-positive women in impacting policies that impact their lives. adrienne assisted our team in planning the visioning meeting to most effectively use the allotted time and come out of the launch with a clear plan and path forward. Her facilitation and planning skills are phenomenal. She is a strategic thinker who values inclusion and creativity. She has an amazing ability to think on her feet and shift gears when the group process requires it. It was clear that adrienne was committed to working her heart out to help us succeed in the movement to strengthen the voices of positive women. One of the things I appreciate most about adrienne is her ability to connect with a very wide range of people and life experiences to help move them forward together with a shared vision and purpose. We are stronger in our movement having had Adrienne work with us.”
– Maura Riordan, WORLD
“I thank adrienne for her vigilance and dedication. Today is historic, affirming and a tribute to the work of American citizens who want a different future for our nation. I am proud to know adrienne and the many young people who work to craft a new vision for country and claimed this nation as their own. I am in your debt.”
– Claudine Brown, Cummings Foundation
“We have worked with adrienne over the course of the past 4 years or so and in that time she has been an advisor, a facilitator, a rabble-rouser, and a much needed reminder of laughter and music. Whenever we host a gathering of any size, we are always hopeful that adrienne may be able to help us. adrienne’s ability to quickly assess the needs of a group and strategically gear a conversation in the right direction, all while having fun and making everyone feel heard is remarkable. She can be loving and thoughtful while also challenging us to live up to our core values.”
– Kavitha Rao, Common Fire
“adrienne is an amazing person in general and is a fabulous facilitator. She’s very comfortable with herself and with groups, she has an expansive toolkit of different practices to draw on, and she is used to working with a diverse range of groups — bringing love and real presence to all of them. We didn’t do much prep work with her — she was able to jump right in and adapt quickly as the group shifted and its needs changed, and she was able to help ground the group and really hold it as we faced some challenging situations. Wonderful!!!”
– Jeff Golden, Common Fire
“adrienne has an extraordinary way of creating powerful containers in time and space for people to identify their big – and sometimes previously hidden – passions and visions for social change. In our time together as a small group of 20, adrienne invited our summit participants to use creative means of expression, like slam poetry, performance, and music, to articulate their commitments to being the change they want to see in the world. And, participants walked out deeply committed to supporting both each other, and our organization’s strategic growth and impact.”
– Sharon Smith, Brower Youth Alumni Network
“It always makes me feel grateful to read transcendent writing like adrienne’s, something that calls you higher. I happen to also be reading a biography of Gandhi and gaining something of an understanding about him for the first time. adrienne’s writing certainly reminds me of his principles, which he routinely stuck to in the most surprising circumstances.”
– Sam Dorman, League of Young Voters
“I can’t tell you how awesome and inspiring it was to be in a social justice space that truly centered artists and our contributions to the movement instead of putting us on the fringe, which has often been the case in my experience. Thank you for your commitment to centering art as a tool for education, liberation, and building.”
– Ms. Cherry, Mangos with Chili
“I hope I can be a part of something adrienne is facilitating again. The recommendations that she brought and the processes we worked on together were just what we needed to help us get back to work!”
– Billie Hickey, Undoing Racism in Detroit’s Food System
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