DNAWORKS and Stage West Theater present After Orlando Fort Worth - January 30

Please join us!

DNAWORKS is proud to offer THE WELCOME TABLE INITIATIVE to arts, educational, and community organizations!

DNAWORKS is proud to offer THE WELCOME TABLE INITIATIVE to arts, educational, and community organizations!

The Welcome Table Initiative

Who is it for?

Theatres, Schools, Academic Programs, and Community Organizations—any institution or group working to create a more welcoming environment for all people.

How long does it take?

We design it to fit your needs. Recommended is half or full year.

How does it work?

DNAWORKS’ Welcome Table Initiative (WTI) encourages productive and honest dialogue about key issues of identity, equity, access, opportunity, and representation. It begins with a 3-day Listening Project, in which DNAWORKS sits one-on-one and in small groups with community members to hear about their experiences, perspectives, hopes, and dreams regarding the state of their community/ organization and ways in which it can be more welcoming to all people.

We then lead the Crowdsourcing Change workshop, exploring the language that surrounds these issues and what different words mean to each of us. The workshop moves from open and courageous conversation into identifying personal and community-wide action steps in the form of Community Change Projects as a way to expand Welcome Table activities and values.

During the course of WTI, community “Change-makers” are invited to connect with each other and DNAWORKS via video-conference to be in action around their Change Projects. The guiding principle is that collective, incremental change leads to cumulative, measurable, and sustainable change. 

At the end of the WTI process, we gather to discuss the results of these change initiatives. We take the project information and participant experiences into We the Griot, a devised performance workshop in which we work as an ensemble to stage the multiple voices, perspectives, and stories of the members of the community. The results of the Change Projects and the devising workshop are then presented to the community in a celebratory event followed by a community dialogue.

At the end of WTI, DNAWORKS delivers a report complete with documentation of community voices, Change Projects, and the measurable change that occurred during the WTI time-frame. We use an arts and community-based assessment model. We will also include suggestions for future action.

Ultimately, the Welcome Table Initiative is set up to be a collective, creative process of listening, learning, self-expression and action, with ideas and performance generated by the community for the community. 

Thus far the Welcome Table Initiative has visited UNC-Chapel Hill/Playmakers Rep, Skidmore College, and Tufts University, and will soon be at San Diego State University. 

For more information: Info@dnaworks.org