TREE OF CHANGE
by Crystal Mason & Jason Wyman
Tree of Change is Praxis.
Tree of Change is Praxis.
It is not an organization, agency, business, “theory of change”, a person, a thing, or an object.
It is a way for us to practice co-creating change in the here and now, so we all can be free.
It offers guides, tactics, models, practices, language, and symbols that aid in designing / conjuring / creating time and space in such a way as to deeply experience belonging, which is a cornerstone of equity, through anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-fascist lenses.
It is currently being articulated by Crystal Mason and Jason Wyman in co-creation with a wide community of artists, culture bearers, organizers, educators, and comrades across North America including Mason J, Vioelta Vasquez, Afia Thompson, Sabereh Kashi, Rupy C. Tut, Tray Smith, Midori, blkcowrie, Juan Carlos Escobedo, Dyan Ruiz, Jeantelle Laberinto, Priya Prabhakar, Joseph Smooke, and many, many others.
Tree of Change is Praxis.
And Tree of Change Praxis constantly evolves / iterates / develops because of the collective effort of comrades co-creating change, liberation, camaraderie, and solidarity.
Our Values
Our Values
We value autonomy & consent.
We believe all have a right to autonomy of their own body, time, space, and action, and we believe consent (one’s ability to both give and revoke it) is autonomy’s bedrock.
We value conversation.
We believe conversation is how we collectively cultivate trust, vulnerability, camaraderie, and solidarity. Plus, conversation is part of deep and long-standing dialectical traditions.
We value communal applied dreaming.
We believe dreaming is the practice of letting ourselves (body, being, spirit) wander and imagine while listening deeply to our own thoughts without shame or judgment. Our dreams become amplified when we share them with others . Noticing what thoughts and visions resonate with us and others moves us to action.
We value relations / relationships.
We believe nurturing and tending to our relations/relationships with ourselves, each other, the world around us, the worlds below and above us, is revolutionary because we understand liberation does not happen in isolation and the practice of freedom is a collective one.
We value accessibility.
We believe in reducing barriers to belonging and full participation. We seek the broadest possible definition of accessibility, while centering Disability Justice as defined by Sins Invalid. We ask questions instead of assuming and trust people to know what they need, want and desire.
We value care and compassion.
We understand this world is harsh and punishing for many of us. We seek to create spaces that offer tenderness and camaraderie where we can all let our walls down if even for a couple of hours. We recognize tenderness with ourselves and others is a practice.
Crystal Mason
is an activist, artist, cultural worker and consultant who works to create space for imagining, conjuring and sharing our dreams of a more just and equitable world. Crystal has been working at the intersections of race, gender, class , ability,sexuality, art and culture for over 30 years. They are a co-founder, along with Queerly Complex, of Queering Dreams, a new art, care and community-expanding network that’s collectively dreaming & creating our liberation from all oppressive systems and systems of domination. They have spent over 25 years prioritizing the art and stories of TQBIPOC folks. They were formerly Co-Director of Queer Rebels an intergenerational QTBIPOC performing arts organization and a board member since 2012. Crystal was also a co-founder and Artistic Director of Luna Sea Women’s Performance Project. Until recently they lived and worked in an intergenerational, multiracial mixed gender, queer and trans centered low-income housing project.
Jason Wyman
is Queerly Complex, an anti-binary social practice artist living & creating on Yelamu, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land or what colonizers named San Francisco. A mystical convener, Wyman creates spaces for comrades to explore & discover who they be individually & collectively. They work with dreams, value(s), structures, & equity to conjure forms of liberation & healing. Wyman’s art-making centers the messy, intangible, emotive, & esoteric bits that make us human. It’s resulted in a large-scale, participatory sticker mural with artists Celi Tamayo-Lee & Mary-Claire Amable for the Asian Art Museum, a national Youth Media Network co-produced with Myah Overstreet, and Queering Dreams, an intergenerational, cross-territorial network of artists, neighbors, & comrades dreaming & co-creating our liberation from oppressive systems, with Crystal Mason.
How Tree of Change Took Root
We started simply with a commitment to create something together.
Then, we dreamed in community with each other.
This dream seeded what has become Our Tree of Change, which builds upon our 50+ years of collective wisdom in cultivating spaces for intimacy, vulnerability, and belonging. We co-create the conditions under which deep change can happen.
We center deep listening, appreciative inquiry, and consensus-based decision-making, which ensures that the services provided can adapt to the emergent needs, wants, and desires of our clients.
Our Tree of Change Consulting Services offers three pathways to change: Workshop, Organizational Development, and Program Development.
Book an intake call and let's start planning your journey of change.