WEAVING, WORLDING

virtual ⟡ sept 6th - dec 13th

a high-level mentorship program that combines weekly seminar-workshops with bespoke monthly consulting sessions.

designed for creatives who desire to deconstruct every stage of their work– from ethical-energetic alignment to ideation and materialization.

our curriculum is rooted in tactile experimentation and communal inquiry, to materially explore how participants might shift their approach to thinking + making.

for this iteration of the mentorship, all work will emerge from sitting-with archives as the foundation for building an ethic, tethering an intellectual lineage, and forming a responsive practice.

we offer theoretical frameworks, design strategies, project management, and communal space in a time of overstimulation + distraction. this is an invitation to find your vision, voice, and rhythm. 

meet the mentors

nathalie attallah

is an artist-designer-scholar, and former teaching fellow at Harvard University. she is a researcher at the Institute for Worldmaking (MIT-affiliated lab), focusing on Arab futurity and building alternative knowledge infrastructures. at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, she often collaborated with sand to investigate deep time, queer ecologies, and entangled systems. nathalie has collaborated with the American Museum of Natural History to critically re-imagine its dioramas, bringing an anti-colonial lens to institutional displays. she is the co-author of “Errant Design: Design(ing) Without Solutions” in Commons in Design (Valiz).

ella hilaire

is a writer-artist-scholar, and former teaching fellow at Harvard University. her research resides at the intersection of Caribbean decolonial theory, theology, and film studies. at Harvard Divinity School, she developed a multi-species theological narrative of the Haitian Revolution that re-imagines liberation struggles through the lens of the ecological + supernatural. ella is a previous research associate and online contributor at Vanity Fair.

frequently asked questions

  • we welcome artists, writers, entrepreneurs, publishers, designers, and culture workers at any stage of their career.

    the program works especially well for bridging the gap between having an idea and making it happen. we guide you to:

    —clarify your vision

    —notice the gaps in your research + creative process 

    —structure your time + energy 

    —elevate your work by paying attention to detail, form, and cultural context 

    —review your final project as a prototype for grants, residencies, and publishing proposals to leverage your work beyond the mentorship

  • —archival research, worldbuilding, and writing for the first draft of a fiction novel

    —a prototype for an artist book inspired by counter-mapping practices

    —designing the conceptual infrastructure and facilitation tools for a transdisciplinary ecological lab 

    —an experimental zine deconstructing the mental, spiritual, and somatic experiences of psychiatric institutionalization

  • we have 7 available spaces for our fall cohort. interviews are taking place on a rolling basis until all of our spots are filled.

  • investment is discussed during the call, and payment plans are available to all participants.

  • all gatherings are completely virtual, on Zoom, with replays sent the day after class. group meeting times are sundays @ 17:30 CET | 11:30AM EST | 8:30AM PST. individual consulting sessions are booked monthly according to your schedule.

  • yes. all partcipants will be guided to select an archive through their creative inquiry, and no prior experience or material is required to apply.

  • a bubbling idea, direction, or question for the next phase of your work. tell us about that short film you never finished, the book you dream about writing, an intellectual inquiry you’ve been sitting with... we get excited about uplifting the experimental, genre-defying projects that stretch our imaginations and call upon a deepening of research + craft.

what we will explore together ‍

archival research

design thinking

relational ways-of-knowing

speculative fabulation

ecological frameworks 

worldmaking tools

FALL COHORT INTERVIEWS ARE CLOSED

*

archival images, poster (top to bottom):

1. Hibiscus moscheutos, scan of a bloom from our neighbour’s garden, Tannay, 2026. scan by nathalie attallah.

2. Unknown Goryeo maker, Fragment of Garden Stool with Openwork Design, Korea, Goryeo dynasty, 1200s. Cleveland Museum of Art, acc. 1918.418. CC0 1.0, via Internet Archive.

3. Film still from Which Way USA — Black Views on Race (Bobby Seale episode), prod. Charles Grinker + Mert Koplin, 1969. Periscope Film LLC, via Internet Archive.

4. Octavia E. Butler, working draft of Kindred (as To Keep Thee in All Thy Ways), ca. 1977. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. © Estate of Octavia E. Butler.

additional archival images:

1. Unknown Babylonian scribe, Cuneiform tablet: Atra-hasis, Babylonian flood myth, ca. 7th–6th century B.C. Clay. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. 86.11.378a, via Internet Archive.

2. Richard Doyle (illustrator) with Edmund Evans (engraver/printer) and William Allingham (text), In Fairyland: A Series of Pictures from the Elf-World, publ. Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer, 1870. Colour lithograph. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. 1970.565.74, gift of Lincoln Kirstein, via Internet Archive.

3. William Michael Harnett, The Artist's Letter Rack, 1879. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. 66.13, via Internet Archive.