Vital Matters’ Mutual Aid Mondays is a series of gatherings that launched on Inauguration Day, 2025, to connect with one another in nourishing and productive ways, and to exchange ideas, resources, tenderness, and care for each other and the communities we care about–particularly those who are most vulnerable at this moment. This feels like the vital foundation for any of the work we do, the art we create or curate, or the battles we help fight.

Learn more about Vital Matters here: www.vitalmatters.net, and follow us on IG: @_vital_matters_

Our 4th Mutual Aid Monday of 2025 is an outdoor picnic and conversation about how we continue to cultivate and deepen our commitment to Joy, Solidarity and Mutual Aid practices as we move into fall and winter. Mutual Aid is often, and rightly, focused on material needs. In the face of disaster, food, water, first aid, and other basic necessities are the priority. For Vital Matters, because we believe in the power of art and creativity, is also important to consider the nonmaterial things that are vital not only for our survival in the present, but for the creation of new culture that we must build even in the midst of the rubble. Things are urgent, so, as Bayo Akomolafe says, we must slow down, long enough to tell a story…

For this Mutual Aid Monday gathering, we will focus on how the stories we tell and songs we sing nourish us, and shape our being and doing in the world. Be a part of the weaving, bring a story or a song to swap. Some Vital Matters artists will offer stories, poems, and songs that offer alternatives, undo old patterns, challenge us to think differently, provide nourishment and inspiration. Join us! Bring a short story, a song, a poem of your own, that offers love, courage, vision, any of the BIG BEAUTIFUL things we need to sustain us in these difficult times, and bring us hope and stamina for the long haul…

We will have:
A potluck picnic–bring your favorite picnic food or beverage
Eco-Somatic Grounding and Connecting to Earth and each other
Stories and Songs with JACOB BUDENZ, SANAHARA AMA CHANDRA, VALESKA POPULOH, VERI TAS and more!

RSVP for exact location. Stay tuned for more details! Let us know if you’d like to contribute food or drink: vitalmattersbaltimore@gmail.com