Please join the Coldwater Creek Stream Team, Phoenix Consults, and Watershed Cairns, as Betsy Damon leads scientists, artists, and community members listening to Coldwater Creek and learning ways to return the water to its self-cleaning state. We’ll meet at the headwaters of Coldwater Creek in Wild Acres Park, Overland, Missouri, on Saturday, September 7th from 9:15am to 4:30pm (program below).
For four decades, artist Betsy Damon has dedicated her life to water and activism. Since founding Keepers of the Waters in 1991, Betsy has worked around the world with grassroots groups through lectures and workshops inviting communities to reclaim their water. She is designer of The Living Water Garden, a nature-based public park that cleans water and is an environmental education center. Betsy will give the Keynote Address at the River Soundings 2024 "Big Rivers and Communities" conference at Powder Valley Conservation Nature Center.
In her Rivers Soundings talk, Betsy will speak of experiences shared in her book: Water Talks: Empowering Communities to Know, Preserve, and Restore Their Waters, with a forward by Jane Goodall, DBE, that resonate with the conference theme. River Soundings registration is free at https://greenwaynetwork.org/river-soundings/
Sep. 7 Program:
Meet for coffee and juice at 9:15 am at the main building in Wild Acres Park. After introductions at 9:30, Betsy Damon and local experts who know Coldwater Creek’s tributaries and impacting infrastructure, as well as plants and coexistent species, will root our knowledge with indicators of lively water systems. After a break at 11, small groups will meet for participants to share their thinking about what can happen, individuals' visions and ideas. After a light lunch, we will go to the creek with curiosity and creativity to find places along the creek to make our own observations. We will create micro interventions that can restore or sustain the water's health
(and indirectly our own). At 3:30 pm, we will gather to share experiences, insights and ideas to go forward.
Have questions? Let us know you will be coming. Call or text Laura Madden (202) 845-4503 or Libby Reuter 314-363-4274. There is no charge for the workshop, but donations for lunch will be appreciated, with order placed below by Tuesday Sep. 3rd.
