Mission: Possible a Success!

On Saturday, November 30th, over 30 members of the Alliance came together at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center hosted Watershed Family community building scavenger hunt and art event "Mission: Possible." On our fun filled day community members came together to combine curiosity with passion to collectively care for our home watershed.

We were motivated by a core question: How do you tend to waterways that are not in your direct control??

This was same question we asked youth and multi-generational participants at our first Design Circle at the Tribal Forests and Watersheds Camp at the Mashantucket Museum - an especially fraught question for Tribal citizens. And, given the complex regulations around water quality in the USA, it's an enduring question for anyone concerned about pollution or conservation or climate mitigation at a local or bioregional scale.

The short answer is building Alliances like ours, Indigenous and Youth co-led, bringing together coalitions across all boundaries. The slower and deeper one is this: transform the way everyone relates to water.

How to do that? Start exploring young and don't stop, engage in caring as a vehicle for learning, make art.

Mission: Possible is one of the direct outcomes of that first Design Circle.

Mission: Possible, turned out to be a super fun and co-created Scavenger Hunt and Collective Art Project. The Alliance Youth Council (led by high schoolers Zoe Wu and Mia Pisani) created the Scavenger Hunt, with challenges for young and old. It was designed to encourage slowing down and looking and listening closely, emphasizing care and relationship, with plenty of room for wiggling and stomping and acting like trees. The challenges (and the app that went along with them) also yielded a first round of data for mapping areas that flood, are too hot (or where there is plenty of shade), have special trees, where people like to play, and so on as part of our ongoing Northern Watershed Vulnerability analysis being conducted by Fuss and O'Neill.

A group of artists led by Pattagansett Art Center's Kristi Hollohan and Jessica Cerullo, Rain Thomas, Kate Richards, Derrick Strong (Tell me your story and I'll help you draw it), and Judy Kirmmse set up a beautiful creativity space with thematic prompts related to the Watershed Family Scavenger Hunt themes. Donations and a small grant from CT Sea Grant/NOAA supported art materials, cultural learning, and free food, and the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center provided the perfect place and the cultural learning exchange.

Cultural Educator Connor Smith of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center volunteered his time to share the ecological relationship game Rain Thomas designed as part of the first design circle last summer. Instead of a typical matching game where like matches like, each card is unique and you get points for describing the relationships between different plants, animals, and relatives. Did I mention that you get extra points if you can pronounce the Pequot names for the animals, plants, and habitats correctly???

Our Mission involves renewing our relationships with each other and the waterways that connect us and give us life, and we are rapidly sensing the joy and resilience that comes with a shared sense of purpose. We are a community that learns, plans, and acts together.

We will always be free to join, and so donations are welcome!!!

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You don't have to live here to want to see our community-led mission move from possible to successful!