In Practice Weekend
Hosted by Kinstead + Engather at Mabel’s Rest
What do you know that someone else might want to learn? What would you love to learn from someone else?
In Practice is a co-creative weekend for exchanging the skills, practices, knowledge, and gifts we each carry. We’ll gather to learn from one another, try things together, and be nourished by what others bring.
You don’t need to be an expert. This weekend is about recognizing what we already know and creating opportunities to share it.
A Season of Practice
This FREE gathering is the culmination of A Season of Practice, offered through the Healing Grounds Foundation, Kinstead’s nonprofit.
Kinstead is an ecovillage in formation in the Hudson Valley. While we do not yet have a permanent home, these gatherings give us opportunities to practice the skills, relationships, and ways of being together that help communities thrive.
For this weekend, we’re partnering with Engather, a Hudson Valley-based tech and culture platform that strengthens community through a gift economy of mutual support. Its network connects neighbors to share skills and resources, pursue common interests, and give or receive a helping hand.
Together, we’re creating a weekend around a simple idea: we each have something to contribute and something to receive from one another.
Our Home for the Weekend
We’ll gather at Mabel’s Rest, a communal gathering space surrounded by 136 acres of forest and open sky in the Hudson Valley.
With indoor and outdoor gathering spaces, a pool, sauna, and fire pit, Mabel’s Rest gives us room for conversation, hands-on learning, movement, creative practice, shared meals, and time together.
How It Works
The weekend is co-creative and emergent, taking shape around the people who gather and what each of us brings.
You might share a skill, lead a practice, demonstrate something, offer a useful tool or approach, or simply participate and learn.
The circles below give us places to begin. You won’t be limited to one.
Skill Circles
Living and Deciding Together
How do we share power, make decisions, navigate conflict, and stay in relationship?
This might include shared governance, communication, accountability, conflict transformation, trust-building, role clarity, and practices for repair.
Mutual Aid and Everyday Support
How do we become more capable of helping and relying on one another?
This might include mutual aid, caregiving, resource sharing, emergency preparedness, tool libraries, time banking, and other systems of everyday interdependence.
Food, Land, and Ecological Practice
What skills help us deepen our relationship with food, land, and the natural world?
This might include growing food, gardening, foraging, plant identification, composting, seed saving, food preservation, cooking, ecological observation, and land stewardship.
Making, Mending, and Everyday Life Skills
What practical knowledge helps us become more resourceful in everyday life?
This might include home repair, sewing, mending, tool use, budgeting, household systems, fixing, building, and making.
Healing, Movement, and Embodied Practice
What practices help us care for ourselves and one another?
This might include movement, somatic practices, meditation, rest, breathwork, body awareness, healing traditions, and practices for tending stress and well-being.
Art, Story, and Cultural Practice
How do creativity and culture help us create meaning, memory, and belonging?
This might include music, art, dance, storytelling, writing, craft, ritual, traditions, games, and celebration.
Invite Two People You’d Like to Learn From
Part of the exchange begins before we gather.
When you register, we’ll ask you to personally invite two people you’d like to learn from: someone you know well and someone you’d like to know better. Tell them why you thought of them and what you’d be excited to learn from them.
After You Register
Your confirmation email will include a short questionnaire about what you’d like to share and learn, your availability, and any camping or lodging needs.
A limited number of FREE camping and overnight lodging options may be available at Mabel’s Rest. Most meals are provided.
Come ready to share something and learn something.