OUR VISION
Wayne County has more stories than any one person can know. Ask any of us who we are, and you’ll hear stories: of farming and manufacturing, of work and family, of good times and hard times. Weave these together, and you have more than a county – you have a place, a community, a home.
Warp & Woof offers a taste of this weaving, live, with laughter and drinks. Four times a year – summer, fall, winter, spring – we’ll ask regular people from Wayne County to respond to a theme with short, true stories from their lives. We want as many threads as possible, which means business owners and factory workers,
farmers and city-dwellers, conservatives and liberals, white folks and people of color. Are you the sort of person who could tell us a story? Yes, you are. This is for all of us, Warp & Woof.
OUR PURPOSE
Individuals’ stories, woven together, make up the civic fabric of Wayne County. Warp & Woof seeks to strengthen that fabric by celebrating these individual threads -- and to do so in a lively, joyful, and entertaining way. By recruiting storytellers from all walks of life, it aims to introduces
people to neighbors, as neighbors. In sharing their own stories and listening to those of others, we believe participants in Warp & Woof will build a stronger and more expansive sense of local community.
We also believe that the arts can help to power Wayne County’s economic development. With our affordable cost of living, existing cultural organizations, and strong local arts communities, Richmond and Wayne County are well situated to attract more creative people and the vitality that surrounds them. Warp & Woof aims to contribute to this larger vision of Wayne County as a place that makes -- and is made by -- art, creative writing, and (of course) storytelling.
WHO WE ARE
Dr. Ben Brazil
(Warp & Woof's Co-founder & Story Coach)
Professor & Director of the Ministry of Writing Program and the new MA in Theopoetics & Writing Program at ESR. In addition to his academic work, Dr. Brazil has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Indianapolis Star and the Dayton Daily News.
Kaia Jackson
(Warp & Woof's Co-founder & Story Coach)
Youth director for Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting of Friends, founder of Valley Storytelling Collective in Amherst, Massachusetts, and a leader of the Survivor Theatre Project. Kaia is pursuing a Masters of Divinity at the Earlham School of Religion.
Jeanne Marie Mudd- Woofer Emeritus
(Warp & Woof's Co-founder)
Founder of Watershed Ways and Pastor of Congregational Ministries for Greensboro First Friends in North Carolina-- Jaimie has blended her life’s work as a nonprofit executive with a calling to entrepreneurial ministry. She has served as executive director of Neighborhood Partners in Phoenix, Arizona, and is currently a student at ESR.
Kristen Laws
(Warp & Woof's Website Design, Marketing & Advertisement Manager, and Event Coordinator)
