We’re excited to share our new Red Tent series
Saturdays at 5pm:
July 18 - Childbirth & Nature Mandalas
August 8 - Menarche & Storytelling
September 12 - Menopause & Creative Movement
October 10 - Death & Meditation
The Red Tent Workshop Series is a four-part monthly program that combines art-making, guided conversations, food, and ritual. Each gathering is centered on the different major thresholds in women’s lives and is open to all ages and genders. The workshops are led by regional artists whose practices bridge community engagement and creative work.
What are Red Tents?
Red Tents are a safe and sacred place where self-identified women gather to experience, share, celebrate, and mourn the rhythms of the life in community. We welcome women of all ages and backgrounds. We often have mothers & daughters join.
We have been hosting Red Tent gatherings at the Telegraph School since 2021. Typically they are monthly events that include an activity, a sharing circle and a potluck dinner. Our activities are tied to the natural rhythms of nature and draw from the ancestral practices of our rotating leaders. Here are some examples of what we’ve done.
For this Red Tent Series, we are exploring the different transitions of women’s lives through creative expression, sharing circles, ritual, and food. Led by local artists and culture-bearers, we come together to unwind the stigmas and create support and reverence for all the phases of women’s lives. Tea and light snacks will be provided. You are welcome to bring a potluck item to add.
Childbirth & Nature Mandalas
July 18th
This workshop explores Childbirth as both a deeply human life transition and a universal natural process of renewal, growth, and transformation. Drawing on her work as both an artist and a holistic doula, the facilitator Anastasiia Starukhina will introduce childbirth through physiological, emotional, and symbolic perspectives, while also sharing artworks related to birth, motherhood, and change. Participants will then take part in a guided sharing circle using metaphorical images to spark reflection and conversation around birth, life transitions, and new beginnings.
The hands-on creative component centers on building a large collaborative Seed Mandala from natural materials such as seeds, stones, dried plants, salt, and candles, offering a meditative way to reflect on personal growth and the rhythms of nature. At the close of the workshop, the mandala will be gently taken apart and participants will take home a small symbolic bundle and seed packet, followed by a shared light snacks and herbal tea that further supports the workshop’s atmosphere of nourishment, connection, and care.
Menarche & Storytelling
August 8th
This workshop centers on “Blood Stories,” inviting participants to reflect on and write about experiences connected to menstruation, coming of age, and the personal and cultural meanings we attach to these stories. The session will begin with an introduction circle in a room arranged for shared conversation, followed by an overview of the workshop and Bethany Adams’s introduction to the concept of period stories as a creative and communal writing practice.
Participants will receive journals and pens and will be guided through a series of writing prompts, with structure and support provided throughout the process. After writing, participants will have the opportunity to share their stories over light snacks and tea, creating a space for listening, reflection, and connection. Led by writer, educator, and community builder Bethany Adams, whose work bridges storytelling, endurance, nature, and women’s experience, the workshop draws on her extensive background in writing, experiential education, and community-based projects, including prior Red Tent gatherings with The Telegraph School.
Menopause & Creative Movement
September 12th
This workshop explores Menopause as a significant life transition through movement, music, discussion, and shared reflection. Led by Angelica Dzeli Gosiewska Palmer, a social practice eco-artist, ritualist, and founder of The Telegraph School, the session will begin with an introduction of the physical, cultural, and psychological changes associated with menopause, including how different cultures and historical periods have understood and honored women in their post-childbearing years. Participants will then be invited into a group discussion to share personal experiences, questions, fears, and sources of strength connected to this stage of life, while emphasizing the importance of community connection during times of transition.
The creative portion of the workshop will begin with meditation and gentle movement, encouraging participants to tune into their bodies as they are now, noticing sensation, limitation, capacity, and emotion. Through guided movement exploration, elements of contact improvisation, drumming, and song, the workshop will offer an embodied and communal way to engage menopause as both personal experience and shared cultural passage. The gathering will conclude with light snacks and tea, to provide nourishment and unstructured connection time.
Death & Meditation
October 10th
This workshop invites participants to explore death as a shared human experience through conversation, meditation, creative expression, and communal reflection. Facilitators Bethany Adams, Anastasiia, Angelica Dzeli Gosiewska Palmer, and local Death Midwife Raye Savittiere will guide the afternoon by sharing their own experiences with death, grief, transformation, and remembrance through the practices of writing, painting, movement, and end-of-life care.
Together, we will enter into an open group discussion, creating a supportive space to ask questions, share experiences, and contemplate our relationship with mortality. Raye will then lead a gentle Death & Rebirth Meditation, inviting participants to reflect on the many endings and beginnings we experience throughout life and to consider death as a profound teacher.
The hands-on portion of the workshop will pair participants to collaboratively create a small work of art inspired by the themes of death, impermanence, and transformation, offering an opportunity to respond creatively and relationally. The gathering will conclude with light snacks and tea, providing time for conversation, connection, and integration
Pricing
Each workshop lasts approx 2 hours and includes the a community-centered sharing circle, a creative project, art supplies, tea and light snacks. You are welcome to bring a potluck item to share.
The group is intentionally kept small to facilitate connection and trust-building. As such, space is limited and signing up early is recommended.
The cost is by donation at the door. It is a Pay It Forward model, which means if you’re able to pay a little more to help us continue to offer these to the community, that helps those attend who can only pay a small amount.
Our Teachers
Anastasiia Starukhina
Teacher of Childbirth & Nature Mandalas Red Tent and Co-Teacher of Death & Meditation Red Tent
Anastasiia is a multi disciplinary artist, holistic doula, and art facilitator based in the mountains of upstate New York. A mother of six and the author of the book “40 Days After Birth,” her work explores the inner transitions of life — birth, motherhood, loss, renewal, and personal transformation.
Anastasiia combines visual art, craft, and traditional women’s practices to create spaces for reflection and initiation. Her workshops often draw inspiration from nature, seasonal rhythms, and the wisdom of handmade objects. Through simple materials — clay, plaster, textiles, botanical forms — she invites participants to slow down, work with their hands, and connect with their inner experience.
She works as an Art Facilitator at the Kirkland Art Center (KAC) in Clinton, New York, where she leads community workshops that integrate art-making with conversation and personal storytelling. Her approach blends artistic practice with holistic care, creating gentle and meaningful experiences for people navigating important stages of life — not only in motherhood, but across many thresholds of human experience.
Website: www.holima.org
Teacher of Menarche & Storytelling Red Tent and Co-Teacher of Death & Meditation Red Tent
Bethany Adams
Bethany is a writer, mountain athlete and experiential educator. With undergraduate degrees in Science and Environmental Studies, her Masters focused on Community Building and Development.
After earning her degree, she went on to instruct at Paul Smith's College and Clarkson University. Part of her mission in life is to be an agent of change, which she has done through her writing and athletic accomplishments in the outdoor field.
She is the first woman to achieve 100 Fastest Known Times (FKTs). Her stories of endurance and healing through nature have been published in Trail Runner and Outside magazines and in the short story collection Blood Sweat Tears (Rugged Outdoorswoman Publishing, 2024). Adams is a proud community ambassador for SheJumps, a non-profit organization that works to provide more women and girls access to the outdoors.
Adams has led numerous community projects from raising awareness around climate change to help fund a community garden. She has also helped organize Red Tents with the Telegraph School.
Instagram page: www.instagram.com/bethany.climbs/
Teacher of Menopause & Creative Movement Red Tent and Co-Teacher of Death & Meditation Red Tent
Angelica Dzeli Gosiewska Palmer
Angelica is an Interdisciplinary Social Practice Eco-Artist and Ritualist that explores the connections within ourselves, with each other, and with nature. Through music, dance, and storytelling, she creates visceral and emotional work rooted in the earth. For decades Angelica has led rituals, taught classes and hosted events interweaving community, activism, and the arts throughout the United States and Canada.
She is the founder of The Telegraph School, a home for the Healing & Performing Arts in Cherry Valley, NY and is on the Board of the Community Foundation of Otsego County. Angelica is the creator of the Cherry Valley Water Project, a multi-year journey to build a sacred relationship between her village and their water through the performance arts and ritual. She is a 2023 recipient of the Rural and Traditional Artist Fellowship and a 2026 recipient of the NYSCA Support for Artists Grant for Folk Arts, through New York Folklore. She is currently engaged in the second phase of the Cherry Valley Water Project, researching her ancestral Springtime water ritual practices in Poland.
Angelica has a Masters in Creative Inquiry and Social Activism from the Experimental Performance Institute at New College of California in San Francisco and a Bachelors in Sustainable International Development and Statistics from Cornell University.
She is deeply influenced by the generations of artists in her family, including her father jazz pianist Paul Bley, by the slow-moving deeply rooted nature of her community in Cherry Valley, NY, on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka land, by the beauty and vitality of its land and water, and by the ancient Slavic and Animist practices of her ancestors.
Website: www.dzeli.com
Co-Teacher of Death & Meditation Red Tent
Raye Savittiere
Raye Savittiere is a certified Death Midwife, educator, and facilitator dedicated to helping people cultivate a more compassionate relationship with death and dying. After more than two decades in veterinary medicine, where she accompanied countless families through grief and loss, Raye felt called to expand her work to support humans as they navigate the emotional, practical, and spiritual dimensions of mortality.
Through community conversations, workshops, meditation, and end-of-life education, she creates welcoming spaces where people can explore death with curiosity rather than fear. Raye believes that by contemplating our mortality, we deepen our capacity to live with greater intention, presence, and love. She lives in Cooperstown, New York, where she serves her community through A Sovereign Death Midwifery.
Website: www.asovereigndeath.com
