TeAda Productions is excited to announce CreAtive Healing Lab (CHL) which will take place from October 2025 through June 2026. As part of this series, all-star guest teaching artists will facilitate workshops that combine the arts, social justice, and collective healing. The goal of CHL is to be a sanctuary-third place for community to gather, process current events, imagine sustainable futures, community-build, and heal through sharing space and creating art.
The 8th workshop of the Spring is titled “Where is the Middle of the Sea: Philippine Palm Weaving in a Changing Climate” and will be led by Carol Anne McChrystal.
About the workshop: In this participatory workshop, we will explore how ancestral palm weaving traditions from the Philippines are being transformed by climate change, migration, and material insecurity. Through a blend of storytelling, cultural history, and hands-on creative practice, participants will learn to repurpose discarded food packaging into weaving material and craft their own small woven object.
Drawing from my own experiences with Filipino weavers and my Pasalubong series—woven artworks made from waste—we’ll explore cultural memory, ecological loss, and the changing shape of tradition.
Together, we’ll ask: What does it mean to inherit a tradition when its original materials—and even its landscapes—are disappearing? This workshop is a space for healing, connection, and creative resistance through craft.
About the facilitator: Carol Anne McChrystal is a visual artist whose materially-driven works are inspired by the traditional plaited mats of her two island homelands: Ireland and the Philippines. Her self-taught weaving practice reflects on how diasporic traditions transform through migration, climate crisis, and global industry. Interweaving discarded plastic waste and gathered plant materials, she explores themes of ancestral knowledge, shelter, and political agency—imagining anti-imperialist futures rooted in both memory and contemporary material conditions.
What: CreAtive Healing Lab Workshop, Los Angeles
“Where is the Middle of the Sea: Philippine Palm Weaving in a Changing Climate” | led by Carol Anne McChrystal
When: Saturday, May 30th, 2026 — from 10am to 12pm PST
Where: West Los Angeles, CA (register for address information)
Register: Button to sign up for this workshop is below, or click here.
Prices: Suggested-Donation / Sliding-Scale based
TeAda Productions is a Los Angeles based non-profit theater of color rooted in the stories of immigrants and refugees. We are committed to healing and honoring the lives of the displaced, exploited and overlooked. Our artistic process starts and ends with conscious listening, community building, and creative courage. Through theater workshops and performances, TeAda offers acts of service that are transformative and impactful.
