Happy Pride Month Garden(er)s!

Tonight, before sunset take a look outside your window towards the eastern horizon and you'll most likely see SIX planets aligning! If you miss it, you'll have a chance to catch the rare alignment again later this fall.

Fun fact: Did you know Hawaiian pizza was first created in Ontario, Canada a little over 60 years ago? Which brings us to a decades old, very controversial question... does pineapple belong on pizza? Tell us what you think.

While you're thinking that over, check out what's new and ongoing in Garden!

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New Events

⏲️Our events are typically listed in Pacific Standard Time (PST). Need help converting PST to your time zone? Check out this handy WorldTimeBuddy clock!

🫂Chronic Illness and Long Covid Support Group is starting on Thursday June 6th & 20th at 5:30pm-7:30pm PST with Chanelle! Navigating everything that comes with chronic illness can be difficult - from managing symptoms to experiencing grief over missing your pre-illness life. This will be a peer support space where we can share our feelings about living with any chronic/long-term illness, including long Covid, during an ongoing pandemic. RSVP via the calendar on the visit page.

📷 Fab will be hosting her Meme Night on Thursday June 6th from 4pm-6pm PST. Bring a couple of your favorite meme’s and their backstory. We will be sharing screens to show YouTube videos, gifs, and any other forms of media to showcase memes.

🌞Summer Solstice is happening 12pm PST June 22nd-12pm June 23rd! Come through for: 1.Workshops on topics such as: Mutual Aid, Altar Making, COVID Safer Hangs, Improv, and Tapping 2. Films (feature length & short) by Trans creatives 3. Performances 4. Games 5. Art Making and 6.Vendor Fair featuring pandemic safe businesses and orgs! RSVP here!

🩰Want to learn ballet in a way that is anti-racist, accessible, body positive, queer, and covid conscious? Saturday, June 29th is officially Day of Ballet in Garden, hosted by Ashley from 11am to 3pm PST. 
  
Tentative schedule:
11am - 11:15am PST: Arms-only/sitting ballet class
11:20 - 12:20pm PST: Beginner full ballet class with choreography
12:30 - 1:30pm PST: Some form of self-defense movement class/discussion
2-3pm PST: Lecture/discussion and/or movie screening relating to BIPOC ballet histories and experiences. RSVP via the calendar on the visit page.

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Ongoing events in Garden

🫁 Want to increase your lung capacity? Come to Breathing with BJ in the Knowledge Nursery! Every weekday at 9am PST.

🎥 Name That Movie (Night!) is Wednesday at 5:30pm PST! This week's movie is a romantic adventure comedy starring a Black & South Asian couple. Have a good guess? Come thru and find out!

🪷 Stretch it out as Caroline leads us in another weekly afternoon Yoga sesh this Friday at 2:15pm PST by streaming a yoga video from YouTube and following along. Videos will be between 25-45 minutes long between easy to moderate pace. Drop ins are always welcome! RSVP via the calendar on the visit page.

💻 Do you work from home and sometimes feel a little too isolated from others? Come Co-Work with us in Garden! We are a 24/7 drop in space for folks to join to co-work silently, listen to music, play a game or chat amongst each other in the chat box.

😷 Hang out, chill and play games with Black folks who take COVID precautions at the Bonfire in Garden! Every 3rd Saturday of the month from 5-8pm PST. RSVP via the calendar on the visit page.

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Opportunities

🎬Queer|Art and Body Hack have an open call to feature Trans filmmakers for their T4T shorts film screening taking place on June 29th. Submit by June 5th.

📸 The Robert Giard Grant for Emerging LGBTQ+ Photographers, Queer|Art’s first international grant provides an award of $10,000 for the winner and $1,250 for distinguished finalists, to support the creation of new work by emerging LGBTQ+ photographers. Applications are due June 30th.

💡The Moonshot Awards centers young leaders 30 and under, around the globe, who are going to change our world with their brilliance. Non-equity grants of $5,000 are given across various categories from start-up funds, to supporting refugees, health innovations and more. Due by July 1st.

🖌️The Homiens Art Prize, due July 31st, is an international, non-acquisitive art prize that is free to enter, and open to all artists. 6 Winning artists are exhibited by Homiens and receive an unrestricted cash award of $500.

🎈 We are looking to open Garden up to community orgs who would like to share space with us here. If you are part of an org that may benefit from office/event space here, please email info@meetatgarden.com

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Announcements & Actions

🪧Artists Against Apartheid has a call for submissions for their June 8th action! Submit ASAP!

🖥️Want to know what's new in Garden since last you visited? Check out this blog post here about what's new! Additionally, if you are member of Garden that has a desk and/or or build permissions, check out our 9 Agreements of Building in Garden.

📝 AYA is an art collective founded in 2023 with the intention of promoting, connecting, and collaborating with Black queer and trans artists around the world. They are planning a liberation focused festival in August that will be offered both online and in-person (in the DMV area) and want to hear from you to determine how to curate the space. Fill out their feedback form and be entered to be randomly selected and win $20!

🍉Centering Palestine has a zoom every Tuesday at 5pm PST, along with other resources to show up for Palestine available here.

🧪We came across a donation of free rapid antigen tests to distribute to our Garden community. We can send tests out to 10 Garden(er)s at no cost. Priority will be given to: low income, disabled and or immunocompromised people, those living in multiple person households and those who have to work in person. Fill out our form if you're interested in receiving free COVID tests.

That's all for now, until next our avatars meet!

😸Gata

PS: Have a one-time-event or a recurring event and need a place to host? Email us at info@meetatgarden.com!

Garden is a free 24/7 space, but it does cost money for us to maintain it on GatherTown. If you'd like to donate to this work, consider throwing some money in the pot here. To send donations directly through our 501c3 fiscal sponsor, email us!