JULIE Ann Flynn

Keeper of The Meadow DUMBO

I am a multidisciplinary artist, educator, published writer, and non-clinical art therapist from Chicago currently living in Brooklyn with my two teenage daughters.  I’m interested in the ways we can combine contemplative and expressive arts to heal and empower individuals and communities while initiating environmental restoration and social transformation.

BACKGROUND

I am a certified in Expressive Arts Therapy through an Indigenous lens after studying with Indigenous Wisdom keepers from the Cree/Anishinaabe and Metís Nations in Canada through the WHEAT Institute in Manitoba, Canada. I hold an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago and a certificate in Contemplative Psychology from the Nalanda Institute at the Tibet House in New York City. For close to a decade, I trained in yoga and meditation instruction with renowned master Rodney Yee. I learned Council Circle facilitation and community-building practices through the Ojai Foundation with a circle of wise women from Israel and Palestine.

I have over twenty years experience as a classroom teacher at schools such as Packer Collegiate and Horace Mann in New York City and New Roads in Los Angeles. In addition, I’ve worked as a teacher consultant for the Illinois Writing Project and Art Centered Educators.

Over the past decade, I’ve led professional development workshops and trainings independently with New York City Department of Education, Stern School of Business at New York University, Barnard, Lululemon, Exhale to Inhale, Bumble, Vista Center, Montessori Day School of Brooklyn, Quartz, Brooklyn Public Library, Callison RTKL Architects, The Wing, Sayge Executive Coaching, City As School,  Safe Passage Neuro-monitoring, Brooklyn Friends School, Bedford Stuyvesant Early Childhood Education Center, Stuyvesant Heights Montessori, The Red Hook Initiative, The Red Hook Arts Project, and numerous community members throughout Brooklyn.

PUBLICATIONS

Medium

Former Cop Reckons with the Social Revolution
A Conversation with Scott Odom
“We can’t uproot the causes of suffering by punishing people. Let’s take a look at the reasons people are committing crimes.”

Learning the Language of Animism
A Conversation with Dr. Daniel Foor
“The wish for many movements for social-earth justice is that the voices of the others be considered; that they are legally and politically valued and that we seek to listen and include them in the dialogues.”

History and Prophecy Converge in one New York Classroom
“If time is a circle and not a line, maybe the classroom is the space where the past and future converge. The room is now a time vessel for not one, but two lost worlds. They speak to one another in languages we don’t comprehend.”

Quartz

What We Lose When We Grieve in Isolation
A Conversation with author Tanja Pajevic
“Writing allows me to reclaim my family’s narrative as well as my personal power. Writing my memoir gave me the ability to lasso our story. My parents experienced trauma, but they were also resilient. By writing their story, I was able to tap into that wisdom and that resilience, and reclaim that strength as my own.”

Tricycle

How to Stay Grounded and Motivated in the Face of Our Climate Crisis
A conversation with Joan Halifax, David Loy and Mark Coleman
Three dharma teachers show us how activism, compassion, and a deeper connection with nature can make a difference.

America’s Racial Karma
Interview with Larry Ward by Julie Flynn Badal
Buddhist teacher Larry Ward’s new book invites us to heal from the karma of racism.

Accessing Refuge: An Interview with Lama Rod Owens
Lama Rod Owens on finding peace in the pandemic
Interview with Lama Rod Owens by Julie Flynn Badal
”Much of my work is about teaching people how to open up to that source of resiliency, energy, and love. We can feel really helpless and alone and just thrown out into the brutality of the world. And I just don’t think that’s the whole truth of things. I believe there are beings ready to support us and to love us if we just open our minds to that.”

The Spectrum of Grief: An Interview with Koshin Paley Ellison
Zen teacher Koshin Paley Ellison shares advice on how to mourn and find peace in our new normal.
Interview with Koshin Paley Ellison by Julie Flynn Badal
”I’m not saying we should bypass our sadness, but to also allow ourselves to have more. That’s what I consider to be wholeheartedness. We are in a time of grief, of immense loss of everything we thought we knew. How we move through our grief and wake up with our grief into this life at this moment, to me is everything.”

Reinventing Home

Rebuilding a Chicago Neighborhood
History professor turned small-scale affordable housing developer, Jovita Baber, believes everyone deserves to live in a beautiful environment. She’s found a way to turn her ideals into action, through her company, Historic Homes, reviving some of Chicago’s great buildings in neglected neighborhoods. She’s making them into affordable rentals, employing local workers and helping to rebuild a whole community.

UTNE Reader

The Sun Doesn’t Play Partisan Politics
Community solar gardens and the sharing of renewable energy can be a much-needed bridge across the gulf of political ideology.

Bustle

What My Six-Year-Old Taught Me About Her Identity
My Daughter Explores her Heritage while Shopping for Traditional Clothing
”When I saw those dresses in the shop window, I could think of nothing but the war in Syria, of Sharia Law, bombings and beheadings, and children trapped beneath fallen concrete. I wanted to avoid anything that reminded me of the painful news.

But my daughter didn't know about any of that. That shop window was a connection to something all her own, entirely distinct from me. The shop kept calling out to her and inviting her in. Who was I to stand in the way?”

Salon

Allergic to Myself
For me, the question was not whether or not I had the disease. Modern medicine had already answered that. The more important question was about the quality of my response. If a state of self-intolerance characterized aspects of the condition, could I practice radical self-acceptance instead? Could I welcome this unwanted illness like an old friend? Could I be open to its double-edged lessons like those of a master teacher?

WNYC

Ancient Practices Offer Coping Tool for Teens
New York Schools Offer Yoga and Meditation
Some students recalled their initial reservations about yoga. “I used to think it was just hippie stuff,” she said. “But ever since I took this class I feel so relaxed. It just opens up my mind and for the rest of the day I feel better.”

Huffington Post

Not Quite One Million Moms
Apathy and Action over School Gun Violence
Why weren't we all taking to the streets, banging pots and pans like those women in Egypt? I wanted to open the window of my apartment in Brooklyn and yell, "Enough is enough!" Maybe others would join in. From our fire escapes and front stoops, we'd all be shouting and wouldn't stop until something was done.

Battered Women Behind Bars
Why was this nice Brooklyn mother of a toddler spending her free time with murderers instead of getting manicures? Elizabeth Rohrbaugh immediately made my list as one of the most badass women in Brooklyn.

Revisiting Rana Plaza
Tears in the Fabric is a film that is not afraid to look grief squarely in the eye. And that is no small feat in a culture that can so easily go numb to the grim realities behind our consumption.

Shambhala Press

Understanding Karma through the Lens of Buddhist Psychology
An Interview with Dr. Miles Neale
Culturally, we are entering an age of integration. Respective fields and industries have become so specialized and robust they are now able to collaborate and link together. We are forging new systems that provide solutions that potentially no specialized field could have done alone.