About Us
Mission
TurningWheel Collective uses memory and ritual as touchstones for artistic creation, storytelling, theatre-making, community building, and personal development.
Our Origin Story
TurningWheel Collective was born out of a Theatre for Social Change/Crossing Borders project in Jamaica, WI. Winner of the #InnovativeWomenJA grant for Women’s History Month throughout the US Embassy Kingston, Every Body Theatre Project/Downtown Girls Theatre Collective partnered with a local organization with programming for mostly boys in Denham Town, Trench Town, and Parade Gardens neighborhoods in Downtown Kingston. Downtown Girls was able to step in and offer theatre for social change sessions for girls to build personal bridges and forge friendships across the borders of these, at times, warring neighborhoods. The program ran for 10 weeks successfully.
In a bittersweet transition, DGTC was invited to find a home at the Institute of Jamaica’s Junior Center just two months before COVID gripped the world. Bittersweet also as both Abigail Ramsay’s father and maternal aunt are near centenarians and both had strong connections to Downtown Kingston. Her father, in fact, was a student at the Junior Centre nearly 80 years before her program was installed there, and her aunt was a longtime educator in a local school. Both storytellers and lovers of history, their stories of culture, ritual, memory, and immigration have been the guidepost for all the work Abigail has done.
Since 2022, TurningWheel has been facilitating young women and girls in Little Haiti, Brooklyn (East Flatbush) through the Tèt Ansanm Leadership Group for Girls at Flanbwayan Haitian Literacy Project. Each six-week summer program allows participants to celebrate their shared culture as well as personal story. Throughout the school year, local human rights issues as well as connected themes of self-development and education are examined.
In 2024, the young participants have created their own theatre piece on immigration and memory, which will be presented alongside performances by local Haitian artists.