Essential Space

Essential Space, a Black and Brown people centered retreat space, currently rests on 36 acres of woods and trails just outside Kalamazoo. As part of a partnership with the Kalamazoo Nature Center the spacious, and convenient site with adjacent streams and water, hosts retreats, nature walks and social gatherings. Essential Space ensures environmental equity by establishing, re-establishing and maintaining Black and Brown people’s connection to the Natural world that is often coded in caution. The project responds to the need to add a place of primacy for learning from and retaining Pottawatomi River traditions and to increase Black and Brown people’s access to the benefits of Nature including decreases in blood pressure, depression, anxiety, and hypertension.

Essential Space Market Barn Programming

Programming on the current parcel includes overnight Blamping weekends (Black Glamorous Camping), day retreats, social gatherings, Backyard bashes, wellness workshops, and youth day camps and has increased intergenerational interest and emotional investment. Rent Essential Space

The Birth of Essential Space (2020 - Today)

Three years ago, the search began for an autonomous rural retreat for Brown and Black people to interact with nature and restore and establish cultural traditions of healing. Since then The Cultural Land Stewardship,The Institute of Public Scholarship, and its program, Collect and Recover Wellness, have allied with the Kalamazoo Nature Center to create Essential Space.

COLLECT & RECOVER WELLNESS: BLAMPING AND A WAY WITH NATURE AT ESSENTIAL SPACE

Batt's Creek / Little Trout Run Programming

The Growth of Essential Space

Essential Space is planning for the expansion of its footprint and beginning the visioning process through the lensed of retreat, Afrofuturism, intercultural education, healing and sustainability. We look to identify creative ways to build an infrastructure for a rural retreat center and generate a sustainable 400-year, 14 generation design, that is restorative, energy producing, and pollutant clearing.