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Meet our Festival Guest Artists

Our festival features San Diego-based QTBIPOC artists, wellness advocates, and healers who inspire the work we do here at Soultry Sisters Arts + Wellness Collective. They will lead arts and wellness workshops, performances, culinary features, and art installations centered around creative expression,
collective healing, and mindful movement.
This year we are asking each guest artist to create an offering or activation
in response to our festival theme, Radical Re-Imagining.


Justine Banal
Sunny Soto-Briscoe
Alyssa "Ajay" Junious
Toni Lynn Junious

Theena Nguyen
BJ Robinson
Frankie Simone
Keomi Tarver

Noriko Whitfield
Irie Zepeda

Workshop Descriptions

Learn more about our workshops!

Our festival includes arts + wellness experiences centered around creative expression, collective healing, and mindful movement. We asked each guest artist to create a session in response to what "Radical Re-Imagining" means to them. We are excited to feature QTBIPOC artists, wellness advocates, and healers who inspire the work we do here at Soultry Sisters Arts + Wellness Collective.

Saturday Workshops

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Soulscape: Mindful Movement  • Soultry Sisters (Ajay & Toni Lynn Junious)  •  Saturday • 10:00am - 11:00am

“As we search for pathways to a liberated future, PLAY is a vital practice.” - Soultry Sisters

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Play is natural and connects us to our humanity. It has roots in being a pathway to reclaiming our collective liberation. Play looks different for everyone. There is no right or wrong way to play. Whether it helps us relax, sparks curiosity, or invites us into flow, play opens the door to explore imagination, joy, and healing.

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SOULscape is a guided movement experience rooted in play, expression, and embodiment. Together, we’ll journey through playful movement and breathwork, using visualization and somatic practices to reconnect with our bodies and creative spirit. This is a soft space to come home to yourself, to find freedom through self-expression, and to explore what liberation feels like in your body.

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This session fosters a sense of belonging and creative flourishing—inviting you to connect with others while tapping into your own unique creative playground.

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Art in Conversation • Guided tour at OMA  • 11:15am - 12:15pm

A dedicated space for PLAY - offering intentional ways to story-tell about the trickster energy, act out emotions + ancestral cosmologies, move through interactive communal activities to break the inner and outer ice

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Step n Stride: Art Walk • Soultry Sisters (Ajay & Toni Lynn Junious)

• 12:30 - 2:00pm

In workshop, Mel will be guiding folks through the process of tapping into their mythic imagination. The belief in mythology is that everyone has a gift to offer and contribute to the collective. My hope is that in these devastating times of crisis, we might find ways to remember how the mythic stories of our ancestors were once used as maps for survival and can guide us on how we might resist empire today.

By connecting with these stories, we can begin to tap into the beauty and the grief, enchantment, and ecological wisdom that they hold and develop a capacity to imagine new possibilities for the future.

This workshop will include grounding, active imagination practice, and writing prompts to uncover your unique mythic story within the collective.

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Important Reminder: This offering will not be held in a clinical capacity. However, care is available <3 Liberatory Wellness Network Mango Tree Counseling Axis Mundi Center for Mental HealthS uicide and Crisis Lifeline: 988 Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255 Domestic Violence Hotline: 888-385-4657 Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741

Sunday Workshops

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"Radical Re-Imagining" • Soultry Sisters (Ajay & Toni Lynn Junious)  •  Sunday • 10:30am - 11:30am

Rest is the sacred act of softening.  A yielding of the body to a space of receptivity where dreams and reality blur lines so we may play in the infinite possibility of our Divinity.  Through the use of song, sound, and sacred storytelling, “Lullabies of Liberation” will draw your mind and body into a harmonious state of rest.  Here you’ll be guided to imagine and play as you allow your dreamscape to become a lived experience.  As a community we’ll reflect on our dance within the imagination through artistic expression and communal sharing.

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Sound Healing • Noriko Whitfield •  Sunday • 11:45-12:45pm

“As we search for pathways to a liberated future, PLAY is a vital practice.” - Soultry Sisters

Play is natural and connects us to our humanity. It has roots in being a pathway to reclaiming our collective liberation. Play looks different for everyone. There is no right or wrong way to play. Whether it helps us relax, sparks curiosity, or invites us into flow, play opens the door to explore imagination, joy, and healing.

​

SOULscape is a guided movement experience rooted in play, expression, and embodiment. Together, we’ll journey through playful movement and breathwork, using visualization and somatic practices to reconnect with our bodies and creative spirit. This is a soft space to come home to yourself, to find freedom through self-expression, and to explore what liberation feels like in your body.

​

This session fosters a sense of belonging and creative flourishing—inviting you to connect with others while tapping into your own unique creative playground.

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Creative Expression Workshop • Irie Zepeda  • Sunday • 2:00pm - 3:15pm

Songwriting can warm your funny bone and soothe your soul! In this workshop, participants will play with words and sounds to create songs that can impact your everyday life as easy tools for comfort & consolation, as well as energy & inspiration!

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Creative Expression Workshop • Irie Zepeda  • Sunday • 2:00pm - 3:15pm

Songwriting can warm your funny bone and soothe your soul! In this workshop, participants will play with words and sounds to create songs that can impact your everyday life as easy tools for comfort & consolation, as well as energy & inspiration!

Learn more about our
Community Mixer guest artists

Our festival will have 3 community mixers throughout the weekend. Our mixers are a great opportunity to connect with other festival participants & guest artists. We love creating opportunities for folks in our community to socialize & make meaningful connections with one another. Friday and Sunday mixers include an art installation, live performances, music, food, local vendors, and dancing. Saturday's mixer will be post art walk at a venue in downtown Oceanside.

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 Margaret Salazar •

Festival Art Installation


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Culinary Artist • Sunny Soto-Briscoe

Opening Mixer, Sunday Lunch &

Closing Celebration Mixer

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 Live Performance • Frankie Simone

Opening Mixer

Live Performance  • William "BJ" Robinson

Opening Mixer, Closing Open Mic Host

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Margaret Salazar • IMAGINATION station: "Collective Art Book"

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 Live Performance • Keomi Tarver

Closing Ceremony


 Live Performance • Sam Paguita

Closing Celebration Mixer


Artists Bio

Learn more about our guest artists!

Learn more about our
Media Team

We have an amazing Media Team who are
capturing all the special moments during the festival weekend.

Learn more about our
Coordinator Team

We have an amazing team of Festival Coordinators who are
providing support during the festival weekend.

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