Become A Losstender 2023

Are you someone who wants to take on a purposeful challenge with transformative potential?

Role
Details

A Losstender is supported and guided to extend care to strangers, holding space for grief and loss through artistic and embodied practices. As a Losstender, you will:
Co-learn: Share practices as a cohort and encounter diverse wisdom about the experience of grief & loss
Recruit: Work as a team to share & demonstrate your offer with people living in encampments
Hold space & model creative expression: to acknowledge and move emotions relating to grief & loss, through creative practices, leaving people with an artifact of their experience
Debrief: Maintain a debriefing practice throughout with the cohort and Circle of Support
Make grief visible: Help plan events to prompt public witnessing of grief & loss
2.5 from months from mid July - end of September
Mid July
~24 hours (incl. retreat)
End of July to end of September
End of July-Sept: ~5 hours a week
This is an opportunity to parlay your artistic/ embodied skills into practices of grassroots care & community connection, with great support, and oversight to minimize the potential for harm.
1. Honorarium: $1600CAD
2. Constructive feedback and hands on learning
3. Group learning process on inter-cultural grief & loss
4. Mentorship: from knowledge holders of different cultural & spiritual backgrounds
5. The art of making moments: ritual design, and meaningful interactions, even with strangers
6. Confidence & skills: around how to show up for people, in life

Apply Now!

Or see other open roles

Scroll down for even more details on our decision process

How we make decisions

We start with the belief that everybody is qualified to be part of Soloss. We welcome folks from all walks of life, lived experiences, and backgrounds.

We wish we had the resources to support each and every person with a desire to take on this role. We do not. As a prototype, our intent is to assemble a cohort (i.e group of people on a learning journey) who can help us to stretch and grow in fresh directions. Because this cohort will be grounded in encampments, in partnership with campers, we specifically want to learn how Soloss can be a source of care and solace in transient, often precarious, settings.

So, we will be making decisions based on what folks can help us to test and try. Our process is NOT rooted in meritocracy. It’s not about who is ‘best’ or most credentialed. We don’t care what’s on your resume. We care about who you are, and who you’d like to become.

Things we’re looking to test this cohort

Reflecting the lived experiences and identities of campers in our Losstender team, and testing strong support models for Losstenders with more historical trauma
Are you someone with lived experience and/or real openness to people living in precarious situations -- AND with desire to learn about what works, for whom?
Making the most of brief encounters in a context of lots of coming and going, and plenty of uncertainty
Are you someone who has experience or thrives in environments in flux?
Creating healing spaces - both fixed and mobile - that embrace culture and spirituality
Are you someone with appreciation for beauty and ritual?
Using music, art, dance, movement, and so much more as a healing process, and less as a product
Are you someone with a creative practice that you’d love to share, and an openness to experimenting with co-creation?
Decentralizing network decision-making and testing different kinds of resource exchange: what holds value for the network?
Are you someone who is curious about alternative currencies or building non-hierarchical communities?

Step 1

Submission Review

A small group of 6 alumni Losstenders and Circle of Support members will volunteer to form a "kitchen table" group to review all submissions. They will try to get a sense of you, based on the above criteria. At this stage, we’ll be looking at your expressed time availability, intentions, areas of comfort & discomfort, and readiness to learn!

Step 2

Consideration for Alternative Roles

In some cases, we may get a sense that you’d be a great fit for one of our other roles! If so, we’ll reach out with a proposal! Take a look here again to see the different roles we’re looking for this time!

Step 3

Invitation to a Conversation

Once we’ve engaged with all submissions, our “kitchen table” group will try to reach consensus on who to invite for conversations, using our criteria as a guide. If we can’t meaningfully distinguish between applicants using our criteria, we’ll place names in a hat and do a random draw, in an effort to avoid making choices based on our biases. Think of these conversations less as a formal interview, and more as a first date. We want to get a feel if we’re a good match!

Healing moments: Based on your own personal experiences, what could a healing moment look like between two strangers?
Non-professionalism: The Losstender is not a professional therapist! We think that’s an important boundary. Particularly if you are someone with professional therapeutic training, or who has had much experience with professional therapy, how might you approach conversations as a non-professional? What are your thoughts on the line between the professional and the non-professional? What do you see as your strengths/offer as a non-professional?
Connecting across difference: Connecting with someone very different from ourselves can be so rewarding, and it can also be challenging. How have you engaged with people who, for example, don’t share your background, beliefs, values, or life circumstances in the past? What would you like to try?

Step 4

Putting together the cohort

Once we’ve had conversations with selected folks, our “kitchen table” will get back together, seeking consensus on what a well-rounded cohort might look like. We’ll be thinking about the overall group dynamic, and how to make sure we have some different viewpoints, lived experiences, artistic mediums, and learning styles. If we can’t reach consensus, we’ll return to putting names in a hat -- conducting a lottery to make decisions. Why? Because we don’t want to fall into the trap of trying to choose ‘the best’ person. Our decision-making is about finding an eclectic mix of humans for the encampment context.

Hear from previous Losstenders

"I’ve learned to hold space for other people, and make offerings without being so focused on the outcome. I feel much more connected to my own self, and I've realized that I have to remain in the ground of my being."

Erin Pettifor - Body and Movement Losstender 2022
"For me, this experience is huge - what potential there is for humans to be creative together, how it can be kind of subversive, because we're at this point now where we're so disconnected. It’s a really wonderful way to be together”

Dana Wylie - Musical Losstender 2022
"I was going through grief, and I believed Soloss was perfect for my own healing. I think we heal in community. Instead of going through it alone, my intention was just like I want to help put that energy into something. "

Yusi Hunter - Visual Art Losstender 2022
"The fact that I was invited to sort of sit with grief as a concept and other people's loss and things like that, while I was being very directly confronted with my own was a really precious opportunity to me and felt serendipitous. "

Colin Matty - Writing Losstender 2022