Today we’d like to introduce you to Lianna Jean Manibog.
Hi Lianna Jean, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’ve been in Utah for about seventeen years, which is by far the longest I’ve spent in any one place. My entire life has been pretty much that of a wanderer, we moved around a lot due to my dad’s profession so from a very young age I experienced living in all kinds of places. I like to say I did the compass rose tour – California, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, and then back to California. I ended up here in Utah at 18 years old, when I came out here from California to start college. Because I moved so much in my formative years, I learned a lot about how important it is to have community and what kind of skills it takes to build a healthy community. My family is Filipino, Islander, and Hispanic so those strong ties to family and community were ingrained in my from a very young age. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been really interested in what kinds of skills and settings it takes to be able to build healthy and effective community structures.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I think we all get to decide what the unifying narrative is that gives meaning to our experiences. As an individual, we control our own narrative. As a collective, that gets a little bit more complex because I think competing narratives are what create a lot of the discord that we experience societally.
I wouldn’t say anyone has ever experienced a perfectly smooth road on the journey that is life, and I don’t think that’s the point. I won’t pretend that struggle is fun or romanticize it, but I know that some of my biggest growth points have come through some of the bumpiest parts of my story. Growth requires that we are stretched and challenged, and quite often that is an uncomfortable, if not altogether painful, experience. Moving so often while I was young, for example, was a very painful experience and I had to navigate feelings of loss and abandonment quite often. But from that, I feel I gained some of my greatest strengths, which is a deep appreciation for the importance of community and an understanding that in order to build a community it takes effort and work. It’s a joyful experience, but it does require the ability to cultivate a curiosity for the people we encounter and recognize that somewhere in their lived experience there is common ground on which we can relate. We just have to be willing to find that ground and then build from there.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Some of my great tenets of life include the following:
1. The pursuit of learning is a human endeavor that we are all inherently interested in. Curiosity is central to the human experience, and it simply needs to be cultivated properly. Education, in it’s true form, is not about a particular system of learning. It’s the pursuit of curiosity and delight in discovery.
2. Storytelling is power. The stories we are told about who we are as a community, as human beings, as individuals, etc. shape our understanding of our purpose and give meaning to our experiences. Art in all forms allows us the ability to inhabit the narrative and emotional experience of another human being for a short while and creates common ground on which we can find empathy and understanding.
Combining these two tenets helps you understand what I center my work around. I am a musician, I’ve been playing local shows around Utah for the last five years both in individual acoustic sets, as well as with my band (Interior Wild). I’m also an educator at heart, and I taught english and writing courses at the college level for about 10 years prior to leaving formal teaching positions. As I’ve watched our social and political climate continue to intensify, I had an epiphany moment that resulted in my creation of my non-profit, The Threadwork Collective. I host a weekly radio show/podcast that focuses on the intersection of arts and activism for the purpose of exploring the critical role that storytelling plays in creating common ground for us to meet on and interact with one another while recognizing our common humanity and inhabiting a space of curiosity about our differences.
The Threadwork Collective platforms the idea that we need to build effective communities in order to address all of the big issues that we are currently facing, but that we largely haven’t been taught what it means to live in healthy community or the skills needed in order to do that. We talk to local artists and musicians about the causes and stories that matter to them, while also providing free educational materials and resources through our website that can help people begin to learn how to build community. Our goal is also to help people find their niches by pointing individuals towards groups, organizations, and events that interest them locally. If people don’t know where to go to get involved or to find their community, we want people to know they can start here with TWC.
Another focus of The Threadwork Collective is to reclaim and destigmatize the word “activism”. This is not a partisan issue, and the fact that it has become so is a major problem. In our organization, we define activism as simply having an active role by participating in and helping to shape your community. Regardless of political affiliation, we need to be able to exist in healthy community and have dialogue over issues towards the end of finding sustainable solutions. This is hard to do, for a lot of reasons. It’s not an inherent skillset we have as human beings, and so we learn how to do this by having safe spaces to come together and learn the tools needed to effectively do this. Community doesn’t mean that we have to be best friends with everyone around us, but it is so important to restore a recognition of our common humanity and use this as a foundation from which to explore perspectives with curiosity.
Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
Be genuine always. When approaching networking, maintain an interest in who the people you’re meeting are and building real friendships and relationships as opposed to looking for business opportunities. People are not a means to an end, and when you view them that way it strips their humanity and reduces them to a function. Nobody likes to feel like they’re an object. Be interested in the human being first and foremost, and then allow whatever business opportunities to arise as you cultivate further.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thethreadworkcollective.org
- Instagram: @liannajean (personal/musician page); @thethreadworkcollective (non-profit IG)
