We guide people through a process of finding and liberating their
inner wisdom as well as sharing and learning from each other through compassionate dialogue.
Our Mission
Founded in 1999, the Mandala Center is a multi-disciplinary arts and education organization dedicated to social justice, community dialogue, and societal healing and transformation.
Through experiential workshops, trainings, theatre dialogues, performances, and other creative events, we invite people to be more awake and alive as well as empowered to take action toward a more just and joyous life for all people.
The Mandala Center is also an international hub for the training and grassroots practice of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed and is home to the Poetic Justice Theatre Ensemble.
Our approaches seek to:
- Build community by creating a playful and mutually respectful atmosphere.
- Encourage critical thinking.
- Facilitate honest, compassionate dialogue.
- Stimulate personal and societal transformation through highly participatory, experiential methodologies.
- Support increased consciousness and confidence in order to empower positive action for the good of all.
- Address diverse and multi-cultural needs.
Our approaches are gentle and supportive yet frequently fast and powerful. They also are extremely playful and celebratory.
Our Philosophy
Using a community-based, popular education model, we provide a container for sustainable learning to happen. We believe that one’s deepest knowing exists within oneself. We may be experts on the structures; people are the experts on their own lives.
For true change to happen in our increasingly complex world, both inner work and outer work are necessary. We cannot separate the personal from the political, the individual from the collective, personal growth from social justice. We view the body, mind, spirit, and the planet as inextricably linked.
Our work invites critical thinking and calls for the delicate balance of compassion and accountability. Anti-oppression theory — a power-based analysis of the “isms” — underlies everything we do, whether or not a particular program addresses those issues directly. It is valuable to recognize how a person’s social group membership affects their experience of the world.
While we do not advocate any particular path towards consciousness and healing, we recognize that different approaches are needed in different contexts. Therefore, Our Methods are vast and varied.
We do our best to adapt to the needs of different communities and situations as they arise and change moment to moment. We are continuously exploring new tools and techniques that help people go where they need to go. Meet Our Team.
Mandala Center resides on the colonized lands that are the traditional territories of the S’Klallam (Nəxwsƛ̕áy̕əm̕) and the Chemakum (Aqokúlo or Čə́məq̓ əm). Qatáy, now called Port Townsend, is also a historically known gathering place for many tribes including the Makah, Tsimshian, Tlingit, and Haida among others. We acknowledge the ongoing disappearance of Indigenous people and the harmful impacts of settler colonialism. We recognize the importance of understanding more deeply the injustices, past and present, against the Original People of Turtle Island (North America) who have been here since time immemorial. We seek to cultivate relationships with Indigenous artists and collaborators, and commit to ongoing education to deepen awareness in order to take action from informed places. (Land Acknowledgements)