This is a Writing Revolution.
This is a Writing Revolution.
Abre Tu Boca is a social practice project that takes creative writing out of the upper echelon of "writers" to give the power of the voice back to the people. Regular people are provided the same tools as "writers" and without the typical financial or over-intellectualized barriers to access them. The project asserts: We all have words. Come use them.
The project overcomes many of the typical blocks in verbal expression to directly access language where it lives: inside the body, as the inner voice.
So in Abre Tu Boca, you are not taught writing. You are dropped in. The prompt activates the voice. And with pen and paper, you simply catch it on the page.
Next, we zoom out and observe the writing, switching over from subconscious to conscious mind. Here, you are taught techniques — ones that “writers” use, but put in simple, human terms — to help you more accurately get the thing on the page to match the thing on the inside. This is typically called editing. But we can also call it effective communication.
In other words, what you learn in Abre Tu Boca clarifies what is spoken between you and the page. Which means it clarifies everything spoken between you and yourself - all those parts and voices in there. It gets them to enter into conversation and get on the same page. And, over time, it also affects everything spoken between you and other humans. It all gets clearer. More natural. Eventually, it even feels effortless.
But Abre Tu Boca is not just about writing. Or speaking up. It’s not all about you. It’s also about listening. Actively. That’s what good communication is. So as others share their writing out loud, you’re given prompts that help open your perception and guide your feedback. So you have some idea of what you could say and what to pay attention to.
So ultimately, what Abre Tu Boca teaches is perception. It gets you to deeply perceive what’s going inside your writing and, by extension, what’s going on inside you… and around you. And to be still with all of it. To take it in, hold it, and then to act from that place. From a place of astute awareness. That’s power. And all you need is pen and paper to take you there.
How It All Started
Abre Tu Boca was started by writer and artist Amanda Aileen Fisher in Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, Mexico, out of an arts residency during the summer of 2022. It began with a writing circle, zine lab, and an open stage event called “Abre Tu Boca.” The project grew quickly and within two months had been invited to travel to work with a nonprofit in Medellin, Colombia.
Now in its fourth season, Abre Tu Boca is a full language-arts program with a faculty of facilitators guiding participants through a journey to empowered self-expression. The project remains at home in Todos Santos with pop-ups in other parts of the world, and is offered in a mix of English and Spanish.
Founder
Amanda Aileen Fisher
Writer & Interdisciplinary Social Practice Artist
Amanda Aileen Fisher is an interdisciplinary social practice artist and writer who is drawn to the power of language in creating and reconstructing “realities.” Her work heavily explores perspective as a shape-shifter and how it can be used to access – and recode – the individual interior landscape, and thread by thread, the collective one.
Before beginning Abre Tu Boca, she served as co-director of Colectivo El Nido, a community arts and cultural space in Todos Santos. She also founded Crown Town Handmade, a collective of entrepreneurial artists, in her home city of Charlotte, North Carolina, and managed the Aristocrates, a residence of artists in Los Angeles, where she also lived for four years.
Amanda also founded and directed EDIA Maps, Inc, a publishing company that created and printed story-telling based maps of overlooked geographies and subcultures in the Carolinas, bringing to light the collective voice of a region.
Her social practice and white box gallery projects have been shared and shown in Los Angeles, Mexico, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic.
See more of Amanda’s work at amandaaileenfisher.com.
This donation-based social practice project is made possible by community sponsors.
Partners
Abre Tu Boca partners help build the foundational structure of the organization. This season, we are creating a sustainable, scalable model that will enable the project to impact more lives around the world. If you would like to donate your expertise at a structural level, please reach out.
Nica Celly
Holistic Branding & Business Development
An artist by degree and an entrepreneur by experience, Nica collaborates with motivated founders for roots-up business builds, holistic branding, design strategy, and meaningful communications. With a focus on creating clarity for purpose-driven projects, she is proud to have worked with brilliant minds in social justice, design, music, art, yoga, and regenerative agriculture. She spends the rest of her time witnessing words and visual language emerge from deconditioned states of being.
Charlotte Eulette
Facilitator Certification Program Development
Charlotte is a poet and published author and the director of the Baja Sur Poets and Writer’s League. She was also co-founder and former International Director of the Celebrant Foundation & Institute (CF&I), a worldwide educational non-profit offering certification training for rites-of-passage professionals. For her work with CF&I, Charlotte has been interviewed by BBC Radio, NPR’s All Things Considered, CBS’s Morning Show, News with Dan Rather, CNN and NBC News, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.
Or Coin?
Got Skills?
Either way
(or both!)…
We need you.
Season 4
In-Kind
Sponsors
In-Kind Sponsors create a professional base from which Abre Tu Boca can more effectively operate. They provide direct resources that the organization could not otherwise afford. If you would also like to offer your professional support as an in-kind sponsor, let’s talk.
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Sasha Galanova | Photographer & Visual Storyteller
Sasha is a visual storyteller working through the lens. She captures the real, the raw, the authentic through photography and video, as well as through the curation of pre-existing photo archives. Getting her start in newspaper reportage, she approaches her subject through what she calls a “gentle voyeurism,” taking the viewer on a tour of the space around the subject. She captures not only the human in front of her, but also the air around them, giving a sense of the way they affect it. She’s known for her in-water surf photography, which she has shot around the world, and her ability to direct you into poses that feel more like natural expressions.
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Virginia Scirrotto, Baja Tech Space | Software Developer & Technology Engineer
Virginia is a software engineer with a passion for crafting sleek web solutions and connecting businesses with cutting-edge eCommerce platforms. Whether she is building a custom website from scratch; working with SquareSpace, WordPress, Umbraco, Shopify; or integrating seamless online shopping experiences, Virginia thrives on making technology easy and accessible for everyone. She turns complex tech talk into something interesting for the average human. When she’s not busy coding, she helps run the Perros Santos group in Todos Santos.
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Sandy Peterson | Bilingual Fixer & Interpreter/Liaison
Sandy has dedicated her life to bridging language and culture gaps. She spent 30 years in the California public school system (junior high) as a bilingual teacher and interpreter/liaison, and locally, has worked with the Todos Santos and Pescadero junior high youth. A second language learner, herself, and a believer in Spanglish as a third language, Sandy began her journey with Spanish at age 17 while living in Sevilla, Spain. She holds a BA in Spanish and is BCLAD (Bilingual Cross Cultural Language Acquisition Development) certified. She teaches Spanish in private, customized tutoring sessions, as well as with colleague Daniela Orozco. Sandy offers her liaison and translator services for all matters of business, with a local reputation as “the fixer.”
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Daniela Orozco Fabián | Cross-Cultural Language Consultant
As a first-generation Mexican with Colombian and Guatemalan heritage, and time spent living in the United States, Daniela is not only fully bilingual, but also culturally fluent in the subtleties of cross-cultural communication. As a translator, Daniela brings a mastery of tone, slang, colloquial expression, and subcultural connotation to their work, going beyond the literal to convey essence. Daniela has translated in literature, art, and education and can bring clarity to any sized text. However, Daniela’s specialty is in purpose-driven work — such as developing bilingual brand voices for cross-cultural businesses — where she transforms language to authentically reflect the audience’s cultural framework. Daniela and Sandy also offer collaborative Spanish tutoring sessions, so clients can work with a native speaker from both languages.
