BKLYN CLAY partners with Touching Land/Tocando Tierra to provide space, materials, firing, and other resources to facilitate these workshops and ongoing classes. The therapeutic properties of clay are crucial to this work and provide a point of grounding and connection for all participants.

Touching Land/Tocando Tierra

Touching Land/Toccando Tierra is a non-profit organization founded by Carolina Rubio MacWright, a Colombian-born immigration attorney and artist. Carolina has blended her passions of art and law in an effort to help immigrants navigate their new lives in America, while arming American allies with the tools and understanding they need to create a welcoming community.

Touching Land uses hands-on experiential arts as a tool for community building and immigrant empowerment. Touching Land has several different programs, each program follows a different social track: either the Empowerment Model or the Building Bridges Model.

Our Empowerment Model is meant for immigrants and vulnerable populations where the focus is on legal rights, self-worth, mental health, and building networks of support among participants. Our Building Bridges Model is a platform where cross-cultural connections are born. Participants from different socio-economic and cultural backgrounds come together on a level playing ground to seek understanding of their shared humanity, as well as their rights and duties as allies in diverse communities.