Chocolate Church Arts Center

This project will use an ensemble production by Faultline Ensemble to reimagine the public and municipal spaces of fire and ambulance stations as sites for collective trauma recognition and healing. Incorporating live performance, interactive discussions and a series of participatory workshops, Counting Pebbles will work with rural emergency medical responders, their families, and communities to process the trauma of rescue work and the impact of responder burnout. Drawing on firsthand stories gathered from responders over the past four years and created by artists, emergency responders and health workers, this collaboration will create public space for grief, traumas, and triumphs, often buried and unrecognized. In healing these traumas together, the project will use story, performance, and art to build relationships between communities and rescue workers, reduce stigma against marginalized patients and improve emergency patient care in rural and marginalized communities.