((( a work in progress )))

Mirror Bridge
co-creating a peaceful commons
through the language of art



MISSION
Mirror Bridge co-creates a peaceful commons through the language of art, the closest means we have to universal exchange. We share art, in all its forms, as inquiry, medicine, connection, and restorative action. We honor art as a balm that soothes the wounds and affirms the awe we all experience as living beings. 

VISION
Mirror Bridge is organized by artists, healers, educators, cultural workers, and community organizers, for anyone to engage and everyone to explore. We weave spaces of care and nourishment, make experiences of wonder, spark individual imagination, and alight collective consciousness. Together—by offering independent practices, in person gatherings, a free library, sustaining memberships, and more—we will build and participate in a reality that honors all beings and cares for all cultures. 

PROGRAM
Our inaugural program is a free public library, which will launch with quarterly volumes featuring aligned artists, healers, educators, cultural workers, and community organizers. This openly accessible multimedia portal will offer curated art/works, approaches to healing, and interdisciplinary creative expressions, primarily through dynamic web-based platforms. Hopefully, a kind of borderless sanctuary for shared reflection and regeneration, inside and out.

PROCESS
Every contributor who makes Mirror Bridge is supported for their participation. Cooperatively, we grow sustainable shared resources, including time, space, funding, and fellowship. Our fuller concept paper / experimental framework imagines how we may grow and evolve. Mirror Bridge will remain a work in progress. 

STRUCTURE
A social benefit hybrid, Mirror Bridge operates as an independent LLC and with a nonprofit fiscal sponsorship via Fractured Atlas. Women-led, Mirror Bridge is co-directed by Julia Mandeville and Maria Manuela, and we will weave a stewardship circle of councilors, ambassadors, and makers. We are based in New Mexico and collaborating beyond borders.

STATUS
Mirror Bridge is in the research, development, and pilot phase, and we are inviting insights and securing funding to support this process, as well as our forthcoming projects, capstone programs, and foundational initiatives. Our immediate next steps are:

  • engage in initial discovery dialogues

  • invite the core collaborators

  • co-refine the program and architecture

  • secure the seed resources to proceed with the library

  • open a call for makers interested in joining us as featured contributors


((( share your insights )))




CO-CURATORS & -DIRECTORS
Julia Mandeville is an award-winning cultural worker, curator, writer, civic artist, and grassroots organizer. With the dream that we can make a joyous, just, and peaceful future by and for all, Julia builds open public programs for lifelong learning, creative expression, self discovery, and collective impact. With two decades of experience, Julia holds/held leadership roles at Harwood Art Center, SOMOS ABQ, Tricklock Theatre Company, Albuquerque Poet Laureate Program, and more, and she’s a 2024-25 Women’s Impact Alliance Catalyst Fellow. At home where the Sandias and Manzanos meet, she lives and makes in Albuquerque, on Tiwa Lands, with her beloveds James and Iris.

Maria Manuela is a writer in Santa Fe, where she carries the legacy of a family who has lived there for tens of generations. Motivated by stories, she seeks words that convey the human experience, and all the ways that magic manifests. Maria’s writing has appeared in publications including Hyperallergic, Wild Sam, New Mexico Magazine, UNUM Magazine, and Southwest Contemporary. On any given evening, she can be found gazing at the sunset with pups Ham and Pea, and partner Joel, being grateful for the small moments that are the sweetest juice in this life.


((( share your insights )))