One of the most important things we can do as communities is to create spaces for connection and creativity, places that nurture the bonds between community members that are not places of commerce. Spaces that serve multiple purposes. Gloria Boberg talks about how a few extra acres in her community became one of those places, offering the space for a community garden that has served to connect and foster the relationships between all the members of her small town. 

Dana Robb loves adventure. Whenever presented with the opportunity, Dana is all in.  Currently this includes riding the local mountain biking trails with her husband, canyoneering, and climbing the hills of southern Utah. She loves to learn and explore with her six kids whom she’s been homeschooling since 2009. Her other interest include health and wellness and humanitarian work. If given the choice between cleaning her house and reading, she will choose reading every time. Drawn to the opportunities Big Ocean provides, Dana loves connecting to a global sisterhood where women’s issues are being addressed through reframing and an abundance mindset.

ShelliRae Spotts is an essayist, advocacy writer, screenwriter, and sometime poet who teaches creative writing and composition at Brigham Young University. She is passionate about exploring the ways we use stories to build bridges within our communities and her essays delve into the connections we discover through languaging our lived experiences. Shelli has attended the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women as an advocacy writer for the last several years, and is dedicated to social justice and environmental causes. She was the co-director and writing mentor for "Words for Water: Dancing the Stories of our Home Waters," a collaborative writing/dance advocacy project focusing attention on the challenges facing our rural river watersheds.  She is the author of a forthcoming essay collection, "Radical Creativity: On a New Economy of Care." When she is not teaching, writing, or reading, Shelli loves to spend time with her husband and four adult children watching great movies, attending live theatre, or dragging everyone outside to “look at the sky.”