How To Get Involved at Carterhaugh
January 11, 2022
During the Q&A of our Nutcracker talk back in December, someone asked a really good question that had nothing to do with The Nutcracker.
She was new to Carterhaugh and wanted to know how to get involved.
Honestly, our brains shorted out a little, because there are SO many ways. (We’re in a constant state of “Let’s do this! Or this! Or maybe ALL OF IT” like over-caffeinated folklore magpies.)
So, for the start of the year, we decided to lay it all out. As of January 2022, this is what you can watch, participate in, and anticipate, here at Carterhaugh. There’s a lot of variation on price, participation, and intensity, so wherever you’re at, we’ve got you!
Free Talks
Talks you can watch completely for free, whenever your fancy strikes, by clicking on the links below:
Patreon
If you’re not already familiar with Patreon, it’s an online membership platform that connects creators with fans and supporters. Anyone can join at any time, and you can adjust or cancel your membership at any time. Basically, you choose a tier, and then you get access to all the perks and cool stuff for that tier (plus everything for all the tiers below it.)
At the Willow tier ($7) you get access to our Carterhaugh Book Club. We LOVE this book club so much.
Here’s how it works. We pick a book and give you about a month of lead time to read it. (We’ve read fairy-tale retellings, a new translation of Beowulf, Japanese folktales retold with a feminist twist, gothic novels, folkloric poetry, classic fantasy, and more, to give you an idea of what we get up to.) Before the book club meeting, we post a link to Crowdcast, which is where book club takes place. You’ll get an email automatically sent to your inbox when this happens, so you can find it easily. During the book club meeting, Brittany and Sara will be on screen, sharing discussion points, answering questions, and keeping an eye on the VERY ACTIVE chat (which is where you’ll be!) Occasionally, we have the authors of the book present up on screen with us, or have a brave reader come up to share a long discussion point on screen instead of typing it, but usually it’s Brittany’s and Sara’s heads on the screen and readers in the chat.
At the Salonnières tier ($20) you can participate in the Carterhaugh Fairy-Tale Salon. This has honestly become one of our favorite parts of Carterhaugh.
The salons happen via Zoom, and your actual face is on screen (unless you turn off your camera, which is totally fine.) We give you a prompt to consider in advance (always something about how fairy tales or folklore are impacting your life), and then we talk about it together. We LOVE hearing your voices and seeing your faces during the salons – this is also the best way to get to know us… and for us to get to know you!
Also, we’re adding a NEW THING to our Patreon, starting next month, at the Dandelion Puff ($1) level (so EVERYONE can participate), and we’re really excited. You wanna know what it is…?
A fairy-tale read-along!
Basically, we’re going to pick a book of traditional tales and read a story a week, together. We’ll have a space on Patreon for reactions, questions, and discussion (this is for you, people who are over Facebook!), plus maybe some behind-the-scenes responses from Sara and Brittany. No video, no big assignments, just a fairy tale a week to savor with the community.
This read-along was inspired by the million students who have requested a course on the Arabian Nights, so we’re beginning with The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1001 Nights translated by Yasmine Seale.
Don’t worry – it’s not actually 1001 stories, we’re not going to be reading this for 20 years, we promise.
Also, this book looks gorgeous.
More on the read-along will be posted here and on Patreon soon!
There’s lots of other cool stuff on Patreon (if you support us on the Fairy Godmother tier, we’ll make you your own video on a topic of your choice, just saying), but these are the highlights!
Facebook Discussion Group
We have a very active general Facebook discussion group where you can post about anything remotely folklore related. Fun, low-key, free. Go forth and post cool things!
Self-Guided Courses
Most of our courses at Carterhaugh are live, meaning that the lectures are literally live (though you can always watch the recordings.) They only happen once and aren’t available after they happen. But we do have a few courses that you can buy at any time that are pre-recorded.
They’re really good. College-level good but a whole lot cheaper.
You can work at your own pace, and you have guaranteed access to all the materials for at least 1 year. No extra books or supplies needed.
At the moment, you can enroll in:
and
Introduction to British Folklore
If you love these topics, go forth – it’s a lot of in-depth material on topics that we know really well and absolutely adore.
Talks for Other Organizations
Sometimes, other organizations hire us to give talks on nifty topics, like Star Wars and folklore, the women of Arthurian legend, or fairy-tale cats. (We’re not joking, and, no, we can’t believe we get to do this, either.)
We’ve done a bunch of talks, online and off, for Profs & Pints, and you can buy tickets and immediately watch any of the online talks we’ve done for them, which is many. There are also a few other talks we’ve done for The Folklore Podcast and Magickal Women & Company. You can peruse all those talks by clicking here.
We’ve also been doing talks for the Smithsonian. Alas, they don’t put up recordings of their talks, so you can’t watch them after they happen live, but you can buy tickets to our upcoming talk for them on American Fairy Tales. And we’ll be doing another one for them on the fairy tales on Hans Christian Andersen later this spring!
Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok
Whatever your social media platform of your choice, we’re probably there.
Or, if you have your own website/blog/etc, you can join our Team Catawampus!
Spellcraft
After running a folklore and creative writing workshop, we put together a workbook: Spellcraft: Write Like a Witch:
It’s especially useful if you are:
– First dipping your toes into folkloric creative writing
– Experiencing writer’s block and want a push
– Wanting an arsenal of new prompts and ways into your writing
It also comes with a BUNCH of bonus videos, worksheets, tools – seriously, so much awesome stuff.
Live Courses and Workshops
A handful of times a year, we run a live course – something completely new, with live lectures, a dedicated course Facebook discussion group, discussion questions, readings, the whole works. We think of these as the heart of Carterhaugh, and we really, really hope you join us for at least one this year!
In a few weeks, we’ll be opening up enrollment to a new course on fairy-tale heroines from around the world. We just read an Iroquois story called “The Vampire Skeleton” that is 1000% going in there, plus a Beauty and the Beast tale from former Yugoslavia about a pigeon beast where the takeaway is essentially “no really, communication and community are good and necessary for the breaking of spells!” so you know it’s going to be good.
And, later this spring, we’re planning a fourth iteration of Rapunzel’s Circle. Don’t worry – you don’t need to have been in any of the previous Circle courses to enroll. It’s completely stand-alone. Rapunzel’s Circle is something really special. While we put a lot of heart into everything we do, RC is a place of intense growth, change, vulnerability, and bravery. We’ve been, frankly, astounded by our students in every chapter so far, and we can’t wait to open the Circle again.
The absolute best way to know when these courses and workshops go live is to join our newsletter – the people on there are always the first to know about the awesome things we’re doing!
Well, there you have it. Lots of ways to get involved!
What’s been your favorite part of Carterhaugh so far? What made it special to you? We’d love to hear from you!
Discovering Carterhaugh was at the very top of my best things of 2021 list!! I love every single thing you offer! So excited to join in on all the fun you’re cooking up for 2022!!! ❤️
This makes our hearts sing, Liz!! <3!