Ongoing Curiosities In Post-Formal Education: Making Kin, Becoming Kin, And Becoming Kin(d) With/In A Story Family Sojourn

In a year-long inquiry, called a Story Family Sojourn, women participants who had completed their formal education met with each other in the Southern Appalachian Mountains. The purpose of this expressive arts-based inquiry was to explore what would emerge through knowing by making together and thinking/theorizing together with/in a Story Family composed of women, time, expressive arts, and storyplace. This inquiry is based in a theoretical framing of feminist posthumanism, feminist new materialism, and phEmaterialism. Creativity, sacredness (affect), and social and environmental justice provide a felted conceptual triad throughout the inquiry. The findings are based on data creation of stories and photos culminating in ongoing curiosities.The implications point toward the entanglements of the matter and discourses intra-acting to create Story Family members, human and other-than-human. This emergent study points to the need for attention and intention to be applied to invitations for doing community education and educational leadership differently in other storytimes and storyplaces.