We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Gina Tang. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Gina below.

Gina, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

Trail-blazing is inseparable from risk-taking. Going off the beaten path means risking one’s footing, so to speak. It challenges whatever concepts of security, stability, and sometimes safety that a person has held.

I’ve taken a myriad of notable risks over the last 30 years or so, but one that specifically comes to mind is the time I left San Diego and blazed a new trail: moving myself and two young daughters onto a remote permaculture farm in Northern California known as Bramble Mountain, with nothing but a tent and two handpan drums.

It was my instinctive response to the climate of Covid at its peak, when everything was shut down and tension in the city was at an all-time high.

Up on the mountain with a dedicated crew of 9 people, 6 dogs, 4 cats, and many goats and chickens, I spent my days tending to my children in the garden, singing, and integrating myself into the rhythms and sensations of mother nature.

Living with an outdoor kitchen, an outdoor bathroom, and no Wi-fi was a huge adjustment—but I recovered an essential part of myself.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Gina Tang and I’m a Literary Artivist—I advocate for expressive writing, reflective reading, and creative self-expression. I am also deeply enthralled with the beauty and wisdom of the natural world. The result is a somatic approach to writing; articulating for and from the earth, the body, and the inner self.

The cultivation of an embodied connection to ourselves, each other, and the earth is largely missing from the mainstream education of children. Instead, children are trained to become consumers, employees, and patrons of a disease management system, as all manner of medications become necessary to offset the effects of excessive exposure to hyper-tech, processed food, and stress.

Little Shepherds Nature Lab is a constructive response to this problem. We’re a group of parents transforming a school bus into a creative learning environment for kids ages four and up, and partnering with a variety of outdoor classrooms throughout San Diego County. Named “Rover,” the bus will bring eco-literacy into the mix with a pop-up outdoor puppet stage and podium. We’ll also have a kid-sized composting kitchen, a soil science station, and a lending library on board. This coming July we’ll be running our route for the very first time (and there’s still space available on our roster!).

What’s really driving me is that I want to spend ample time each day singing, hand-writing, drumming, dancing, gardening, composting, and otherwise tending to the earth. And, I feel this work should be both collaborative and intergenerational.

Rover is a vehicle for that.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I believe embodied, expressive, “regenerative” writing has the power to save lives, and my current mission is to see hand-writing centered as an essential outlet for mental, physical, and social development.

In my bones, I know the marks we make by hand are a direct extension of our unique heartbeats. They are our thumb-prints, our imprints, and our signatures. Writing by hand helps us uncover and understand our authentic voices. In doing so, we cultivate our capacity for real connection with others. As we go through life, connection is an antidote for addiction, depression, anxiety, and many other degenerative conditions caused by emotional isolation.

Cursive, in particular, is a form of writing that regulates the nervous system, increases attention span, and stimulates cognitive clarity. Negligently, public schools no longer give instruction in cursive to children. Where cursive was the predominant form of writing for hundreds of years during the age of discovery, we are now looking at an entire generation of people who will not have this tool at their disposal. Instead, they will input text on computers.

I am not claiming that computers aren’t useful–indeed, they are now integral in the society that most children will inherent and inhabit. However, I do not believe that this competency should obscure the potency of working by hand and heart.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

The contours of society are largely shaped by the government, which dictates where and how people live. In the United States, we actually don’t have a lot of room to create communities that directly support creative freedom in a coherent manner. Even on private property, permits and regulations prevent us from building outside of convention. Convention leans toward single-family housing, the consolidation of resources into centralized industries that are inherently extractive, and the censorship of critical inquiries into the practices of large corporations.

Before Covid, it was estimated by the CDC that 54% percent of children in this country live with chronic illness. Now, they’re saying 40%. They also say this number is rising. Whether it’s more than half or almost half, this statistic points to an upcoming generation that will spend its time, energy, and resources attempting to manage its mental and physical health. Clearly, this is not movement toward a thriving creative ecosystem!

I would see the federal, state, and municipal bureaucracy shift to allow people to live and work in a more organic and communal fashion. Earth-building, for example, should be widely permissible. It makes no sense to force people to build conventional structures out of lumber, which is costly, permeable to mold/insects/fire, and terrible at managing temperature. We should be free to build multiple energy-efficient dwellings on available land (and more should be made available) of whatever size and configuration supports the productivity of the people living there. We should be able to build our own economies, grow and distribute our own food, and educate groups of children without interference from licensing agencies that limit and control our movements. And, we should hold each other accountable as we go about our business.

I would also see the mainstream media centering and celebrating creative problem-solving and solution-oriented thinking, rather than simply pumping stress and division into our cultural narratives.

As members of society, we either submit or resist. We conform to and maintain the status quo, or we stand in our creative power and choose to move differently.     

Contact Info:

• Website: www.littleshepherds.earth
• Instagram: @littleshepherds
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/littleshepherdsnaturelab
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@littleshepherdsnaturelab