SDBN Red Tent

Communities around the world have been organizing Red Tents as a special place for birthing people to share their birth stories, celebrate birth experiences, and heal from traumatic ones. We gather as a community each year, to hold that sacred space with and for each other. The goal of every Red Tent is to create community, record our stories, and practice deep listening.

SDBN will be holding its 16th Annual Red Tent event on Saturday, September 10th, 2022

1 pm-4pm (PST)

Location:

MVMNT Studio

5702 El Cajon Blvd

San Diego, CA 92115

A Red Tent is a time for menstruating people of all ages to share and/or listen to birth stories. It's a day of celebration, connection, parenthood, and often healing.

Registration Open Now!

Click here to register and please share.

History

Red Tent events began reemerging in a more popular forum here in America when Karen Brody, a writer, activist, mother, author and playwright of Birth, (a realistic portrayal childbirth) founded and started BOLD. Ms. Brody and BOLD wanted to create a way that various women and organizations could organize and hold local Red Tents on or around Labor Day and use BOLD's format to make it easy and set a precedent. SDBN used the leadership of Karen Brody and BOLD and began holding local Red Tents in 2006. SDBN started with small circles in local parks and invited women in the community as a way of meeting a very important need. The event grew each year (and continues to grow) and SDBN still holds our Red Tent on or around Labor Day as a special way to honor "labor", birth, and the need to tell and share our stories. The SDBN Board of Directors recognizes the exclusionary history of the Red Tents of the past which did not explicitly welcome all birthing people, in particular those who are trans or gender non-conforming.  We are working to create a safe space for all birthing people to share their stories and participate in community together.

Poem from 2018 Red Tent

Raffle

Not only is the SDBN Red Tent event a way to outreach to the community, it also serves as a fundraiser for San Diego Birth Network. One fun part of the Red Tent is our raffle. If you are a local business wanting to get your name and products out to the community, consider donating goods or services to be raffled off at the end of the event. If you would like to donate an item for the raffle, please contact us!

If you are planning on attending the next SDBN Red Tent, remember our raffle! Bring a few extra dollars to donate and put your name in to win. The raffle is pretty amazing!

Future Goals

SDBN's big picture goal is to hold several Red Tents for the various communities in San Diego through our outreach program. We hope that by localizing and doing more than just one, we can cater to birthing people that may have specific needs such as access to our annual location, cultural norms, languages and special services that aren't met through our bigger event. If you would like to help SDBN Red Tent, have ideas about how to best serve the birthers in your community, hire an interpreter to better participate in our annual September event, or help you (or your organization) host a local event in you community, please contact us through our volunteer page.