About Molly
healing activator . artistic director . music & wellbeing researcher . creativity liberationist
co-creating collective and personal social healing vessels, capacities, and practices
Molly Jane Sturges works as a composer-artistic director, music & sound-centric whole health researcher, depth facilitator, educator-activist and meditation teacher who has collaborated with individuals, organizations, and communities around the globe for over 30 years at the intersection of personal & collective healing, participatory music and arts, spirituality, intergenerational healing, whole health, creative research, community organizing, and education. She is currently a senior researcher/faculty/artist at the University of Minnesota with The Center for Spirituality and Healing and The UMN Medical School, a senior fellow with The Center for Excellence in Public Leadership at George Washington University, and artist-faculty with Minnesota’s College of Art and Design’s Creative Leadership Program where she focuses on liberatory creative practice and contemplative-creative wellbeing relational practices. Molly collaborates with individuals, communities, and organizations across the globe to co-create a care-centric, equitable, compassionate and earth-centered world. Molly is a United States Artist Fellow in Music with a focus on ceremony-infused relational improvisational practices and a founder of many creative healing activation projects including Littleglobe, Firerock: Pass The Spark, Lifesongs and Waking The Oracle. Molly believes that our earth connected heart centered spaces of co-creativity are places of undeniable power & healing.
MORE ABOUT MOLLY
A social weaver, innovator and integrationist, Molly works on many intersecting fronts to co-activate healing and being well processes, implement accountable systems of equity & justice, support and innovate embodied and spirituality based collective practices, and co-create creative practices and expressions that activate earth centric guiding narratives and practices. Currently Molly’s primary focus is as a senior researcher & integrative healing practitioner focusing on whole health, music/sound, neuromodulation research, health equity, and community engagement with Tess Lab - a translational science lab at the UMN Medical School and as faculty/artist at The Bakken Center for Spirituality and Healing where she is directing the healing, science, ecology and community centered project, Waking The Oracle. She is in the process of developing a new community care facilitation training course and continues to lead and develop Stories That Heal, a music, community and mental health project based in rural Michigan.
Molly has created, composed for, and directed many projects and programs including founding artistic director and co-founder of Lifesongs, an intergenerational music, aging and hospice program, Littleglobe, a diverse arts-in-community artist led non-profit, and Firerock: Pass The Spark, a DIY musical storytelling and immersive learning engagement project that can be employed, adapted and localized by groups and communities nationwide as a mythical and heartfelt catalyst for community healing, & sustained climate justice work.
Molly has consulted with organizations, communities of all kinds, and universities including The Renee Crown Wellness Center at The University of Colorado, Minnesota College of Art and Design, DNA Works, and Biomimicry For Social Innovation. Molly is a senior fellow and faculty with The Center for Excellence in Public Leadership at George Washington University and for the academic year of 2019-2020 Molly was The William Corcoran Visiting Professor in Arts and Community Engagement at The Corcoran School of Art and Design at George Washington University (GWU) with a focus on musical healing.
An innovator in immersive and participatory activations Molly has been devoted to deepening her learning, facilitating, and teaching around healing domination based systems with a specific focus on racial & economic justice, climate justice and relational and contemplative leadership. Molly creates participatory healing activations with communities, organizations, conferences and more including projects with The University of Colorado, the Dalai Lama/University of Wisconsin/Mind and Life Institute’s Center for Ethical Leadership, and The EU Festival of Culture. Her ongoing collaborations with research based scientists and health care practitioners has been central to many of her projects and efforts.
As a musician and composer Molly was awarded the 2008 United States Artist Fellowship in Music. She holds an MA in World Music Composition from Wesleyan University where she studied with MacArthur Fellow Anthony Braxton and the late great musical mystic Jon Barlow. As a performing vocalist, recording artist, and leader of creative music ensembles Molly has received numerous commissions and residencies including the EU Festival of Culture, The city of Evora, The MAP Fund, Santa Fe Opera, and many more. She has written and performed original music for a wide array of projects including music for dance companies, silent films, circuses and sound installations. She is a devoted improvisor and experimental creative musical researcher with a firm belief in the undeniable power of music and the arts to heal.
Molly was the founding artistic director of the artist-run NM arts and social justice organization Littleglobe and served on the faculty at the University of New Mexico for six years in Arts & Ecology where she focused on community healing projects. She has collaborated with science based communities including work with The University of Colorado's Renee Crown Wellness Center including the pilot project of The Colorado Lullaby Project in collaboration with Carnegie Hall and The Body Positive Project. She has led workshops, master classes, and on a range of topics including; music improvisation and conduction, music & healing, creative aging, death & dying, the power of social imagination, and intuitive literacy.
A life-long student and teacher of contemplative and somatic practices including meditation and yoga, Molly integrates these sensibilities and practices into all of her work. Molly has practiced and taught meditation and the contemplative arts and has worked with many organizations and groups on wellbeing and collective healing including somatic, expressive, cultural community organizing and contemplative modalities. She was the founder of the Wesleyan University yoga and meditation program while a graduate student in music.
In devotion to liberatory practice and education and as a JEDI (Justice Equity Diversity and Inclusion) facilitator, Molly trained with Dr. Angel Kyodo Williams in Embodying Social Justice, Dr. Angel Acosta as a 400 Years of Inequality facilitator, and Bayo Akomolafe. She is newly a racial justice facilitator with the Minneapolis YWCA (2023). A certified mindfulness and meditation teacher with with The Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute Molly teaches bi-annual meditation retreats. She is honored to be currently serving on the boards of two healing organizations focusing on generational trauma healing, DNA Works and Tawacin Tanka.
Born in Cleveland, and raised in the Denver-Boulder area and northern Michigan, Molly has lived and worked in several countries around the globe including Senegal, Norway and Ireland and is currently based in Minneapolis, MN. Her being well practices include exploring nature with Violeta (her miraculous pup companion) , praying and singing for the healing of our world, working deeply on all things related to ending-racism and all domination systems, getting into the deep wilderness as often as possible, practicing bike repair, slowly studying for her pilot’s license, and giving great thanks for a sunrise morning cup of coffee. Molly considers the gift of raising a now 22 year old daughter to be one of the greatest honors of her life.
Riding the great waves of the current global transition Molly is doing her best to be of service and embody love-in-action in honest, grounded and accountable ways. She remains convinced most of us are on a need-to-know basis as the new era unfolds and that we are all walking each other home.
See current and past projects to learn more.