ABOUT WCC
World Community Connect was founded by Masa Hilcisin, educator, visual artist, holistic human development practitioner, and somatic movement therapist in training with the intention of creating a space, sanctuary and community where plurality is a norm (read more about her in-depth story here).
This is a space where tolerance, diversity and equality are nurtured, promoted, and respected where creating, and sharing stories, cultivating self-expression, healing, and education are accessible to all people regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, or age.
Our complex cultures, unresolved histories, social conditioning, inherited individual and collective narratives, all kinds of -isms and -phobias, and internal limitations created a space where we more and more isolate, censor our voices, and experience fear from making brave choices and courageous promises that will serve our individual and collective well being.
Here in this community, we encourage deep creative exploration of selves whether it is through breathing, storytelling, singing, engaging with social art, exploring art as social tool, collaging, playing, conceptualizing, intuitive mark marking, abstracting, installing objects together, dismantling objects... whispering, screaming out loud, moving the body, painting, dancing, experimenting, movie making, performing, creative writing, healing…
World Community Connect wants to keep offering re-education of all of these aspects that have been conditioned, repressed and neglected.
ABOUT MAŠA
Hi, I am Maša. I started the organization World Community Connect because my dream was to create a space where creative processes, healing, and education are accessible to everyone, and where tolerance, diversity, and equality are nurtured and respected.
I am a visual artist, educator, holistic human development practitioner, and somatic movement therapist in training.
My personal experiences of growing up in a war zone, witnessing destructive nationalism, religious and ethnic segregation, gender-based violence, experiencing different forms of abuse, deaths of loved ones, migration, losing my family, going through journey of single motherhood, dismantling the old and building the new, helped me to learn on how to alchemize those experiences into tools for personal growth, and being of service to others.
I began to explore creative tools, film-making, collages, paintings, visual experimentation, and other forms of visual storytelling to tell and share some of the deepest and the most intimate personal experiences, along with meditation, mindfulness, somatic movement, conscious body, energy healing, the mind - body connection, ethics, safety, socially engaging narratives...I began to explore all of these as a portal to allow myself to face some of the deepest wounds, to allow myself to grieve, to give myself permission to heal, to expand my inner and outer worlds, to embrace self sovereignty, to expand my spirituality, and to make courageous promises to myself.
These experiences also taught me about the importance of tolerance, respect, diversity, and openness and made me gravitate towards people and communities of all backgrounds.
I wanted to cultivate the idea that creating and sharing personal fragments, unraveling stories of our lives, our struggles, and achievements not only create powerful pool that we can reach out to when we need to feel sense of community or support or to find those who walk similar path as we do but it also opens the path to some of the deepest and core healing, individually and collectively.
I grew up in Bosnia. I used to walk or ride a bicycle around 10 kilometers every day to get to the high school, and then come back home crossing another 10 kilometers through some of the most dangerous parts of the city, which were exposed to sniper shootings and grenades.
Around the age of 18 I was selected as one of the protagonists for the documentary film ‘Ragazzi di Sarajevo’ (Children of Sarajevo) directed by Italian documentary filmmaker, Daniela Cavini.
In ‘Children of Sarajevo’ I shared some of the most painful experiences about war time, and I also learned about the importance of having one’s voice heard and sharing that voice with the rest of the world.
Nevertheless it took me years after that to find the form which would be a transcendent channel for my voice.
Until I learned that creating goes so much further and beyond any formal education institution. Until I realized that one of the ways we make an impact and contribute to our own healing processes, and healing processes of others is by sharing our stories.
Until I learned it is our birthright to create. Until I learned that the power of self-expression has an enormous effect in cultivating empathy and compassion, and building a healthier world.
Experiencing the migration, being alone and building my own space in a new country, being in survival mode many times and then losing my beloved mother, strengthened my passion and importance of not giving up one’s creative force and finding myself a place in the world as a woman, artist, humanist, activist, educator, mother.
Throughout the years of my doctoral studies in film and audio-visual field, I discovered other aspects of visual aesthetics which inspired not only my teaching engagement but also influenced my body of work which diverted towards reflection, exploring my own past, relationships, and diving deeper into the space within.
My creative and healing works changed the trajectory when I understood magical mixtures of elements of art, nature, inner journeys, and outer worlds. I had the great fortune of studying work of people from different parts of the world, visual art made by dozens of women for the past two centuries, a key forces that helped my work to become sublimation of visual personal open space, space that invites people all over the world to share their voices, sing their songs, dance their stories, write their memories.
I still see a teenage girl who rides a bicycle on her way to the school, escaping snipers and mortar shells in order to escape into a different world at least for a moment, to escape into something creative and profound. Yes. Sharing the voice and darkest places of our soul can be overwhelming, and can be scary and frightening. It can make us vulnerable and exposed, but it also deepens our own individuation, awakening a continuous awareness of caring and nurturing stories and experiences that need to be told.
I want to be of service to others as facilitator of creative and healing processes, to encourage creating and sharing personal narratives, to dismantle stereotypes, social conditioning, guilt, fear, shame, and many other patterns which are detrimental to individual and collective well-being.
