About
The School for Living Futures was founded in 2022 by sisters Sarah Rose Nordgren and Krista Anne Nordgren in Durham, North Carolina.
Our mission is to become a hub for programming and projects that combine art, climate work, kinship and community, and that bring together the knowledge of artists, healers, scientists, activists, ancestral wisdom holders, scholars, designers, and storytellers. We aim to counteract climate despair, denial, and inaction, and to empower people with the skills and ideas necessary to become changemakers in their own realms and create living futures for people and the planet.
Sarah Rose Nordgren
Founder, Director
Sarah Rose Nordgren is an American poet, writer, teacher, and cultural organizer. She is the author of two award-winning poetry collections, Best Bones (2014) and Darwin’s Mother (2017), as well as the prose chapbook The Creation Museum (2022), which explore feminism, the natural world, spirituality, science, and the human experience. Her nonfiction book, Feathers: The Bird Hat Wearer’s Journal, won the Essay Press Book Prize and was released in February 2024.
Among Nordgren’s awards are two winter fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, and fellowships and scholarships from the Sewanee and Bread Loaf Conferences, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Nordgren holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, an MFA in Creative Writing from University of North Carolina Greensboro, and a PhD in English from the University of Cincinnati where she also earned a Graduate Certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She has taught courses in poetry, literature, and environmental writing at UNCG, Xavier University, Miami University of Ohio, and University of Cincinnati, as well as independently and through various arts institutions.
Sarah Rose has had a lifelong interest in environmental issues, but had her “climate awakening” in 2019 which led to her joining an activist group in Cincinnati focused on lobbying and direct action. Experiencing the power of action and community as antidotes to climate despair and anxiety changed the direction of Nordgren’s life. In 2020, She returned to her hometown of Durham, NC where she founded The School for Living Futures.
Krista Anne Nordgren
Assistant Director
Krista Nordgren is an agent of change whose career has included roles as a marketer, coder, community organizer, entrepreneur, and psychotherapist. She started in the tech field, where she held roles as a community manager and curriculum developer for startups and a VC firm.
In 2012, she founded The Makery, an online shop that helped North Carolina-based artists market and sell their goods. This business evolved into The Mothership, a coworking, shop and event space in downtown Durham, open from 2013 until it closed during the pandemic in 2020. The Mothership was an accessible space for artists and creative workers, holding regular exhibitions, community art events, dance parties, drag shows, and educational programming.
After attending the School for Poetic Computation in 2016 as a student and resident artist, Krista designed and developed websites and apps for local start ups and arts organizations and taught creative code classes for Moogfest and Carolina Friends School. Krista also worked as a consultant for local businesses on opening their brick-and-mortar spaces, including running successful Kickstarter campaigns to fund opening costs, raising over 25k.
Currently, Krista practices psychotherapy and is the Assistant Director of School for Living Futures.
Brandon Dawson
Marketing and Technical Advisor
Brandon Dawson is a communicator first. Throughout 15 years in radio broadcasting, stints teaching communication theory in Europe and South Africa, and in more than two decades in marketing, branding, and communications strategy, Brandon‘s core motivation is to connect, to be understood, and to help others create and tell stories that help them do the same.
When he’s not writing songs or producing his own music, Brandon serves as the Director of Strategic Brand Experience & Communication for Cincinnati-based Hyperquake, an integrated strategy and design studio, where he helps to define how brands show up in the world. At the core of that work is the belief that a brand must stand for something, must have a unique vision and promise, and that in today’s landscape a brand’s sustainability strategy and action must be the starting point for determining what value it provides to consumers and to the world in which we live.
Brandon is a graduate of both the Terra.do “Climate Change: Learning for Action” course and the OPF (One-Point-Five) Academy Sustainability Consulting Accelerator. He not only helps define the brand vision for SfLF, he also works behind the scenes to facilitate marketing, events, and technology for SfLF’s various programming.