What happens when feminist theory meets hands-on creativity? When cross-stitching becomes a form of resistance? When poetry film and zine-making turn into tools for dissent?
Last week, I co-led a four-day workshop on feminist making at the DH@Guelph Summer Workshops. Inspired by Sara Ahmed’s call for a feminist survival kit in Living a Feminist Life, we blended theory with praxis to weave (sometimes literally!) together discussions on feminism, data, and the digital with hands-on creative activities. Together, we explored how making can be a form of knowing, resisting, and surviving together.
Throughout the week, we learned how to make poetry films and took some footage at The Arboretum to include in our films.
We learned about and created data physicalizations, using some data we created about our group.
We made permission notes for the things we want to prioritize in our lives–and the things we don’t!
Building on the concept of a “Stitch n’ Bitch,” we made cross-stitch patterns online, printed them, and then cross-stitched while we chatted about academia, making, cats, and everything in between.
We learned how to weave using clipboards as a loom and created individuals weaves, as well as a larger collective weave using a whiteboard as a loom.
And, we made zines!
At the end of each day, we had a closing discussion about one of Ahmed’s items in her survival kit while we each took turns adding to our collective felting project, titled, Felting Our Feelings.
Our showcase at the end of the week highlighted all the fun, creative, political, inspiring, and feminist items we had made–both digital and non-digital. It was a wonderful week and I can’t wait to run the workshop again!
HUGE shout out to my co-lead on this workshop, Kim, for being such a wonderful person to work and make with! Thank you for giving me an easy entry into my first time running a four-day workshop.
Kiera Obbard 