T-shirt design by Kore grrls and myself, Feb. 2011
I have led several, semester-long “Grrls Literary Activism” workshops for teenage girls offered by Kore Press. Inspired by foremothers such as the Guerilla Girls whose creative street activism inspired a shift in the way women artists are represented in museums and the media, the workshops incorporate reading, writing, discussion, and public actions to “empower young women with the skills necessary to express themselves on social issues and become potent agents of change.” To get their words and voices heard, workshop participants have produced ‘zines, posters, tracts, broadsides, door knob hangers, t-shirts, and a poetic tampon dispenser; published their writing on web sites and blogs; and read out loud to audiences.
In 2011, I led 6 girls in a writing workshop focusing on issues of democracy. We visited Dwight Metzger’s Gloo Factory and learned the role of printing in spreading political messages. We then designed our very own t-shirt, which the grrls printed themselves with Dwight’s help. For their final project the grrls made a polling booth, complete with a participatory ballot asking questions about feminism and gender.
In the spring of 2009, I co-led the workshop with filmmaker/photographer Jamie A. Lee. The grrls made billboard posters and Jamie helped them create images that would speak to a particular issue they were concerned with. They also made “tracts,” short literary pamphlets, which they handed out or left in places where people might discover them. Traditionally, tracts are religious in nature, meant to preach or proselytize. The invention of the printing press helped religious groups circulate persuasive material much more efficiently. We borrowed the idea of religious tracts to disseminate our poetry, stories rants, tips, and other “preach-worthy” words.
To order your very own “Sexy Brains” t-shirt to support the grrls programs, visit www.korepress.org.
Read more about the Grrls Literary Activism Workshop here: www.grrlsactivism.blogspot.com.