MOCAs Girls Summit / workshops and discusions on creative approaches to girls education
MOCAs Girls Summit / FRIDAY, MAY 4TH 2012 10AM – 4PM
Join the educators of MOCA’s acclaimed Women on the Rise! program and noted girls’ scholars, activists, and educators Dr. Ruth Nicole Brown and Dr. Dana Edell for a dynamic day of hands-on workshops and discussions on creative approaches to girls education. MOCA invites teachers, counselors, artists, and social workers who serve girls to participate in free classes that will explore techniques for utilizing visual art and performance to enhance their work and promote girls’ creativity and critical thinking. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to meet scholars conducting innovative work with girls in New York and Illinois and network with girl-serving professionals.
www.mocanomi.org/girls-summit
INVITED SPEAKERS:
Ruth Nicole Brown
Dr. Ruth Nicole Brown is a dynamic writer, researcher, performer, mentor and instructor. She is an assistant professor in the Gender and Women’s Studies and Educational Policy, Organization & Leadership departments at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. Dr. Brown works with students and community residents to co-organize, Saving Our Lives, Hear Our Truths (Solhot). Solhot is a space dedicated to the celebration of Black girlhood in all of its complexity. As a critical method of civic engagement, Solhot is a creative cutting-edge application of Dr. Brown’s research interventions in Black Girls’ Studies and Hip Hop Feminism.
Through her extensive training in art-based methodologies, Dr. Brown’s research is interdisciplinary. As a writer, she produces plays, performance texts, photo-performance exhibits, books, and journal articles to document the experiences of black girls in the U.S. and abroad, dismantle existing educational inequalities, and to humanize the experiences of disenfranchised people. She is the author of Black Girlhood Celebration: Toward a Hip-Hop Feminist Pedagogy and is currently working on her second book project, The Black Girl Community Handbook: Creating Accountable Truths.
Dana Edell
Dr. Dana Edell is an activist-scholar-artist and the co-founder of viBe Theater Experience (www.viBeTheater.org). Since 2002, Dana has directed, co-directed, designed and/or produced more than 55 viBe plays, 7 CDs of original music and 4 original radio plays addressing the “real-life” issues that urban girls deal with daily, all written and performed by teenage girls in New York City. She is the director of SPARK, a girl-fueled activist movement that challenges the sexualization of girls worldwide. As an adjunct assistant professor, Dana teaches at New York University, Manhattan Marymount College and with the Bard College Prison Initiative at Bayview Women’s Prison. She has a BA with honors in Classics/Ancient Greek from Brown University, an MFA in Theatre Directing from Columbia University and a PhD in Educational Theatre from NYU.
PROGRAM
10:00 am—Registration
10:30 am—Noon: Panel Discussion: Women on the Rise! Instructors and Invited Speakers
Noon—1:00 pm: Networking Lunch*
1:00—3:00 pm: Workshops
3:00—4:00 pm: Closing Remarks and Group Discussion
*There are various locations to purchase food within walking distance of the museum or you can bring your own.
WORKSHOP DESCRIPTIONS
RUTH NICOLE BROWN / WHAT ARE WE COMPLICIT IN ASKING BLACK GIRLS NOT TO KNOW?: A SOLHOT SESSION
This workshop will take attendees through a typical Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths (SOLHOT) session. The session will commence with “just because”, a black girls’ game, and “check in.” An issue important to black girls will be addressed as decided by workshop participants using poetry and photography, and close with “the incense circle”, a ritual that allows everyone to honor someone they want known and remembered. Participants will be familiarized with what SOLHOT is like, as well as have a shared experience from which to discuss how the work of SOLHOT matters politically, practically, spiritually, and socially.
DANA EDELL / SPARKING CHANGE: APPLYING THE ARTS TO IGNITE GIRLS’ ACTIVISM
This interactive performance-based workshop will explore significant and urgent personal and social justice issues related to the media’s misrepresentation of girls. Through creative writing and physical performance work participants will learn techniques to create and perform site-specific performance pieces that raise awareness about this issue and inspire the audience and the performers to advocate for change.
MOCA WOMEN ON THE RISE! TEAM / NOT YOUR VENUS: USING HISTORY AND ART TO ENGAGE GIRLS IN CRITIQUES OF SEXUAL (MIS)REPRESENTATIONS
This workshop is based on the gender specific curriculum of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Women on the Rise! art outreach program for underserved girls and young women. The program presents the work of contemporary women artists to engage young women in critical dialogues about body image, representation, and culture. In this workshop Women on the Rise! instructors will lead participants in a hands-on art and creative writing project inspired by the work of Shoshanna Weinberger, an artist who explores the legacy of colonialism on sexual representations of women of color.
Registration is free!
Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami
Joan Lehman Building / 770 NE 125th Street, North Miami, Florida 33161 / T +1 305 893 6211 / F +1 305 891 1472 / E [email protected]
www.mocanomi.org