a team-taught, 6-week experience in liberation through creativity + self representation. starts april 15, 2019.
Our faces, our bodies, our physical appearances, are battlegrounds of culture.
As we claim our voices and visibility to do our best work in the world we bump into deeply internalized feelings about how we appear and who we appear as -- always in relation to society’s “norms” of acceptability.
In this course YOU will turn the eye of the camera towards yourself with agency and imagination, using the theater of self portraiture and selfies to playfully expand the sense of flexibility, self love, and confidence that is possible. Because:
our faces, bodies, and images are places of action, resistance, and JOY, too.
The Art of Showing Up is an experience of liberation through self-love, creative play and a well-tended community of others doing the same. You’ll leave the Art of Showing Up:
A more developed visual storyteller
Understanding of how visual culture works in both oppressive and liberating ways
Able to make strategic and imaginative choices about how you engage in and affect visual culture
more connected to your inherent amazingness and your voice
more free from the internalized BS that makes you feel visually “not right,” and an analysis to support it;
with a deeper understanding of the experiences of others with identities and experiences similar to AND different from your own, and better tools to be co-agents of healing and change with them;
wowed by the beauty and dignity of all humans;
with a bunch of GREAT IMAGES that YOU made;
with an increased understanding of the facilitation tools and policies that create brave spaces and liberation spaces;
with increased confidence and creativity which you can apply to your communications, marketing, visibility and engagement with the world on behalf of your most important work.
THE ART OF SHOWING UP
Reclaim Yourself(ies) | 6 WEEK COURSE | STARTS APRIL 15, 2019
$285. Early bird registration! apply by 3/27: $270
WHY AN APPLICATION?
We are designing transformation space! That means it’s responsive, co-creative, and a place where voices that are typically marginalized or disempowered in classrooms (and society) are in the center. Your application helps us find out who you are as a learner and a potential creative accomplice and ally to others in the space. And, space is limited, and we want to make sure that some types of folks aren’t outnumbered by others -we aim to create as diverse and inclusive space as we can! So, apply and we will respond within 10 days.
Come and make your image: imaginative, self-defined + without apology.
“The most moving online course I’ve ever participated in.”
Guest Teacher Tiana Dodson bringing the pro tips!
in The art of showing up, we follow principles and guidelines of communication with each other that are built to include all, and let art and justice do their work.
the gaze of mass culture, and the oppressions inherent in that gaze, deeply affect how we see ourselves and our identities in this world.
we aim to create anti-oppression spaces and perspectives -
so we can disrupt, PLAY and imagine our way to a freer voice and self-image!
“I learned that I AM BEAUTIFUL. and you are too.”
Your teacher-facilitators:
AMY WALSH she/her/hers
Artist, educator, and washed up bingo celebrity Amy Walsh is the founder of the Bureau of Tactical Imagination and the Art of Showing Up. She’s taught art, visual culture, design and visual storytelling for almost 20 years and has the stretch marks to prove it. She now works with small business owners to spread their message, change culture and build their businesses in ways that are as imaginative and ethical as they are lucrative.
JU-PONG LIN she/her/hers
Ju-pong has been greeting neighbors in hand-knitted aprons since 1990, when she first started engineering tender and awkward social situations for creative liberation and connection. She developed the first university program in decolonial and indigenous art practices, and speaks, writes, and makes art on that topic around the U.S.
Guest Artists:
Naima Lowe
Naima Lowe comes from a long line of Black people who make things. She’s got parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great-great grandparents who are musicians, fashion designers, Sunday school teachers, waitresses, and field hands. Through them she inherited a lineage and aesthetic of Black cultural production that is as enigmatic as it is discernible. These people have also gifted Naima with her commitment to social justice, focused work ethic and big mouth. Naima’s work has been exhibited widely.
Jessica Brown
Jessica Brown is an Interdisciplinary Multimedia Spectacle Generator commenting on the cultural cache of our time. She’s an artist, designer, entertainer, performer, and world builder -- curated and unscripted.
She’s currently teaching classes like “Art and Activism” at the Rhode Island School of Design and playing trumpet in the Extraordinary Rendition Band.
Be warned: She likes to make silly things in a serious way. Or is it the other way around.
tiana dodson
Tiana Dodson is a fat, certified holistic health coach who’s out to destroy the belief that you have to be skinny to be happy and healthy. Through her work with One Beautiful Yes and the Live Your Best Fat Life program, she guides people feminine-of-center to reconnect with their bodies through pragmatic self-care practices so they can come to see that there is nothing wrong with living in a larger body.
ok, so whats actually involved?
CLASS MEETINGS: We will meet each Monday, starting April 15 for 6 weeks, time TBA, for 90 minutes.
ASSIGNMENTS: Each week, the whole group will get an assignment (via email and posted in the FB group), to make a handful of selfies or self portraits exploring the teachings of the week.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: Over the course of the 6 weeks, 3-4 guest teachers will offer additional experiences - that can look like a presentation, a facilitated discussion, or something else. These are optional and will also be recorded.
ACCESS to materials: All classes will be recorded - in case you have to miss one, you can catch up.
COMMUNITY SPACE: We will share images and engage in discussions and explorations in a secret facebook group just for this course.
TIME EXPECTATIONS: To fully benefit from the course, we suggest you spend a minimum of an hour each week outside of class, making stuff; and at least a half hour engaging in conversation in our FB group.
TECH AND MATERIALS: some kind of digital camera - a cameraphone is fine. That’s the main thing. “Would be nice” things: a selfie stick, a tripod that works with your camera or phone, a person in your life who might take pictures of you while you play dress-ups, and oh yeah - stuff for playing dress ups. You’d be surprised at how much stuff you can dress up in - it goes well beyond clothing. But at minimum: come with a camera.
Cost: $285. Early bird cost (apply by 3/27): $270. registration closes April 8.
NOTE: the art of showing up is no longer enrolling.
Participant work from past Art of Showing Up workshops!
(all images used with permission)
