Sewing the Seeds of Change: Banner Workshops for Revolutionary Times

Name: Sewing the Seeds of Change: Banner Workshops for Revolutionary Times
Start: 2021-07-22T16:00:00-04:00
End: 2021-07-22T17:30:00-04:00

With Jenna Reid and Syrus Marcus Ware

FREE

VIEW RECORDING HERE

Banners are textiles that are usually seen front and centre at direct action events. What is less visible are the ethics of care that go into making banners. Through conversation while making a banner together, Syrus Marcus Ware and Jenna Reid will talk about what they have learned through making banners, and how the values of disability justice and healing justice are woven into the work at every step of the process. In this hands-on workshop participants will learn a few techniques for how to make their own banners and will come away with an understanding of how textiles fit into our revolutionary efforts.

Jenna Reid (she/her) is the current Artistic Director at Kickstart Disability Arts & Culture. Jenna is a fibre artist who works primarily with the practices of quilting and natural dyes as a way to engage with activist based aesthetics. Throughout the spring, summer, and fall of 2020, she worked alongside prominent social movements in Toronto creating large scale banners and pennants to creatively activate messages for racial justice and radical change.

Jenna has completed a residency on Toronto Island with the Feminist Art Conference, and has exhibited her work and presented on panels in Canada, the US, the UK, and Australia. Her studio work explores inter-institutional violence informed by the histories of queer, feminist, Deaf, disability, and mad movement organizing. With a studio-based PhD in Critical Disability Studies at York University, Jenna’s teaching and research specializes in the emergent field of Mad Studies. Jenna has published in The Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Canadian Art, Intersectionalities: A Global Journal of Social Work Analysis, Research, Policy, and Practice, Journal of Progressive Human Services, and Studies in Social Justice.

Syrus Marcus Ware is an Assistant Professor at the School of the Arts, McMaster University. He is a Vanier scholar, visual artist, activist, curator and educator. Syrus uses drawing, installation and performance to explore social justice frameworks and black activist culture, and he’s shown widely in galleries and festivals across Canada. He is a core-team member of Black Lives Matter – Toronto, a part of the Performance Disability Art Collective, and an ABD PhD candidate at York University in the Faculty of Environmental Studies. His on-going curatorial work includes That’s So Gay (Gladstone Hotel, 2016-2019) and BlacknessYes!/Blockorama. He is the co-editor or the best-selling Until We Are Free: Reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada (URP, 2020).

Type: Program

Date: Jul 22, 2021, 4pm - 5:30pm