The Creative Change-Makers Workshop
Thursday, April 3 at 4pm Pacific, 5pm Mountain, 6pm Central, 7pm Eastern.
This is a workshop for developing ideas that bring joy and creativity into our responses to this frightening and exhausting political moment.
A vehicle to help transform your fear and anger into positive creative action—beyond calling your senator or signing a petition.
Which is why I wanted to create a time and place to brainstorm, plan, create, and imagine a whole range of joyful and creative acts of resistance—be they big or tiny, deeply personal, or grandly communal.
Because often all that is required for a creative idea to take shape and become real is a little structure and some camaraderie. An uplifting container that helps foster connection and generativity to help you turn your abstract intention into a concrete reality.
This workshop is that container.
No artistic talent is required to attend, and it’s completely okay if
You don’t feel creative,
Think you don’t have any ideas,
Or if you’ve never done anything “political” before and feel weird or shy about doing something like this. Although you can look at this list I made to spark your thinking.
My goal is for you to leave the workshop feeling energized and filled with a sense of possibility. Maybe even with a plan or two to do some creative change-making.
It’s completely free for paid subscribers of my newsletter The Pink Teacup. Being a paid subscriber is only 36.00/year and you can sign up—or just read more about it— here.
Here are links to three recent posts if you’d like to read a little more about it first:
Workshop Overview—How it will work:
The workshop is on Zoom and will last between 75-90 minutes, but you can come for as long as you like or are able.
We’ll first discuss what it might mean to create your own joyful bit of resistance and how to “partner” with a creative idea.
I’ll share examples from my own experience for bringing both art installations and protest projects into full fruition.
Then I’ll lead a group brainstorming session where we explore and imagine various creative and fun resistance projects we might try, and I’ll help you think about first steps you could take to make your idea a reality.
After that, we’ll break away to work on our own for a bit—taking a tiny first action step or two in our individual ideas to see how it goes. (If you’ve ever done some online co-working, it’ll be like that.)
This part can be really fun, but for folks who aren’t ready for that, I’ll stay in the group area of the call and hang out to answer questions and discuss ideas.
Afterwards, we’ll reconnect and talk about our nascent baby ideas and how it felt to work on them. And we’ll lean on the group mind for any help or expertise that might come in handy for each other.
This is a zero pressure experience. It’s about connecting to your creativity and hopefully having some fun.
Agreeing to attend is not promising you’ll do something or make something. If you’re not sure, you can just use the time to consider doing or making something. OR, you can just come and bring your good vibes.
Need some inspiration about why doing this kind of thing can make a real difference?
Read this BBC article on how tremendously successful non-violent demonstrations and activism can be.
I’d love for you to join us.
If you are already a paid subscriber, you already received an email with a registration link.
If you aren’t yet a paid subscriber, you can sign up here. Once you do that, you’ll get the registration link in your welcome email.
Here’s a starter list of potential ideas for creative change-making to get your juices flowing for the workshop!
Print, paint, or sew a flag of resistance or solidarity that hangs outside your house or apartment window.
Write a zine about vote suppression that you casually leave on coffee shops tables.
Bake blue and yellow iced Ukrainian flag cookies that you bring to work for your right-wing coworkers to enjoy unbeknownst.
Make “did you know” single-fact flyers that you stick on car windshields in a grocery store parking lot.
Design a saucy bumper sticker, a righteous pin, or an audacious t-shirt that you share with like-minded souls.
Weave nature crowns or construct witches hats to wear with friends at your next protest—or plan a crown-making party where you’ll invite your local friends to come to your place to create them with you.
Paint handmade signs that are funny or wacky or graphic or gorgeous to bring to protests and share with folks who showed up without one.
Write a checklist of immigrant rights and legal aid numbers to leave at your library or local bodega and then make it fun and funky with weird fonts or pretty graphics or calligraphy. Or draw little hearts all over it.
Order custom “democracy” M&Ms or “Rule of Law” conversation heart candies and put them out at your PTA meeting or church coffee hour.
Choreograph a public dance project that celebrates reproductive rights.
Stitch a quilt to auction at a fundraiser for the displaced.
Make tiny protest messages that show up in unexpected places in your community—perhaps left in a grocery store shopping basket or taped to a bathroom stall at a rest stop or the gas station mini mart.
There is no wrong, no too small, no too wacky no too mundane. If it excites you, or feels fun, or, if you’re like me, it makes you involuntarily raise your eyebrows while you smile mysteriously, that’s all that matters.