substack #43
Hi, I’m Bianca — Artist, Professor, & Creative Strategist in Los Angeles. In case you are new here or if a reminder could help, this newsletter began as an exploration of figuring things out, one day at a time. Upgrade to a paid subscription to make sure you never miss out on the really good stuff.
Hi All,
Welcome to folks who are new here! If you signed up for the upcoming teach-in with Where Are The Black Designers I’m so looking forward to seeing you! We’ll see you tomorrow February 15, 12 pm PST / 3 pm EST / 8 pm UK for a global teach-in to understand and apply creative frameworks to support current organizing for Palestine, Sudan, and Congo.
We are currently at capacity but some good news - we’ve opened up a waitlist for tomorrow’s teach-in.
Teach-In: Waitlist now available!
If you were unable to secure a spot and would like to join us please join the waitlist. If you were able to sign up but are unable to attend, please release your ticket so we can distribute it to folks on the waitlist.
This teach-in is hosted in collaboration with Where Are the Black Designers? and was made for creatives who want to deepen their relationship with social movements and develop meaningful applications for their work. From supporting rapid response campaigns and creating cultural interventions to building better relationships with organizations and organizers, join me and Mitzi Okou for this 90-minute session on 2/15.
Resources For Tomorrow
During my last teach-in, I brought up some incredible work done by Zoras Daughters in response to some Anti-Black nonsense created by a “travel influencer” during the black square era of 2020 Instagram.
I use it as an example for a few reasons:
Note the Anti-Blackness / saviorism of this rapid-response work and the dangers of work done outside of deep relationship-building
Highlight the weaponization of Visual / Material design choices to create false authority on a topic
Start our discussion about the importance of strategy, self-awareness, and building theories of change as creatives
Creatives are often asked to come in at the end of a process to decorate an idea. I believe that creatives can be incredibly valuable throughout the entire campaign and action-planning process.
Tomorrow’s teach-in starts with me creating some context, why we need to be included, and what we need to know so we’re ready to contribute.
Unfortunately, I don’t have time during our teach-in to have an in-depth conversation about this particular example (but believe me, I could - that’s a lecture for a different day). But if you have time before tomorrow, I recommend diving into Brendane and Alyssa’s episode.
“As much as I hate turning anti-Blackness into a teachable moment, I felt like it was important to kind of help our audience understand all of the misleading and insidious shit that was going on in the video, as well as in the original post. So that video, actually gave us a really great opportunity to explain more about what was going on with the post and then also address what happened in the video. And so, what I didn’t know at the time was that it was actually gonna bring to light that this was a pattern of behavior. That she’s been doing this to Black women for a long time and that when they spoke up, nobody believed them.”
As always, I’ll have a session summary available after tomorrow’s teach-in for folks to download.
Also - if you’re in Los Angeles and need a place to put your heartbreak.
Talk next week,
B