Visual arts partnership with Broadstairs college
Project dates: January - March 2020
In early 2020, POW!’s Visual Arts and Youth Engagement lead Cynthia Lawrence-John worked with 30 students aged 16-18 from Broadstairs College on a two part project that fed into their visual arts course.
The project began with a discussion of ‘What does feminism mean to you?’ and led on to explore the theme for POW! festival 2020: Imagined Futures.
In part one of the project, students were guided to create a t-shirt reflecting their ideas on feminism and versions of the future that they imagined. Using a myriad of materials the students created a wild and wonderful array of designs, as you can see in the gallery below.
The second part of the project explored fanzines and their impact on popular culture. Students were guided to design and create a poster or page for a fanzine. A selection of these were exhibited as part of POW! 2020 festival at Sister Joan Hair Salon in Cliftonville. This was a hands-on experience and valuable work experience for the students whose pieces were selected for exhibit, as they were directly involved in curating and hanging the exhibition.
POW! and the students of Broadstairs college felt strongly that this opportunity should be used to make artwork visible and accessible to a wide range of people, even those who may not ordinarily visit a gallery. Located on Cliftonville’s busy high street, the exhibition did just that, being available to the many community residents passing by on their way to the shops.
One of the posters was featured as a full page of the Broadstairs Beacon, which is distributed throughout Thanet and read by a wide selection of the local community.
POW! Thanet has a diverse Community Engagement programme that connects with schools, colleges, universities, and community groups in Thanet and the wider Kent area. Our dedicated Community Engagement team provides workshops, facilitates projects, and supports groups to explore issues regarding women, girls, feminism, equality and wellbeing through creativity. POW! Thanet’s Community Engagement team have worked with 250 children and young people from April to December 2020.
Read about all our Community Engagement projects here.
If you’d like to work with POW! Thanet’s Community Engagement team, please do email engagement@powthanet.com to speak to our Engagement Director, Francesca Alphonso.
