Social Justice Sewing Academy
SARAH C. RICH JAN 2, 2019
The afternoon quilting workshop at Hillcrest Elementary School in San Francisco, California, meets in a mobile classroom behind the main building. After the school day is over. Then sixteen kids have walked across the basketball court, dropped their backpacks, and headed for a table piled high with colorful fabric. Then they cut out silhouettes and gluing block letters.For example, a red appliqué stop sign reads Stop Deportation. Or the letters LGBTQ underscore a feminine face with a small of a black mustache. Then the caption says Let Me Be Me.
Sara Trail
Sara Trail, the 23-year-old founder of the Social Justice Sewing Academy organizes these quilting bees for activist youth. She’s raced over from her day job teaching high school courses to incarcerated adults.
Inspired by Trayvon Martin’s death
Trail says that social justice work became urgent for her when she was a high school senior in the wealthy Bay Area suburb of Walnut Creek. It was February of 2012, she recalls, and she’d just celebrated her 17th birthday. On the opposite side of the country, a boy she didn’t know had also just turned 17. Someone she might never have heard of except that shortly after his birthday, he was killed.His slaying made national news. It was Trayvon Martin.
Trail was one of the few black kids in her neighborhood. When Martin was killed, she says, she didn’t yet fear the police. She says that her parents were protective and focused on scholarly achievements. “I did swimming and reading and piano,” Trail says. However, from age four, she sewed. Quilting enabled Trail to express the intense feelings that Martin’s death aroused.After that, ” I started making my first art quilt,” she says, “which was Trayvon’s face.”
A few months later, she began her freshman year at the University of California,Berkeley. In addition,she also began tutoring at a nearby public school. Then,she decided to try using craft as a way for students to comment on the issues that touched their own lives.
Quilting and Social Justice
Quilting might seem too quiet and slow to hold teenagers’ attention. But it has always been a kind of social media. For centuries, quilting circles have been a space for women to discuss their lives and to seek support. Quilts themselves have served as a mode of communication where others failed or posed a threat.
a small grant
At the end of her senior year at Berkeley, Trail founded the Social Justice Sewing Academy with a small grant. She used the money to buy sewing machines, supplies, and public transit tickets for students. In the mornings, she taught ethnic studies and critical consciousness. In the afternoons, the issues would inspire sketches for a quilt square. I paid attention to the student’s interests.If they mentioned redlining, then we would look at maps of their area. Later they would find out how many buildings had been foreclosed. Research how many families were given predatory loans Trail says.
Seasoned Quilters Help Out
Trail built a worldwide network of seasoned quilters through Instagram. She mails the students’ fabric squares for final stitching to the experienced quilters. Most of them are older, white, and living in places where they rarely come into direct contact with youth from disadvantaged backgrounds. However, they are eager to help and share their skills.
“C is for Colorism”
Bianca Mercado participated in an Social Justice Sewing Academy workshop as a 17-year-old at her high school in Massachusetts. She created an alphabet quilt with 26 social justice statements. Her “C is for Colorism” block was mailed to Colleen Haraden-Gorski, a water-resource specialist in California. Haraden-Gorski researched color discrimination. Then she decided to stitch in a rectangle of brown fabric with a script reading brown paper bag. The added detail refers to the custom among African Americans to compare their skin tones to brown paper.
Touring Around the Country
Now, Mercado’s quilt is touring exhibitions around the country. Moreover, it often hangs among more traditional patterns, surprising viewers accustomed to tamer geometries. From the quiet patchwork of fabric, the young artist’s voice speaks loud and clear.
In Conclusion
The Social Justice Sewing Academy now has branches all over the country. Due to the work of Sara Trail, her dream has expanded.https://annbaldwinmayartquilts.com/2020/07/political-quilts2008-2014/
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