This workshop invites you to grapple with personal and societal conceptions of safety by slowing down with the practice of hand embroidery. Together we will discuss how individual traumas, and social privilege or marginalization play a role in how we understand our safety, what safety means to us as individuals, and how we weave strong communities. Leaning into the meditative and intergenerational quality of sewing circles, participants will have the embodied experience of how craft can heal and connect us.

Participants will learn a few basic embroidery stitches and be invited to create a piece of their own design that represents their relationship to safety. All skill levels are welcome!

Heather Marie Scholl is a hand embroidery and mixed media artist based in Philadelphia. Her work investigates the intersections of race, gender, and trauma through personal and national narratives. In 2015, Scholl began a series “Whitework,” confronting white women’s roles in white supremacy. This led to co-founding Confront White Womanhood, an anti-racism education initiative for white women, including the workshop “The Violence of White Women’s Safety.” Through the exhibition of her series “Resurrection of a Victim” Scholl has held public programming on LGBTQ+ Domestic Violence, including “Safety Together: DV in the Dyke+ community”. Scholl’s art work has been exhibited across the United States and has been written about in Slate, Cosmopolitan, i-D magazine, and others. www.heathermariescholl.com