Spoken Spaces
With Vashti DuBois & DaSaint
Spoken Spaces online art course with With Vashti DuBois & DaSaint
Inspired by The Colored Girls Museum this writing workshop invites participants to engage with home space as the muse - All Spaces Speak.
In this eight-week course co-facilitators Vashti and DaSaint invite participants to create poetry inspired by spaces that speak. Participants will engage in being and seeing themselves in those spaces and speak back through poetic prose. We invite participants to explore the various spaces we call home, rather known or unknown and speak of its story in a poetic format.
Artists will learn fundamental poetry genres and styles but this is not the focus of the course, rather we will focus on what happens when we bring this knowledge into the spaces that speak to us.
Office Hours: Thursdays at 12 or 5pm
***ALL Classes include FREE & Continuous Membership Access to our virtual campus Programming called Student Life
** Payment Plans Available
April 12th - May 24th
Wednesdays
5:30 pm - 8pm EST
20
Students Max
$1,250
USD
Vashti DuBois, Founder & Executive Director
Prior to creating The Colored Girls Museum (TCGM), Vashti DuBois held leadership positions at a number of organizations over the span of her 30-year career in non-profit and arts administration. DuBois’ work focused primarily on issues impacting girls and women of color at organizations such as The Free Library of Philadelphia, Tree House Books, the historic Church of the Advocate, the Children’s Art Carnival in New York City, the Haymarket People’s Fund in Boston, Congreso Girls Center and The Leeway Foundation.
In 2015, DuBois opened TCGM to “honor the stories, experiences and history of Colored Girls throughout the African Diaspora.” It is the first memoir museum of its kind offering visitors a multi-disciplinary experience in a residential space. TCGM initiates the ordinary object, submitted by the colored girl herself, as a representative of an aspect of her story and personal history which she finds meaningful. Dubois was awarded the Arts and Business Leadership Award for Outstanding Dedication to Women and Girls of Color, and providing agency and visibility for the practices and histories of artists often excluded from the canon.
TCGM has been engineered to pop up in other cities and neighborhoods around the country, transforming ordinary spaces into Colored Girls Museum outposts that collect, archive and share the stories of indigenous Colored Girls.
DuBois is a graduate of Wesleyan University and a NAMAC Fellow. She is currently working on a book about the making of The Colored Girls Museum.
DaSaint is an artistic minister and spiritual alchemist who loves to learn about the world and people by experiencing it for Herself through travel. She has been living in Philadelphia since the summer of 2015, after completing seminary in Atlanta. She was born and raised in Miami, Florida where most of her family still reside. DaSaint is a lover of words and rhythms, and has been writing poetry and music since high school. Her undergrad degree is in English/ Creative Writing and Africana Studies. Dasha has authored two poetry books and is currently writing her third. She has recorded and performed some of her work through various creative outlets and can be found on several social media platforms. Currently, she is on a playcation where she believes she is making it a life quest to Live, Love, and Liberate herself and others. DaSaint is enjoying the season of leaning into more play with ease and peace. During her down time she enjoys a good bottle of red wine and listening to a groove that she can dance to. Her overall mission for her life comes from the charge given by the late Rev. Dr. Katie G. Canon, to “to do the work that your soul must have.”
“The 2022 Philadelphia’s Cultural Treasures fellows represent extraordinary artistic practices and exemplary community-driven work by artists of color that are critical to the city’s cultural landscape,” said Paula Marincola, executive director of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.
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