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COMMUNITY ORGANIZING WORKSHOPS
Laurel connects her activism to her creative teaching practice by designing and facilitating workshop spaces for participants to engage with a particular social justice theme and build collective power. Her workshops have included:
In 2020, Laurel served as the Los Angeles County Captain for the Movement for Black Lives Election Defense program, for which she hosted and facilitated online training workshops in deescalation, voter protection, and responsive street care. Check out more examples of Laurel's community organizing workshops below: |
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ART AS RESISTANCE
In response to the 2016 election, Laurel founded the Art As Resistance Student Group at UCLA. As the Faculty Advisor of Art as Resistance, Laurel hosted and co-facilitated bi-weekly meetings including grantwriting workshops, teach-ins on political/protest art, social justice film screenings, & more. |
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SCORES FOR THE REVOLUTION
A public resource disseminated through social media as well as in-person at Making Art During Fascism, a workshop devised by Beth Pickens, taught by Laurel on February 12 2017 at the Women's Center for Creative Work in Los Angeles, CA from facebook, January 2017: The other day I was listening to Sue talk about one of my favorite books, Yoko Ono's Grapefruit, and I thought about how nice it is to have a score: a simple set of instructions that tells you what to do, but lets you fill in your own performative content. So Ewen + I made this small deck of cards: Scores For The Revolution. It's intended to be a little tool to combat overwhelm - in those moments where you might feel stultified by the infinity of possible acts of resistance, you can pick a card, any card, and let it give you some clarity or guidance or direction. Each card contains a small action - ideally no more than half-an-hour - that you can perform on your own. Give these cards as a gift! Print them out and decorate them! Hand them out at marches! Drop them from a plane! WHAT. EVS. Please simply use them if they are useful. This is what we do now, and we need all of the tools we can think of and more. “You cannot buy the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.” - Ursula K. Le Guin |
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THE STREET THEATRE BRIGADE
From 2008 - 2010 Laurel served as Artistic Director of the Street Theatre Brigade, an initiative of the University of New Mexico Partnership for Learning through the Arts and Community Engagement (PLACE) program. With the brigade, she created original, collaborative performance interventions designed for public spaces and community events throughout the city of Albuquerque to promote engagement with social justice themes. The Street Theatre Brigade also collaborated with the National Hispanic Cultural Center to bring clown performances and workshops to Albuquerque Public Schools. |
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