Choosing from the submissions--Curators CHIEDZA PASIPANODYA and JORDANA FRANKLIN at Walnut Studios, as part of the OCADU Women's Kit mentorship project.

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​The Women's Kit - REGENERATION
Opening Reception Thursday, October 5 @ 7 - 10pm
Panel Discussion / Tuesday October 17 @ 7pm (ASL interpretation available)
Ada Slaight Student Galleries, Second Floor 
Hours 7:30 am to 12:00 am
OCAD University 100 McCaul St, Toronto
Contact: 647-919-7336
Email: torontofac@gmail.com 
www.thewomenskit.org 
www.factoronto.org 

*Event is trans inclusive / transphobia will not be tolerated
*Venue has gender neutral washrooms
*Venue is wheelchair accessible
*Scent reduced event / no perfumes or colognes please 

23 artists
drawing from the past
bringing to the present,
moment-by-moment expression
forty-two years later

a discovery
much has changed
and yet not enough

An intergenerational art exhibition and launch of The Women’s Kit website celebrating the history and visibility of feminist art in Toronto. 

In 1973, The Women’s Kit was produced in Toronto at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) by researcher and artist, Pamela Harris, along with a team of fellow artists and educators. These women assembled a dynamic educational resource with over 150 items that relate to the socialization of femininity. 

The Women’s Kit was distributed to high schools and colleges to encourage students to observe and question the limitations set on prescribed gender roles. Since its creation, The Women's Kit has found its home at the Centre for Women's Studies in Education (CWSE) at OISE as a subject of research and scholarly publication.

During a meeting in 2014, members of the Feminist Art Conference viewed the kit and were enchanted by the time capsule of the feminist art movement in Toronto. Through funding by an anonymous donor and hundreds of volunteer hours, they sought to immortalize the kit through a massive digitization project.

FAC is strongly motivated by a feminist imperative to document the pioneering work of the kit’s creators. This new website is as a testament to the importance of feminist history and the necessity of visibility. By publishing The Women’s Kit online, FAC is bridging the feminist generation gap. The creation of the digital platform also allows the kit to return to its origins as an educational tool for wide dissemination. 

For the development of the website, FAC procured funding from a generous anonymous donor. The educational expansion on the project solidified with additional funding from OCAD University through the Ada Slaight Foundation and an Arts Education Projects grant from the Ontario Arts Council. This critical funding supported students in an exploration of the kit, culminating in the creation of artwork inspired by its contents. Outfitted with museum gloves, current Drawing and Painting students at the Ontario College of Art and Design University, along with recent alumni and local youth, dug through this rich archive responding with contemporary viewpoints on feminism today. 

The resulting exhibition, REGENERATION, seeks to provide an in-depth and intersectional approach to The Women's Kit, one that re-examines several critical conversations rooted in generations of feminism and fertilized by LGBTQ2S+ love, afro-futurist narratives, race politics, diasporic conversations, gender identity and sexual diversity. They explore new feminist realities and amplify artist narratives that were silenced at the time of the kit’s inception due to power and privilege at play. The arts-engaged youth do this through printmaking and zines inspired by pop art and the graphic arts movements contemporary to the kit.

The resurrection of the kit at this critical moment in the feminist movement and the ensuing conversation between past and present culminates with the launch of The Women’s Kit website and the REGENERATION exhibit of new artwork created by a current generation of storytellers.

Join the conversation through art and explore The Women’s Kit website at the opening reception on October 5th!

OCADU Drawing and Painting                                                        Youth Participants
Current Students and Recent Alumni                                            Women's Kit Remix Retreat

Becca Wijshijer                                                                                 Anne Vo
Bethany Davis                                                                                   Edan Maxam
Cristine Yunyk                                                                                   Isabel Morris
Curtia Wright                                                                                    Jessica Chang
Debora Puricelli                                                                                Jessica Zhang
Iman Aziz Bhatti                                                                                Kira Nguyen Do
Myra Merchant                                                                                 Magda U-Falcon
Natalie King                                                                                       Maude Christie
Niloo Inalouei                                                                                    Mia Yaguchi-Chow
Roxanne Curci                                                                                   Rainier Magtalas
Wei Qi                                                                                                Tina Gong
Will Carpenter                                                                                   Vicky Wang
                                                                                                             Sophia Xavion Alexis

Project funded in part by the Ada Slaight Foundation and the Ontario Arts Council 

PWYC Donation at the door (no one turned away for lack of funds)
Cash bar and party snacks!

This exhibition is the culmination of two educational projects that ran concurrently with the digitization of the Women's Kit:
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In Response to the Women’s Kit - An Intergenerational Feminist Art Exhibition  
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Supported by Ada Slaight funding through OCADU’s Drawing, Painting and Printmaking Department, this project includes an open call to all DRPT/PRNT students in third and fourth year to create new work in response to the social justice themes communicated in the Women’s Kit.
Students will explore the kit’s visual and auditory artifacts for points of art-making. The unique aspect of this project is the intergenerational conversation between feminist art-making practices in the 1970s and contemporary practices at OCADU.
At the end of the process, the students’ work will be shown in conjunction with the Women’s Kit to create a visual dialogue between both periods.
The current political climate, particularity with the regressive, pervasive politics of the Trump administration, is a catalyst for the students to create work in response to this critical moment in time. Through this project, OCADU will be able to provide paid professional opportunities for students. The students will be mentored through installation design, exhibition marketing and promotion, and curating a panel discussion.

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Artist Educators - Noorin Fazal, Maureen Da Silva and Julia Girmenia plan curriculum at Walnut Studios

Summer and Fall 2017 - at Walnut Studios with Blank Canvases and FAC
Funded by the Ontario Arts Council Arts Education Projects Grant
Women’s Kit REMIX Youth Retreat

Funded by the Ontario Arts Council Arts Education Project grant, The Women’s Kit will provide young people from Central Toronto Academy, a model school with an at-risk student population, as well as other local Toronto youth, with the opportunity to explore feminist issues as they present themselves in historical and contemporary ways. The students will examine artifacts from the kit as windows into the past, mirrors for the present, and opportunities for a better future. Learners will have the chance to investigate the issues, and respond through art making, dialogue, and reflection. In the process of creative expression, learners will make meaning of the contents of the Women’s Kit that is personal, useful and inspirational.
In this this weekend retreat, we will achieve the following learning objectives, which are based on the Historical Thinking Concepts:
• To explore the feminist issues that arise from the artifacts of the Women’s Kit and how these issues present themselves in today’s struggles for equity and inclusion
• To understand how history has been told, how some stories are included and some stories are missing, depending on the sociopolitical context
• To develop historical empathy through the examination of primary sources from the Women’s Kit, and to develop empathy skills in the modern context
• To learn media literacy skills which allow young people to bring together critical thinking and questioning, creativity, and compassion
• To develop self-confidence through the practice of technical artistic skills (visual art, graphics, poetry-writing), as a way of creating a personalized, artistic response to both visual and non-visual artifacts in the Women’s Kit
• To build skills in collaboration, including peer support, giving and receiving feedback, and self-reflection

Youth will explore printmaking, zine-making and bookbinding, as artistic vehicles to explore their ideas around the kit.

This work will be shown with the OCAD University Student work in an exhibition at OCADU FALL 2017.

See photos for this project here. Photography by Maiesha Zarin.

A brief Education Guide to navigating the Women's Kit was developed by Julia Girmenia and Noorin Fazal. This series of questions is meant to help kickstart conversations about its content. Check it out here.