This workshop is part of the Vagina Museum's South Asian Heritage Month Programme. The event is open to people of all backgrounds and of all genders, but is run by and primarily for folks of South Asian descent.

🎨🌺📝

Re-imagining 'Growth'

Join F. Zeeshan Choudhury to transform your old t-shirts or totes in this woodblock printing workshop. We will look at thinking from South-Asian artists, writers and philosophers that will help us re-imagine what 'growth' might mean, and use woodblock stamps to capture an image of what growth means to you. The bespoke stamps you'll be using are based on F. Zeeshan Choudhury's research into queer and disabled folklores as part of their larger Forming New Folklores project. All materials are provided, but please bring as many old T-shirts, tote bags, jeans, tea towels, fabric pieces and other materials that you'd like to print! 

Facilitator Biography
F. Zeeshan Choudhury (@fzeeshanchoudhury) leads community projects that use creativity to facilitate radical wellbeing. Their research and practice finds tangible ways for people to interrogate injustice and imagine new futures. They are an advocate for hyper-local community engagement, and run community groups in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, including the Queer Writer’s Circle at The Common Press in Shoreditch, and Writing to Uncover The Self at St. Margaret’s House in Bethnal Green. They have recently been commissioned by Unlimited to collect and record folklores fron marginalised communities.

🌱🌞🖌️

South Asian Heritage Month at the Vagina Museum

Since 2022 the Vagina Museum has been in Bethnal Green in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, a vibrant and largely South Asian borough. Bangladeshis, and people from other parts of South Asia, have been a part of this community since the 1950’s, when the government encouraged Commonwealth citizens to move to the UK to help rebuild the country after World War Two.

Although we have South Asian volunteers and approximately 9% of our visitors identify as South Asian, there are currently no people of South Asian descent working for the Vagina Museum. We're a small team, but it is precisely this lack of representation that can lead to the kind of universalising narratives of which we are so critical. It is our responsibility, then, to put in the effort to bridge that gap. 

This isn’t about putting on one seminar or one exhibition, having one diversity hire or making one statement of solidarity. It has to be intentional and ongoing. With that in mind, we’re prioritising South Asian artists, poets, healthcare workers, and other organisers during South Asian Heritage Month with the aim of building our connections and networks within the community such that those relationships might continue to flourish after South Asian Heritage Month.

As this year’s theme suggests, we’re looking to put down some roots and see where those take us.

Find the whole programme on our website.

Support our partners by buying a ticket, following them on social media, or telling a friend!