Art is Resistance: support art empowerment training for young Palestinian women

[Alternative Information Center]

Support Alternative Information Center's Art is Resistance program in Hebron

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W6NE71utQI

Art, as a language, empowers people across cultural, economic and social barriers to voice realities of a life . While emphasizing independence, art makes collaboration a tool to transform aspirations into reality, translating personal strengths into critical and creative thinking.

Since 2007 the AIC has been working with communities in the West Bank's Hebron region under the title Art is Resistance. With this program the AIC promotes change by enhancing social, political and cultural voices of Palestinian women, visioning and voicing ideas that create a future free of Israeli colonial occupation and violence.

The program trains 40 young women from the Hebron area yearly, helping them to develop artistic capacities while sharing perspectives on beauty, art and personal expression. Through the weekly, half-day program, participants are given tools of expression to help them cope with the violent reality of their surroundings, while strengthening their creativity and artistic senses, building confidence in their abilities and helping them produce their own art. Twice yearly art exhibitions in Hebron are an integral part of the program, providing participants the opportunity to publicly share their art with the wider community.

Our Current Need 

We need $10,000 to cover the 2014 art is resistance training costs: art supplies, a stipend for the trainer and two public exhibitions of the participants' art works.

$45 covers the cost of art supplies (canvases, paints, brushes, pencils and paper) for one week's training of 40 participants

$150 covers the art trainer's stipend for one week

$320 covers the costs of one exhibition