Spiral: Quilting with Teens

This summer, an amazing group of people came together for one month of learning from the land and each other at Spiral: Young Women's Permaculture Intensive at the glorious Dig In Farm. At Spiral, we invited teens to study permaculture design, wilderness awareness, and social justice.

Besides being one of the most fun, challenging, and rewarding summers of my life, Spiral was also a think-tank for looking at how women and minorities are represented in permaculture and the environmental movement at large. We experimented with how to incorporate social justice and equity teachings into the permaculture curriculum.

As part of this exploration, we worked with clothing from the US-Mexico border to connect on a tactile level with the experiences of border crossing and immigration. We learned about labor in our food system, farm worker's rights, and globalization. Together, we darned holes in migrants clothes and set about designing a quilt. 

Our finished quilt features a women's bra and old-fashioned panties, both found in the desert, against a backdrop of abstract rolling hills formed from large pieces of the clothing. We chose to keep many pieces of the clothing whole or large -- a button here, a pocket there -- so that viewers could recognize the former clothing.

Beyond this, we explored our roles as change-makers in our own communities. The first step in permaculture design is drawn-out observation. We saw that if we apply this to community change-making, we are best suited to making regenerative designs for the communities within which we are already locals!

Many thanks to all the Spiral-ers 2015!