WHAT WE DO

ABOUT US

Founded in 2017, the Social Justice Sewing Academy (SJSA) is a youth education program that bridges artistic expression with activism to advocate for social justice. Through a series of hands-on workshops in schools, prisons and community centers across the country, SJSA empowers youth to use textile art as a vehicle for personal transformation and community cohesion and become agents of social change. Many of our young artists make art that explores issues such as gender discrimination, mass incarceration, gun violence and gentrification. The powerful imagery they create in cloth tells their stories, and these quilt blocks are then sent to volunteers around the world to embellish and embroider before being sewn together into quilts to be displayed in museums, galleries and quilt shows across the country. This visual dialogue bridges differences in race, age and socioeconomics and sparks conversations and action in households across the country.

SJSA empowers young people to use sewing to express themselves and create opportunities for growth and change.

WHY SOCIAL JUSTICE + SEWING?

The murder of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old unarmed teen who was deemed “suspicious” by George Zimmerman for walking through a gated community where his father lived in Sanford, Florida, ignited outrage through America. When I learned that Trayvon was only 14 days older than me I was shook to the core because he could have been me or any of my friends. His death illuminated how society perpetuates a sense of black unbelonging and authorizes and empowers anyone with white skin to violate black citizenship rights through racial profiling and other intrusive forms of surveillance and policing. For 13 years, I quilted the same traditional patterns and followed industry standard, spending thousands of hours refining my craft in the company of quilting mentors. However, in these privileged spaces I began to realize that conversations of social justice were deafeningly absent. No one spoke about Trayvon's death, the protests, or the acquittal of his murderer and I felt like I needed to do something to change that. The "Rest In Power Trayvon" quilt is the first time I mixed my passion for quilting with social justice art, a mix that has made the Social Justice Sewing Academy what it is today. When I combined quilting and social justice I gained a completely new understanding of what it means to quilt with a purpose. This quilt commemorates the life of Trayvon Martin and serves to remind society that as the years pass, his life is not forgotten.

SUMMER 2016 | SJSA Program at UC Berkeley

SJSA began as a six-week summer program in Berkeley in 2016, followed by two weeks of summer workshops in Chicago.
SJSA continued evolving once Sara relocated to Cambridge, MA to attend Harvard Graduate School.