What is Project Girl?

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According to ProjectGirl.org:

"PROJECT GIRL is a ground-breaking girl-led, arts-based initiative created to enable girls to become better informed critical consumers of mass media advertising and entertainment. In other words, to become more media literate.

The purpose of PROJECT GIRL is to enable girls to look at all media forms with smart eyes so that they control the interpretation of what they see and hear rather than letting the interpretation control them. Adolescent girl advisors, leading scholars, educators, media activists, health experts and artists all helped create the PROJECT GIRL media literacy curriculum, and traveling Art Exhibition."

Kelly Parks Snider and Jane Bartell of Madison, WI developed the ProjectGirl.org curriculum to help educators and group leaders learn how to talk to girls about the media.  The co-founders took action and created their organization after realizing that media was everywhere and children, particularly girls, were being affected very deeply by what they were seeing.  The art activities within the curriculum of Project Girl offer an opportunity to take an active stance in regards to the messages sent by popular media by transforming images and making connections through art with other adolescent girls.

The Boulder Youth Body Alliance and a small group of graduate students in the art therapy program at Naropa University have teamed up to implement a unique program based in the Project Girl curriculum in the Boulder community.  Students have adapted the educational curriculum to fit within an open studio model, offering the program through a therapeutic perspective.

You can learn about the co-founders journey in creating Project Girl by clicking here.

Please check back in for posts, videos and images of art making throughout the course of the semester!