Risograph poster created for an Open Mic night, Heard and Healing, part of a series of events for Sexual Assault Awareness Month in 2023. Teal ink on cream paper, featuring a collage by Mars Ibarreche.
Below is a description from FCCW's website:
In collaboration with violence prevention educator, artist, and organizer Alexia Sambrano (they/them) FCCW will hold an in-person Open Mic Night at Honey’s at Star Love. We invite you to prepare a short work and sign up to share, read, perform across genres — music, prose, poetry, spoken word, movement, or even primal scream! The evening will be hosted by Edwin Bodney, co-host of Da Poetry Lounge, one of the country’s largest and longest-running non-profit poetry venues. Stick around for the afterparty for DJ sets by F. Synthetic and Ghorba.
Consider alongside audience, friends, and community: What will it take to heal from our past traumas and pains? What will it take to be safe? What can we do to make healing, transformation, and liberation pleasurable? How can we defend ourselves and those we love from violence and trauma, not just in the physical sense, but in the emotional, psychological, and spiritual senses? What and who is stopping us from experiencing and sharing love and happiness, and how can we change that? Together, we can explore what it can take to make experiencing joy and pleasure a possibility and a reality.
We aim to facilitate a space for healing, to find joy with the people and communities we love. During the Open Mic Night, event participants will be in community with our contributors and with one another. This event is an opportunity to learn about the experiences and contributions of others, to learn, and to challenge assumptions, biases, practices and beliefs about an abolitionist framework to ending sexual violence and gender- and power-based harm.
To sign-up for the open mic, please send an email to info@fccwla.org with your name and a brief description of your performance!
–A.R. 4/20/25
