Weaving Resistance: Art and Poetry Workshop for World Pride DC 2025

Please join Storytelling with Saris at the World Pride Welcome Center with a special workshop to cocreate a massive sari scroll on gender, sexuality, identity, and pride for World Pride DC 2025. In this healing and welcoming space for the LGBQT+ community and allies, we will be discussing human rights and equality for all genders and sexualities, creating art and poetry together, and adding our creativity to a 19-foot-long cotton sari from Bangladesh. The saris will be used in a performance and a march to the Capitol on June 8. You can also view the art exhibition at the World Pride Welcome Center including the Prokash/Reveal scroll created with Bangladeshi-Americans in Brooklyn.

Location: World Pride Welcome Center, 737 7th Street NW (between F & G Streets). Metro: Gallery Place.

Please email c3Rvcnl0ZWxsaW5nd2l0aHNhcmlzIHwgZ21haWwgISBjb20= with any questions or accommodation needs.

"Weaving Resistance: Storytelling with Saris"

In this moment of human rights crisis created by the current US administration, it is imperative to build community and fight back for LGBTQ+ rights without apology or retreat. This year’s World Pride theme is The Fabric of Freedom. Textiles have served as modes of resistance for centuries, especially by women and other marginalized groups. Since 2012, the Storytelling with Saris collaborative art project has been using the cotton sari — a 19-foot-long unstitched garment— as a site of community expression of bodily autonomy and gender and climate justice. Cotton saris are covered in woodblock printing, stencils, painting, drawing, embroidery, appliqué, and poetry and then used for large scale installations and performances.

Over the last decade, Storytelling with Saris workshops, performances, and installations have engaged thousands of people in 12 U.S. states and 8 countries, including Bangladesh, Canada, France, Greece, and Italy. Recent Storytelling with Saris projects, performances, workshops, and roundtables in the U.S. and Bangladesh have specifically focused on LGBTQ+ issues, gender roles and identity, bodily autonomy, and increasing understanding and acceptance of gender-nonconforming persons through discussion, education, and collaborative art and performance.

For World Pride 2025, Storytelling with Saris will present five healing and empowering art and poetry workshops on gender/sexuality/identity to foster greater inclusion, empathy, and pride in this difficult political climate. The workshops will culminate in a community performance and march.

All the Weaving Resistance: Storytelling with Saris Events:

1. Launch & Workshop hosted by Moms Clean Air Force, 555 12th Street NW, May 16 from 5:30 to 7 pm

2. Display of artwork Prokash/Reveal Sari Scroll on gender/sexuality/identity at World Pride Headquarters, 901 7th Street NW, 4th Floor, Washington, DC 20001, from May 17-June 8, open noon to 8 pm most days

3. Workshop hosted by Asian Pacific Islander Domestic Violence Resource Group, May 29 from 6:00 to 7:30 pm

4. Drop in workshops at World Pride DC HQ hosted by Human Rights Campaign, 737 7th St NW, May 31, 12:00pm to 3:00pm and June 1 from 12:00pm to 2:00pm. Drop in and contribute to the World Pride saris with art and poetry.

5. Drop in workshop at the Human Rights Conference at JW Marriott, 1331 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, June 5 from 10 am to 2 pm

6. Outdoor “Weaving Resistance” community sewing performance, June 6 during the 17th Street Dupont Circle Block Party, 5 to 8 pm

7. Culminating event: international march with massive “Weaving Resistance” sari to the Capitol on June 8

The project is supported and sponsored by Capital Pride Alliance. Community. partners: Human Rights Campaign, Moms Clean Air Force, and Asian/Pacific Islander Domestic Violence Resource Project.

To learn more and become part of this exciting project, please register and add to your calendar.

Also check out other Arts events in Washington, Workshops in Washington, Literary Art events in Washington.