i was starting to get pretty stressed out about the workshop too...the one bit of good news i have is that i finsihed printing the posters for the conference! The downside is that i only got 16 prints completed, but i did them and it was a very labor intensive learning experience that i think will help me when we do the workshop...

so...you are absolutely right about proiritizing the workshop starting this week. And it's important that we work on it outside of meetings too. One thing that's really important is getting the example artwork ready. I think we decided that we should just use a screen that we already have. The misled and yell patches and the "because school doesn't teach us" graphics are all good. But we need the lino block and the stencil. I'm kinda interested in doing the lino one, though if somebody else is real passionate about it they can do that one. And I was thinking maybe you or ceecee would be into doing a stencil? That would be really great. We can brainstorm ideas together.

And there are other tasks that need to get done:

writing up the agenda and workshop description: I volunteered to do that. At this weeks' meeting we should designate how long each topic will be and who will facilitate it. We can also spend time talking about facilitation skills and how we want to communicate with the participants. I'm working on the workshop description and will post a draft soon for everyone to give feedback on.

bringing examples of prints:
Ceecee said she had some stuff from her grandpa. Me and nick have some ideas like stuff by Shepard Fairy (obeygiant.com), the Justseeds distro, and more. (Justseeds distributes radical posters and art. And for anyone who missed the info at the meeting, YELL is doing a workshop at the conference about people's history based on their "celebrate people's history" poster series. So they'll be doing that right before our workshop, which is perfect cause it will bring up the "why" of diy printing, and then we can provide the hands-on part.)

I'll keep my eyes open for more examples.

another task that we discussed is finding materials that talk about these three processes. Ceecee said her teacher had some handouts and i think i can find some stuff too.

When we did the workshop with yell, we actually did three run-throughs where we rehearsed the workshop and revised the agenda as we went along. So I don't think we need to really practice every minute of the workshop, but i think there are certain parts that we should rehearse together soon, and we should talk about that at this week's meeting.

Also there will be some logistics like who's bringing what materials, setting up the print stations, etc. We should get to the conference as early as possible. I guess folks with school won't be able to get there that early, but the rest of us should.

alright well i think we have our work cut out for us! if we're really tight for the next two weeks i think we can make this a big success!

--sarah