COMMUNITY SAFETY & HAND EMBROIDERY

This class invites participants to grapple with their personal and societal conceptions of safety by slowing down with the practice of hand embroidery. Together we will question how individual traumas, and social privilege or marginalization play a role in how we understand our safety. Rooted in the reality that our lives include violence –from the state and from individuals – we will reach for accessible pathways towards safety. During our time together we will explore lessons from writers, poets, and activists, alongside guided discussion, and basic hand embroidery tutorials. Leaning into the meditative and intergenerational quality of sewing circles, participants will have the embodied experience of how craft can heal and connect us.

Participants will create individual embroidered pieces that represent their understanding of safety, either how it currently stands, or what they want to reach for. In our final class the group will be asked to combine these pieces into one. Creating a web of safety that we can all exist within. How these works combine will be limited only by our imaginations and the time available.
THIS CLASS IS AVAILABLE IN PERSON
​AT ABRONS ARTS CENTER:
466 Grand Street, NY, NY

WEDNESDAYS 6-8 PM
April 1 - April 22 , 2026
4 sessions +
culminating share out on Friday, April 24
Sliding scale tuition: 
$45, $120, $220, ​or $320
+ $30 non-refundable registration fee

INSTRUCTORS

Heather Marie Scholl is a hand embroidery and interdisciplinary artist based in Philadelphia. Her work investigates the intersections of race, gender, and trauma through personal and national narratives. In 2015, Scholl began a series “Whitework,” confronting white women’s roles in white supremacy. This led to co-founding Confront White Womanhood, an anti-racism education initiative for white women, including the workshop “The Violence of White Women’s Safety.” Since 2020 she has addressed LGBTQ+ Domestic Violence through the art series “Resurrection of a Victim” and related public programming, including “Safety Together: DV in the Dyke+ community”. Scholl’s art work has been exhibited across the United States and has been written about in Slate, Cosmopolitan, i-D magazine, and others. heathermariescholl.com
Image credit: Heather Marie Scholl
This program is supported, in part, through public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Additionally, our classes are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.