Rave About It! - International Women's Day 2022

Publication date:

Welcome to the first post from our ‘Rave About It' blog! As for a little introduction: hello, my name’s Jenny and I’m the Outreach intern here at Ravensbourne, as well as a second year BA (Hons) Digital Film Production student. Alongside being an aspiring filmmaker, I’m also interested in theatre, poetry, and campaigning!

Jenny is a white woman with red hair and a nose piercing, smiling at the camera

This very much relates to the topic of today’s blog post, as I’m going to be covering all things International Women’s Day! This includes the event that the Ravensbourne Students' Union and Outreach teams have organised, extra information about the day, and some charities / campaign groups you might be interested in learning more about.

International Women’s Day (IWD) is celebrated on March 8th annually and is a focal point in the movement for women’s rights. Of course, while IWD is all about a focus on female-centric issues, it’s important for people not to feel like they’ve been left out of the conversation. IWD for me, means focusing on highlighting the voices of trans and cis women, non-binary femmes, and non-gendered people.  

So how can I get involved at university?

On Tuesday 8th of March, we’re holding a zine-making session for all from 4:30-7:00pm. We really want to get everyone involved: potential students, current students, staff members – all in the name of getting creative and doing some super therapeutic cutting and sticking!

Red Background with purple woman with curly hair illustrated in the foreground, with Break the bias graffitied over the top.

 #BreaktheBias

Every year, IWD decide on a theme to evoke discussion. This year, it’s ‘Break the Bias’- with a huge focus on women in STEM careers. Here at Ravensbourne, numerous courses are male dominated, mirroring many of the industries that us students are aspiring to work in. The outreach team have created posters that will be displayed around the building, showcasing some amazing women in film, graphic design, architecture, gaming and more.

Inspirational women in the creative industries

Purple background with white text highlighting the life of Lizzie Emeh with her portrait on the right
Annie Leibovitz portrait on a purple backgroud
Portrait of a white lady with blonde hair on a purple background
Portrait of a smiling mixed race woman with long braided hair
Portrait of a smling tamara penniket with a large video camera
Portrait of Junko Kawano talking
Portait of Timnit Gebru a mixed race woman with a beautiful afro wearing a cream scarf
Portrait of Torill Kove
Portrait of Odile Decq
Portrait of Matali Crassett

While there are well-known, successful women in all these creative fields, I think it’s important to do research on some lesser-known female and non-binary creatives, as it’s something we can all do to inform our studies and inspirations. This also means some of these talented artists can receive some well-deserved recognition at the same time.

Red background with white text

Which other organisations should I know about?

I’m glad you asked!

To note: lots of these organisations and charities I’ll be recommending do amazing collaborative work, projects, and numerous campaigns- it’s always worth getting involved in any way you can!

In my personal experience, I’ve been working with ‘GirlsRiseUp’ over the past year on their ambassador program called ‘Powered By Girls’. I’ve been a part of brainstorming sessions, workshops, webinars and more. I've had the opportunity to get involved in the planning of a campaign from start to finish too.

I couldn’t speak highly enough of this wonderful organisation and I’ve met some incredibly inspirational, powerful, and diverse women from all over London.

To list a few; I’d really recommend checking out:

  • IWD WEBSITE: the source of all your official IWD updates, info and more!
  • ALL WOMXN PROJECT : untouched images of women and girls to break falsity of social media!
  • WOMEN WHO : a unique platform for women working in the creative industries, the initiative aims to connect, support, and inspire.
  • BABYFACE: an out-of-the-ordinary creative agency built on the power of networking.
  • CHEER UP LUV: a platform and campaign tackling sexual harassment and misogyny.
  • 2B OR NOT 2B: a community offering in person and online life drawing sessions every week- with a focus on uplifting visibly underrepresented and marginalized bodies in art.

We really hope as many of you reading as possible can make it / have made it to our Zine session on the 8th. Hope you have a great International Women’s Day! 

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