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of women's culture. Because we have for so long been isolated from one another, we welcome every woman's contribution to the new culture we are slowly creating. We especially welcome input and initiative: people who don't say "the Building should...." but people who say "I want to organize a series of readings/performances/workshops and here is my proposal."

support out community  The Woman's Building is not set up merely to offer training skills, services to inviduals. We do these things, but our intention is simultaneously to create a stable (although fluid) community -- a supportive (not indulgent), critical (not judgmental) environment. We see this not as comfortable retreat from the frustration and pain of living in the real world, but as a basis from which to operate responsibly and effectively. Arlene Raven, one of the Building's founders, writes that "the essential purpose of feminist education is to create a community through which each member can act decisively in the world," (in "Feminist Education: A Vision of Community and Women's Culture," publication forthcoming).

It all began, officially, in 1973 when the newly organized Feminist Studio Workshop leased the old Chouinard Art Institute building in downtown Los Angeles and invited several other feminist groups to participate. The momentum behind this move goes back a few years further -- to the feminist art programs at Cal State Fresno (1969-70), and at the California institute of the Arts (1970-72), and to Womanspace (1972), Los Angeles' first cooperative feminist