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On September 21st, the Feminist Studio Workshop at the Woman's Building in Los Angeles begins its sixth year. Founded in 1973, the Feminist Studio Workshop was conceived as an alternative educational program to provide women with both a new content and method of learning.

The founders of the Workshop -- Judy Chicago, Sheila de Bretteville, and Arlene Raven -- envisioned a learning environment in which an exploration of women's experience could take place, free from the traditional preconceptions and misconceptions of the role of women in society. They sought to develop a way of learning built on small group interaction that included consciousness raiding, the formation and experience of community, training in visual, verbal and healing arts, and the exploration of female history and culture.

Although the Feminist Studio Workshop has expanded to meet the needs of the students and faculty who are its living cirriculum [[curriculum]], the main goal remains unchanged --  to maintain a center from which women artists in all media can draw emotional and political support, where they can learn and teach skills, and where all women can find an atmosphere that encourages non-competitive and caring exploration of personal experience and women's consciousness.

Students in the Core Process, the heart of the Workshop, define and build community by examining political, personal and historical issues in the light of a feminist perspective. Here a woman may find that her fears of making art come from her fears of defining herself as a creator in a society in which female artists are devalued or denied. By sharing these feelings, women find ways to