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FEMINIST EDUCATION: A VISION OF COMMUNITY AND WOMEN'S CULTURE

Each October since 1973, women from all over the United States and Europe come to the Woman's Building in Los Angeles to study at the Feminist Studio Workshop, an alternative learning institution. The ages, backgrounds and levels of intellectual or artistic development of these women vary, as do their fantasies and expectations of what they will experience in our intensive two year program. Over the past several years, my colleagues and I have modified and expanded our original visions of women's culture and the feminist learning process.1 While we first focused almost exclusively on each woman's growth and work. we now recognize the vital importance of collectivity as a precondition for truly effective individual creative work. The consciousness-raising format has been the center and backbone of our process. The aspiration of feminist education is, above all, to expedite action and creative work which make significant assaults on traditional cultural assumptions in the public sector.

The ideas and methods of feminist education which I will discuss evolved in practice at the Feminist Studio Workshop and were developed with Judy Chicago, Sheila de Bretteville, Suzanne Lacy, Ruth Iskin, Deena Metzger and Helen Roth. It seems appropriate that our theories and methods evolved from our collective work because we believe that the essential purpose of feminist education is to create a community through which each member can act decisively in the world.