Project Report
| Apr 30, 2020
UPDATE: Distance Learning + Exhibition Design
By Dr. Danny M. Cohen | Unsilence Founder & Interim Executive Director
At Unsilence, we are feeling grateful right now. Since the beginning of this pandemic, with our online content already in place through our website - all our content is free and accessible to anyone with internet - Unsilence has been delivering live programs to communities across the country. Our website users and total visits are up 107% and time spent on our website is up 21%.
This is why we're so excited to be working on our online exhibition to tell the stories of the mothers of The Sisterhood, a collective of Chicagoland mothers, all women of color, whose children have been killed by senseless gun violence. With "distance learning" becoming the new norm for formal and informal education, the launch of our exhibition has the potential to reach even more people.
The design of our online exhibition is going very well. We are now working to select excerpts from interview transcripts and sequencing the exhibition photographs to tell the stories of the mothers as individuals and as a group of activists. Our goals: (1) To unsilence the personal and collective grief, trauma, activism, and healing of mothers of color. (2) To humanize their murdered children who are so often portrayed in a negative light in the media. (3) To connect communities and support them to talk about systemic violence, because we're facing the gun violence crisis together and we can only solve it together.
Founder & Interim Executive Director of Unsilence
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Jan 2, 2020
UPDATE: Portraits, Side-by-Side
By Dr. Danny M. Cohen | Unsilence Founder & Interim Executive Director
I'm excited to share with you some of the behind-the-scenes work on our Unsilence collaboration with The Sisterhood, a collective of Chicagoland mothers, all women of color, whose children have been killed by senseless gun violence.
Over the last few months, renowned Chicago-based artist Cecil McDonald Jr. has been conducting photo-sessions with the mothers. Working closely with founder of The Sisterhood, Gwendolyn Baxter, an exciting and important framework has emerged:
At the heart of our Unsilence online exhibition will be two sets of photographic portraits. The first set of portraits will depict each mother in her everyday clothes and in an everyday setting of her choice. The second set of portraits will be a series of studio shots, in no specific location, the mothers wearing their group shirts.
By presenting these two sets of portraits side-by-side, our online exhibition will connect and contrast the individual narratives of each mother with the collective story of The Sisterhood as a group of activists who support one another.
This framework – each mother’s individual narrative entwined within the story of The Sisterhood – will drive the learning experience we are designing, and will help us achieve our goals: (1) To unsilence the personal and collective grief, trauma, activism, and healing of mothers of color. (2) To humanize their murdered children who are so often portrayed in a negative light in the media. (3) To help communities across Chicago talk about systemic violence. (4) To connect Chicagoland communities, because we’re in this crisis together and we can only solve it together.
Founder & Interim Executive Director of Unsilence
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Oct 4, 2019
UPDATE: Online Exhibition Design
By Dr. Danny M. Cohen | Unsilence Founder & Interim Executive Director
Thanks to your generous support, we are now starting the education design phase of our collaboration with The Sisterhood, a collective of Chicagoland mothers, all women of color, whose children have been killed by senseless gun violence.
Over the coming weeks, our dedicated Unsilence team of researchers and designers will be selecting key moments from the interview testimonies of a dozen mothers. The testimonies will be presented alongside photographic portraits of the mothers - photographed by artist Cecil McDonald Jr. - and turned into a new interactive online Unsilence exhibition. We aim create a learning tool for schools and communities that highlights both individual experiences and collective experiences of gun violence and its implications for families.
Our project goals: (1) To unsilence the personal and collective grief, trauma, activism, and healing of mothers of color. (2) To humanize their murdered children who are so often portrayed in a negative light in the media. (3) To help communities across Chicago talk about systemic violence. (4) To connect Chicagoland communities, because we’re in this crisis together and we can only solve it together.
We are so grateful for your support. We cannot unsilence injustice without you.
Founder & Interim Executive Director of Unsilence
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