Make.Shift Art Space is proud to present Creative Resilience, a collaboration with Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho. In July 2025, we partnered with local artists and Planned Parenthood to host a series of art and music workshops exploring poetry, zine-making, scream-singing, and DIY screenprinting. These workshops offered participants a creative outlet to share their voices and respond to the urgent issues surrounding reproductive rights and access to gender-affirming care. 

Make.Shift’s November gallery exhibit will showcase the work created in these workshops, alongside pieces from local artists that confront the broader themes of bodily autonomy and gender equality. Opening night will also feature live poetry readings from Salish Sea Poetry Festival.

WHEN: 

Gallery Opening: November 7th, 2025 from 6-9pm

Exhibit runs from November 7th until the 22nd 

WHERE:

Make.Shift Art Gallery: 306 Flora St., Bellingham, WA 98225

Creative Resilience

Statement from Jessyca Murphy, Make.Shift Executive Director

This exhibition is a celebration of over a year of collaboration between Make.Shift and Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho. In both our organizations we were hearing the same thing from our community -- people felt overwhelmed by the current state of reproductive health in the United States and couldn’t find a way to express their frustration. That’s where the Creative Resilience series came in. Our aim was to provide a space for the community to release and process these powerful emotions through interpersonal connection and artistic expression. 

I was honored to facilitate, alongside my friend and colleague Amanda Hodgins, the Intro to Scream-Singing workshop. I wanted to host this workshop for several years and when this opportunity came around, it felt like the perfect fit. There’s nothing I feel like screaming about more than having my rights slowly ripped away! 

My identity has truly been formed around connecting with others through primal screaming -- whether it be in a cathartic conversation, collaborating on performance art, or fronting a number of weird punk bands. I wanted to share that experience with others, especially those struggling to find their voice (whether literally or figuratively), and teach people how to harness that energy in ways that are also protective of your body and sense of self. 

In my portion of the workshop, we worked on singing techniques and warm-up exercises to build up vocal endurance and improve projection, then practiced screaming together and individually. But I know half the battle is psychological, so I asked Amanda to be a part of the workshop because of her experience both as a musician and a mental health therapist. She skillfully led the group in exercises to help them identify and release self-limiting beliefs through writing, drawing, and somatic movements. She did such a brilliant job bringing her authentic self to create a safe container for vulnerable sharing. It is scary and unfamiliar to be unabashedly loud and harsh. Screaming is usually something that we do involuntarily and it can feel dangerous because of the association with fear and surprise. That’s why it can feel so liberating to practice controlling that sound and when, where, and how you create it. 

I was inspired by the risk-taking and authenticity of the participants (shout out to Moon!) and it makes me feel hopeful for the future when I know young people are making space for themselves and their uniqueness. Let’s keep screaming about this stuff!

Special thanks to Jade Phillips, Volunteer Program Manager & Affiliate Data Manager at Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho for initiating this partnership; as well as Makayla Gay, Nico Lund, Amanda Hodgins, Jessyca Murphy, and Sarah Kindl for facilitating the Creative Resilience workshops.

Creative Resilience

Statement from Jade Phillips, Volunteer Program Manager & Affiliate Data Manager at Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho

The Creative Resilience workshops have connected acts of resistance, like art, to opportunities for activism and advocacy. We all have a story to tell, though not all of us know how or when to use our voices. Art can be a powerful method to explore topics that are stigmatized or politized, such as reproductive healthcare. 

Through artistic and community driven endeavors we can create lasting connections that combat the helplessness that many of us so often feel. By creating intentional spaces that focus on care, community, and belonging, our community has shared its values through art. Creative Resilience has inspired our community to advocate for not only reproductive rights, but also human rights with creative human driven methods. 

It can be so difficult to carve out time to activate and resist when life is so busy and so hard, so thank you for choosing to spend your time here creating art and relationships with us! 

If you would like to support Planned Parenthood today, consider these options: 

Share your story of being a patient at Planned Parenthood: stories.ppgwni.org 

• Volunteer with us: volunteer.ppgwni.org  

• Sign up for c4 communication or donate to Planned Parenthood Advocates of Greater Washington and North Idaho ppagwni.org 

• Follow us on social media @ PPGWNI 

Poetry of Place Workshop
Facilitated by local poet Makayla Gay
at Make.Shift on Saturday July 5th, 2025

Participants explored how our identities and memories are shaped by both the environment we inhabit and the experiences we carry. Like a quilt, made up of remnants, scraps, and pieces, we too are a collection of fragments—our histories, families, and the places we’ve encountered. 

Through a combination of visual storytelling and poetry, participants explored personal narratives by working with family photos, archives, and found images to create collages that reflect these experiences. Through generative poetry writing, participants crafted poems that engage with and expand upon the images they create. Participants worked with their own environmental and familial memories, connecting the body’s physical experiences to the emotional stories embedded in the images and words.

Scream Singing Workshop
Facilitated by local musicians Jessyca Murphy and Amanda Hodgins
at Make.Shift on Saturday July 12th, 2025

Participants learned somatic techniques for finding their scream and taking care of their minds and bodies. The group learned and practiced vocal techniques for improving their projection and warming up their voices. They learned tips for augmenting their sound to produce screams that are less damaging to their vocal chords. Together they practiced screaming as a group and individually using a microphone and distortion pedals.

In the second half, participants were led through an exercise in somatic processing to harness difficult emotions they wanted to express. They were guided to write down feelings and negative thoughts, personify those thoughts into an illustrated image and then tear up their creation to reduce its psychological power in their lives. Then they were given the opportunity to put the pieces back together in a new creation, symbolizing how we can rebuild after traumatic events.

Zine Work Party: Repro Health Edition
Facilitated by local artist Nico Lund
at Make.Shift on Saturday July 19th, 2025

Among many other issues we face, Reproductive Health & Services are getting harder to access for many people who need it. Workshop participants made PSA zines to get out free & factual  Reproductive Health information. 

Nico Lund quickly brought participants up to speed by demonstrating  several easy zine styles and showed them fun & creative ways to get loads of info into a zine and print them to get the word out to as many people as possible!

DIY Screen Printing Workshop
Facilitated by local artist Sarah Kindl
at Make.Shift on Saturday July 26th, 2025

Participants practiced clothing modification and screen printing and discussed body positivity and autonomy! They were taught about the basics of designing for screen printing, and how screens are burned and exposed. They learned how to pull screens using pre-made images and illustrations they designed. Everyone got to go home with a patch or tote bag created in the workshop. Participants also learned about the history of screen printing as a democratizing creative medium for getting important messages out into the world.

Scenes from the Creative Resilience series. Photos courtesy of Beth Girma.