Create the protest banner that speaks to you!
Join Moki Tantoco for a protest banner-making workshop. This hands-on workshop will teach you how to create no-sew fabric protest banners, using applique techniques to make collective banners with meaningful slogans.
This event will be at Harold Washington Library Center
400 S. State Street
Chicago IL 60605
This workshop is a part of an ongoing project, Protest Banner Lending Library, which started in Chicago by Aram Han Sifuentes on 8 November 2016, the day after the 2016 US presidential elections. The project teaches people how to make their own protest banners in free and public workshops. Protest Banner Lending Library was featured at Hull-House days before the Presidential Inauguration Day, January 2017.
As part of the City of Stories program, a selection of banners are on display at Harold Washington Library Center's YOUMedia space. Just as one would check-out a book at the library, banners can be checked out for free at the Harold Washington Library’s front desk.
This is a workshop for teens.
Note: No sewing skills are required.
How to Attend
This is an in person event. We encourage those who are not vaccinated, may be immunocompromised or have family members who are immunocompromised to wear a mask. Questions about visiting the library? Check out our Using the Library FAQ.
“The Protest Banner Lending Library is a space for people to gain skills to learn to make their own banners. It’s a communal sewing space where we support each other’s voices, and a place where people can check out handmade banners to use in protests...The words and these banners have a growing history. They are made by someone, used in a protest, returned to the library, and then taken by someone else to a different protest. The banners carry the histories of the hands that hold them and the places where they have travelled." —Aram Han Sifuentes
More than 3,000 banners have been made in workshops, and there are Protest Banner Lending Libraries in cities all over the United States and internationally that house more than 600 banners. It is an active ongoing project where banners are constantly circulating, being checked out, used, and returned.
Moki Tantoco
Moki Tantoco (they/them) is a Chicago-area based arts administrator, educator, and artist. Certified with an Illinois Professional Educator License in K-12 Visual Arts Education and BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Moki develops curriculums and programming exploring social justice issues and multiculturalism using interdisciplinary art practices. Moki was awarded for Outstanding Achievement in Arts and Humanity from the State of Illinois Treasurer’s Office during Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month 2021 and was a recipient of a 2021 Make a Wave Grant from 3Arts. Moki currently serves as the Programs Manager for Kids Rank and formerly served as the Education and Programs Manager at the National Veterans Art Museum. Current projects include launching a national arts curriculum for military connected youth with Kids Rank, co-collaborating on research and creation of a veteran arts database, continuing to create educational programming for veterans, military connected youth and families, and research on post-9/11 veteran artists' place in contemporary art history. Moki enjoys wandering, cooking, traveling, and book exchanges.
