There will be Black girl magic at The Colored Girls Museum this summer.
The museum, known for using memoirs to honor and celebrate ordinary Black girls is hosting a paid eight-week girl summer boot camp named “The North Star: Your Guide to Your Galaxy.”
“Our mission is the ritual for the protection, praise, and grace of the ordinary, extraordinary colored girl,” Melina Gooray says. “How one can research within themselves and the world that they are inhabiting.”
The North Star program is an annual offering of the museum. Participants will explore identity through playwriting and oral history. Gooray says the group is recruiting girls between 7th and 11th grade. In previous years the museum held summer programs where girls researched and highlighted ordinary black women in history.
This year will be different as the group adapts to COVID-19 restrictions. While the girls study themes found in Harriet Tubman’s story and Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, they will design and produce podcasts, and create adventure texts or guides.
“We’re focusing on the ideas of home and freedom and how to bind home and freedom in a moment in which you’re very limited in terms of your movements and your access,” Gooray says.
The museum will invite 15 girls, and three teachers will instruct the group, including Stephanie Jones. Jones and Gooray joined the Germantown Info Hub Hour Thursday, March 12, to talk about the program. Jones says with her background in engineering, she plans to help the girls understand elements of design. She says during the process of collecting art, they will need help formatting their vision.
“There’s a rich knowledge that these young people were generating because they’re full of ideas and great stories,” Jones says. “We want to help them share what they know and be able to better articulate that.”
The North Star program begins April 3rd. So apply soon. To know more or apply for the program, email gigitcgm@gmail.com.
