Learn How to Build a Black Feminist Coding Project in One Month
Plant the seed of your curiosity in nutrient rich soil
Whether or not we did it “right” or “wrong” did not matter — it was about play and the ecstatic joy and satisfaction of fashioning our web presence.
Invitation
I hope you’ll join me in this upcoming discovery workshop, Learn How to Build a Black Feminist Coding Project in One Month, taking place over Zoom on Tuesday, March 28th, 2023 at 6-7PM EST. Register here and together we will explore your curiosity in code, uncover the stories that have stopped you from learning how to code, and learn how Seeda School can help you build a black feminist coding project in one month.
If you’re like me, your curiosity in coding may have been seeded while connecting with your friends over the web using the family computer after school or while on MySpace trying to customize your profile as a method of self-actualization. If you’re like me, your curiosity in coding stemmed from the excitement of the web being a playful site of socializing and creative expression. But as we got older the skill of software engineering seemed less and less accessible. No? Whether through the media or school we started to get the message: web developers don’t look like you, software engineers have completely different interests than you, and programmers have a completely different background than you, so we self-selected out. What’s interesting is when coding was purely about creative expression and social engagement we were all in, we were confident. We do social. We do creation. Whether or not we did it “right” or “wrong” did not matter — it was about play and the ecstatic joy and satisfaction of fashioning our web presence. What if learning how to code was rooted in community, play, and the pleasure of expression, again? Join me in this discovery workshop and let’s find out together.
The Classroom
When was your curiosity in code seeded? I think this is one of the most important questions to orient around before embarking on a learning journey through code and building your first project. The context of your curiosity and the soil in which that initial seed was planted provides tons of information and clues regarding the nutrient rich conditions you might need to seek out or create so that curiosity remains nurtured along the way. Many programmers will tell you the hardest part about learning how to code isn’t learning the coding languages, it’s staying with it in the face of seemingly insurmountable error messages and being stuck for hours or worse, days, on what feels like an unsolvable problem. The difficulty doubles when facing these challenges in isolation. If every programmer faces the same pitfalls in their learning journey, why are so many suffering in silence struggling through self-teaching alone?
If every programmer faces the same pitfalls in their learning journey, why are so many suffering in silence struggling through self-teaching alone?
When I think about the context of my initial curiosity in code it was emphatically rooted in the social and the creative, better put, it was emphatically rooted in the sociality of creative expression. This nutrient rich soil is the inspiration behind Seeda School’s newest offering, The Classroom. The Classroom is a membership where learners build a coding project every month through access to Seeda School's video library and live weekly programming like coursework co-working sessions and open studio sessions with Q&A for project building. The membership also includes monthly study groups led by fellow Seeda School learners and occasional zines published as textbooks through Seeda Press, a publishing platform for black feminist technologists and ecologists. Register for the discovery workshop to learn more about this monthly membership and what a typical week looks like inside The Classroom.
Why Not Now?
Why put off the pleasure of tending to your curiosity? Maybe your curiosity in coding was seeded while playing around on MySpace? Maybe you’ve been interested in adding coding to your creative toolkit but have been looking for a program that isn’t rooted in career advancement and industry needs but imagination and play instead? Maybe you're an interdisciplinary practitioner and you’re interested in the erotic possibilities of weaving coding into the constellation of your creative practice? Hair braider, caretaker, gardener, painter, quiltmaker, storyteller, teacher, coder, yes.
Community Ask
Please share this workshop widely so we can collectively find eachother! In order to cultivate this nurtrient rich soil to plant our curiousity inside of we need people, folks, learners. We need you, your friends, your co-workers, and cousins. Help bring the vision of The Classrrom to life by forwarding this newsletter and sharing the flyer below on social media, linking tinyurl.com/seeda-28 in your caption or story.
With care,
Ayana
