YOU’RE INVITED!! to a weekend of learning, thinking, discussion, surfing, community, and movement building.
SCROLL down for Poster
On Friday, we begin with group surf in Rest Bay, Porthcawl (near Cardiff). We end Sunday afternoon. There is no fee, and inexpensive lodging in Cardiff University housing is available. Participants contribute “skill-shares,” meaning a resource, skill, or a project update. This is done in presentations, or you suggest a format. The tabs to the right on this page show links for on making your own presentations, and to apply. See below for Overview Schedule.
Space is limited. Applications due June 15. Once participant selection is complete, curriculum and logistical details will follow.
DATES: July 6-8, 2018
PLACE: Cardiff University & Cathay’s Community Center
2018 TOPIC: “Collaboration”
The Institute for Women Surfers is pleased to announce our launch of the Institute for Women Surfers Europe (Wales). Our meeting will be co-sponsored by Cardiff University along with Surf Senioritas. The theme of this initial gathering is Collaboration.
In our time together we explore collaborations between women activist surfers, with emphasis on creating new and enduring bonds. Surf activists report that much surf work in the UK pits women surfers against one another. The gender climate creates competition between women for scarce resources, as women vie for acceptance in surf industry and surf media. Our work with “collaboration” as a theme aims to build relationships to strengthen women’s collective powers at the same time we will address crucial differences and problems for group solidarity.
Our event brings together women from Wales, England, Scotland, France, Spain, Austria, Australia, and the United States. European organizers are Lyndsey Stoodley, from Cardiff University, and Dani Robertson, of the feminist organization Surf Senioritas.
As in years past, the Institute devotes itself to political education of activist leaders, artists, filmmakers, and directors of organizations. Participants meet for three days of learning, communal surfing, and skill-sharing presentations. Our goal is to teach one another what we know, support new collaborative feminist relations, including between scholars and community experts. The Institute is about our connections, and through them, the movement for the lives of waterwomen everywhere.
HISTORY The Institute was co-founded in 2014 and conducted its first training at the North County LGBTQ Center in Oceanside, California. We taught one another how to identify confusing contradictions for women in the world of surfing in order to create better worlds and better activist projects. We focused as well on the importance of our relationships to building long term surfeminist movements. The Institute 2015, held at the Brooks Institute in Ventura, took up the linked topics of Storytelling, Sustainability, and Building a Movement. As a mode of activism in surfing, storytelling can move people to action and to new ways of thinking. But stories are far from simple and the ethics of telling new stories is not straightforward. Our question was: how to sustain new stories and surf movements to create the worlds we value? Many reported on the value of new collaborative relationships to the projects they hoped to do or were in the thick of doing. The Institute 2017 transformed our work by taking on “Issues of Access.” As a conceptual and practical point of departure, the idea was to explore communities of women who are forced out or simply not thought about due either to official sanctioned policy or due to unofficial cultural practices that exclude (by class and race especially) For activists working in different arenas of women’s surfing, what kinds of issues of access are priorities?
Participant Skill-Shares are big highlights of meetings!
Click for Report of IWS 2015
Scroll for Video on 2015, courtesy of Beth O’Rourke.
Click for Report of IWS 2017 at Stanford, “Beaches as Spaces of Democracy”
Click for Work/Talks/Activist Collaborations resulting from 2017 meeting (coming).
2018 Institute Schedule (also see brochure)
Friday, July 6
2pm Group Surf Meet Cardiff (Colum Hall) or Join us 3pm at Rest Bay
6:30pm-9:30pm Dinner + Intros, Connecting & Setting our Goals (Cathay’s Community Center, dinner provided)
Adjourn to . . . Woodville Pub
Saturday, July 7
9:30 AM Breakfast, Cardiff University (Heath Park Campus, Michael Griffiths Education Centre)
10:00am-4:45pm Workshops & Skill Shares
6pm Meet Ups & Dinner
Surf Evening
Sunday, July 8
9:30 AM Breakfast, Cardiff University (Heath Park Campus, Michael Griffiths Education Centre)
10:00am – 3pm Skill Shares & Discussion Topics
7pm After Party, Tiny Rebel Cardiff Pub (Open to the Public)
