Teaching artist Ifé Franklin offers an engaging creative workshop, guiding participants in creating small slave cabin-like structures of their own design. Participants will work with fabric, shells, raffia, beads, and buttons to creatively interpret these miniature dwelling spaces. Using the artist’s Indigo Project for inspiration, these small creations are reminiscent of slave cabins, designed to honor the ancestral spirits of Africans/African-Americans who were enslaved throughout America. Ms. Franklin describes them as “wishes or gifts to the spirits of these ancestors, who never had a home of beauty, or even a home of their own.” This workshop personalizes the history, the people, the environment of the life of the enslaved as participants reflect on notions of family, community, and cultural pride. The collective trauma of enslavement is difficult to discuss both within and across communities. This workshop provides space for intimacy, emotional safety, and organic conversation. Ifé has led similar workshops as the featured guest artist at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston College, and The Royall House and Slave Quarters of Medford, MA. A graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Ifé Franklin has worked as a professional artist for more than 30 years. She specializes in indigo-dyed textiles, using resist and dyeing techniques from West African culture. Ms. Franklin has taught textile and other art forms at the Eliot School for Applied Arts and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Contact Ifé Franklin <artist.franklin05@gmail.com> to request a Workshop at your venue.