In the intervention held on October 13th, there were ten participants in total. We gathered in front of Central Saint Martins, and I prepared materials for crafts and some snacks for everyone.
First, I asked everyone to introduce themselves briefly, and then I briefly told the history and story of Nushu. A thousand years ago in China, when women were not allowed to be educated, a woman entered the palace and invented a script that was only passed down among women in order to communicate with her family and to keep it from being known by other people.
Then I took out a piece of white paper with the word “woman” written in Nushu, and I invited everyone to write down any feelings they had about the story, including women’s voice, spiritual leadership, strength, brave, independence, intelligence, creativity, etc…
In the second part I invited everyone to share about when they first learned about female empowerment and some examples from their lives. At first we were not familiar with each other, so I shared my own thoughts first, and during this conversation I realized that we were talking about a wider range of topics, and although it sounds a bit off-topic, I think it was the fact that we all felt safe in the women’s group and that’s why we were willing to share more, and I found that everyone was involved in the discussion.
For the last part of the session I invited them to make crafts and they could choose their own names in Nushu or favorite words and phrases. At first I wanted to add some kind of introduction to the session, e.g. what would you like to convey in Nushu? But it was clear from what they chose, for example, some wrote “Choice”, “Women can do anything”, “Joy”, “Destiny is in women”, “Freedom”.