Details
The People’s Banner Workshop is an ongoing project facilitated by Migiwa Orimo. The workshop provides free visual aids (banners, signs, props) for direct action, protest rallies, picket lines, and other street actions for social justice.
The People’s Banner Workshop collaborates with various activist groups, BLM, Immigration Justice, Antiracism, Climate Justice, Worker’s Rights—to determine key messages for banners that will help their actions by visually engaging the public space. In addition, its aim is to draw the attention of local news media to their actions in order to communicate with the audience-at-large.
Unlike the artist’s studio work, the banners are often created quickly to respond to calls for action on short notice. The banners can then be brought or mailed to wherever they are needed. Once the banners are made, they belong to the activists to be circulated among them and to be taken to various marches, rallies and direct actions.
While the Workshop functions as a mechanism for production, it also provides citizens/activists a space—artist’s studio and/or public venues—for building comradeship.
Grounded in the notion of “Citizen Artists,” the People’s Banner Workshop welcomes participation of both artist and non-artist citizens in order to amplify their collective voice.
About the Facilitator
Migiwa Orimo is an interdisciplinary artist and social justice activist whose work explores memory, history, and the spaces where personal and collective narratives intersect. Through installations incorporating text, drawing, objects, video, and sound, she examines how memories are shared, archived, transformed into stories, and woven into public history.
A five-time recipient of the Ohio Arts Council Individual Artists Fellowship and Individual Excellence Award, Orimo has exhibited nationally at institutions including the National Museum of Women in the Arts, apexart, the Dayton Art Institute, and the Weston Art Gallery. Beyond her artistic practice, she facilitates the People's Banner Workshop, creating opportunities for community members to express their voices through collective artmaking and providing free banners to activist groups.
Born and raised in Tokyo, Japan, Orimo studied literature and graphic design before immigrating to the United States in the 1980s. She currently lives and works in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
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