Mark Your Calendar
Girls Rock Athens Camp
Girls Rock Athens Camp 2018 will take place from Monday, July 30- Friday, August 3rd, with our camp showcase in the afternoon/evening of Saturday, August 4th! (Time and venue TBA).
We are so excited to rock with Athens' youth again this year!
Grown Assed Rock Camp
May 4th - 6th
Similar to our Girls Rock Camp; women, trans, and non-binary adults will have the opportunity to learn an instrument, songwriting skills, and perform at a local venue in Athens.
This year, the camp will feature workshops on songwriting, stage presence, DIY merch, booking shows and creating a press kit, DIY recording, and more! The three days will conclude with a showcase for the newly formed Grown Assed Rock Camp bands on May 6th from 7:00-9:00pm, and will feature a performance from Awkward Thrust.
There are only two spots left for this camp session!
ACTIVIST SPOTLIGHT
Born and raised in Mississippi, Rashaun Ellis is a bold Black woman of about 35 with a southern accent, a contagious laugh and a tendency to swear. Since spending her twenties in communes, land trusts and Washington, D.C., the activist settled in the Classic City, worked at a community-owned grocery store, co-founded the Athens Queer Collective, led workshops in white allyship, and wrote for The Flagpole, a local alt-weekly with a cynical, liberal tone that suits her perfectly. “I’ve experienced the community, the people here in Athens who swear up and down that they’re not racist, that there’s no racism in their communities,” Ellis said. In Ellis’ experience, people who live with privilege don’t always realize when they contribute to the marginalization of certain communities, because it often happens through microaggressions.
“Some people are just straight-up racist,” she said, but “we really have to be able to draw the line between blatant racism and microaggressions and implicit bias.”
And that’s exactly what Ellis facilitates in the white allyship workshops she leads.
Deconstructing the implicit biases enforced by American society and culture is the primary focus. She helps attendees accept their places of privilege and shares with them data and facts supporting the existences of casual and systemic racism. “In general, I’ve encountered people who want to learn, who want to grow, and I think that as time passes and as this conversation continues, privileged persons are understanding more and more that one of the most important, powerful things they can do is listen and follow the lead.”
Ellis is involved in work regarding women’s issues, casual racism in the workplace and workplace discrimination in general. She's a freelance writer, works for admissions at the University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and serves on the Board of the Athens Queer Collective, spending much of her time focusing on outreach and ally education.
“We (the Athens Queer Collective) do what we can to create safe spaces for queer people and queer people of color,” she said, adding that the Collective emphasizes helping “the marginalized within the marginalized.” To that end, the Collective (still in what Ellis calls “its beginning stages”) runs an LGBTQ+ Youth Group and a Transgender Support Group.
“As a woman of color, as a Black woman and as a queer person, I feel very grateful to be involved in that organization and to be able to play my own role - and to be able to write my own history.”
Check out the full interview with Rashaun on our blog! // Learn More about the Athens Queer Collective here!
MUSICIAN.
Support Girls Rock Athens with a new shirt that has something to say!
Lots of music reviews take special note of "females" in bands or "all female" bands. While we think being a woman in a band rocks, it'd make some happier to be noted primarily for our musical talents and passions not JUST by our gender. If you feel this way, say so with a t-shirt! Proceeds go to Girls Rock Athens!
Become a sustaining donor
At Girls Rock Athens, we believe that youth deserve a space to develop and use their voice through performance and song writing. After just one week, 80% of campers express confidence in their ability to handle challenges as compared to 57% before camp begins. Your continued support is instrumental to providing a space for youth self-empowerment in the Athens community. If you would like to become a sustaining donor to help fund and uphold these values, check out the link below!
Stay In Touch!
Don't want too many emails? Don't worry! GRA doesn't send emails daily or even weekly. Sign up for our master mailing list to keep in touch about camp sign- ups, volunteer opportunities and more. Stay tuned and don't forget to tell your friends!