Arpillera Workshop

Since then, she has spoken about human rights issues on every continent and to countless of audiences, including schools, colleges, universities, churches, civic associations, and human rights groups.

In addition to her lectures, De Negri has created arpillera workshops, powerful hands-on educational experiences for students and teachers alike. While creating an arpillera of their own, participants learn how political prisoners and their relatives used this textile art form to tell their life stories.

    De Negri has taught arpillera workshops
    to groups of many ages and backgrounds,
    including young girls at risk (through the
    Union Institute), college students and the
    general public at the Smithsonian Folklife
    Festival on the National Mall.

Veronica De Negri's arpillera workshops are part history lesson, part political activism, part art therapy, and part pure roll-your-sleeves-up, get-your-hands-dirty pleasure. As participants cut, sew, and trim their own arpilleras, De Negri moves from table to table telling the stories of Chilean women whose arpilleras she has collected--arpilleras depicting for the most part instances of violence and injustice endured by them or by their loved ones. As she speaks, she threads needles, cuts cloth, and offers design suggestions with tremendous grace, authority, and ease. It is an amazing combination of challenge and affirmation she offers. I was deeply affected by her and recommend her extraordinary workshops to everyone.
Professor Gail Wronsky, Director of Creative Writing and Syntext
Loyola Marymount University

Veronica De Negri can lecture to full school assemblies of several hundred or to smaller groups. She travels with a set of arpilleras made by political prisoners, which she uses as 'text' for her lectures.

Arpillera workshops are for smaller groups, usually around 20 students. De Negri brings the materials to make the individual tapestries (fabrics, thread, and other design elements), and students are encouraged to bring items that have meaning to them to include in their project, e.g., a piece of old clothing.

All ProyectoVOS speakers have projects in their home country for which they are raising funds. Veronica De Negri’s project is a museum of memory in Chile.

For more information on the Arpillera Workshop, contact Linn Shapiro.

Proyecto VOS, Voices of Survivors 3001 Veazey Terrace NW, Apt. 1514, Washington, DC 20008