ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we explore an attempt at a ‘response-able’ feminism with a group of young people at a national ‘feminism in schools conference’ through applying arts and participatory methods. This exploration draws attention towards how creative and arts-based practices can connect human and non-human matter to form collectively-generated knowledge. In schools in which there is no formalised feminist curriculum, both authors want to further understand the ways that teachers and school leaders navigate informal in-school feminisms with young people. The authors aimed to disrupt neoliberal approaches to feminism through collective art-making that materialised the tensions felt on a day-to-day level in schools, as well as to capture the students’ ideas for how to create different understandings of gender and sexuality. We argue that this participatory and creative model enabled new imaginings of feminism to unfold in the process of folding a material plait. Much like the origami paper sculptures that Deleuze alludes to in his concept of ‘the fold’, this arts-based practice undoes notions of linear progress as the fold does not have a specific aim or destination. The process of creating the plait allowed for all those participating in the national ‘feminism in schools’ conference to make a small disruption to individualised and marketisable forms of in-school feminism as they materially entangled their own ideas for new possibilities around gender and sexuality in schools.
