A ZEITGEIST INITIATIVE

By Andrea Busche

Fromright here in our own backyard to clear across the globe, today’s women are doing amazing things. From arts and entertainment to science, math and politics; parents of little girls born today can tell their daughters they can grow up to be anything they want – and mean it.

One organization that fully supports the advancement of women is Zeitgeist – a nonprofit arts and community development organization based right here in Duluth. Zeitgeist consists of many enterprises, including a café, cinema, movie theater and more.

For the full calendar year of 2019, Zeitgeist is promoting “Year of the Womxn” – a special programming series at Zeitgeist that highlights womxn’s perspectives, experiences, and stories. Maddy Wegener, marketing manager for Zeitgeist, explains this exciting initiative, which is open to the public, along with the significance of that special and unique letter “x.”

Why the “x?”

Wegener explained the meaning behind the spelling of “womxn,” rather than “woman.”

“Zeitgeist is committed to making our programming inclusive to all women, and as such the Year of the Womxn planning committee decided to spell ‘woman’ a little differently – with an ‘x’ replacing the ‘a.’

“This spelling has become a trend globally over the last few years and attempts to be an inclusive spelling of the word ‘woman’ to acknowledge the exclusion of many women

Continued on page 24 throughout society and historical feminist movements. It intends to be accessible for all womxn, including transgender womxn, womxn of color, womxn from all nationalities, and other identities womxn use to distinguish and identify themselves. Additionally, the different spelling often causes people to pause – helping to ignite contemplation and conversations around the complexity of gender.”

The Events

As noted, the Year of the Womxn initiative is a series of programming at Zeitgeist which highlights womxn’s perspectives, experiences, and stories. Wegener shared some information about this year’s events.

“The goal of this year,” Wegener explained, “was and is to integrate and highlight more womxn in Zeitgeist’s internal programming. We’ve been integrating more womxn in our curated art galleries, our cinema programming, our live music in our cafe, and our live programming in the Teatro Theater which includes Superior Shorts, Ted at the Teatro, Gag Me With A Spoon community story share, and Renegade Theater productions.

“Our featured program for the year is Cocktails and Conversations, which features a small group of womxn engaging in conversations around a timely topic,” she continued. “Our first Cocktails and Conversations was centered around Womxn in Activism, and our second focused on Womxn in Music. We will have two more Cocktail and Conversations events this year, and once our speakers have been confirmed, all details will be published on our website at ZeitgeistArts. com/yotw.”

All Year of the Womxn events are open to the public. Some are ticketed or have a suggested donation, but many of the events have been offered at no charge.

A Special Guest

Duluth Mayor Emily Larson was one of the featured speakers at the first Cocktails and Conversations event.

“We were so thankful that Mayor Larson was willing to get involved and share her experiences with our community,” Wegener said. “It was fun to hear from her in a more relaxed setting where she could share her personal stories and perspectives not only from her time as Mayor, but also from her youth.”

Mission

Wegener summarized the overall mission for Year of the Womxn.

“Our hope is to showcase that womxn can, and do, hold positions of power, leadership, and influence across our community. This year is an opportunity for anyone to hear from, learn from, and connect with the number of exceptional womxn across our city and region, and to bring womxn’s stories to the forefront.

“Additionally, our goal at Zeitgeist was to be more intentional about our internal programming curation process, and we look forward to continuing these new processes into our future work as well. This year is not specifically about womxn and their contributions to the arts, although we have been highlighting womxn artists, but rather about celebrating a variety of womxn across a variety of career and demographic backgrounds.”

In addition to her professional ties to the project, for Wegener, it’s also personal.

“As a woman, I am happy to see my organization and my community rallying around a vision that champions womxn and gender equity,” she said. “My hope is that this initiative serves to move our organization, community, and region forward on the path to gender equity.” D

For more information, please visit ZeitgeistArts.com/yotw.