When explaining her experience running Grrrls Rock Columbus – a rock camp that teaches instruments to a group of 12 to 18-year-old girls, trans, and gender variant youths – Meg Zakany is often met with comments like, “I’m sure there’s a lot of fighting.” The assumption exists that an all-girls’ space must be rife with competition and rampant emotions. This isn’t the case. Zakany and others help campers create their own powerful spaces for positive self-expression.
Ohio State University
Nora Hesse
As a land-grant institution, The Ohio State University has a special responsibility to share its scientific-based research with its surrounding communities. To open avenues for community sharing, the university created a system to address local, national, and global needs through research-based educational programming in 1914 – this is the OSU Extension Program. Nora Hesse is one of the many important people who make up the OSU Extension Program Franklin County.
Verónica Betancourt
Your typical visitor to the U.S. art museum is more often than not affluent, white, and academically well-educated. As a Latina interested in and inspired by art, Verónica Betancourt often visits encyclopedic art museums – these are museums that claim a comprehensive representation of art history. Her experiences in these spaces are often rife with feelings of alienation and questions of her acceptance as a Latina in the museum’s narrative. Through her dissertation, Betancourt seeks to open these spaces to a more diverse population.