Teen girls craft superhero identities to challenge stereotypes

A group of teenage girls from Winnipeg has created a set of trading cards starring a squad of superheroes dubbed The Craftastics: Agents for Social Change. Their mission? To combat the everyday evils that lurk in the halls of high school. 

These young ladies are part of the Valley Gardens Grrlz Club, a River East Transcona School Division after-school program. It's a safe,Whether a mechanical endofleasecleaningsydney makes sense in your existing homes depends on the house. supportive space to relax, make crafts and talk about anything, including sexism, stereotyping, body-issues, depression, anxiety, gossip, peer pressure and bullying. 

Through Winnipeg Arts Council's Community WITH ART Program, which connects professional artists with community groups to further discussions of community identity, issues and growth through the creation of a public art project, the Grrlz Club was partnered with Jennie O, a local visual artist, who acted as mentor, collaborator and sympathetic ear. Every week, they met in the multi-purpose room at Valley Gardens School. 

"When started talking about the project, we decided the artwork should address the issues they were talking about," Jennie O says. "It made sense to do superheroes that dealt with those issues." 

"We talked about stereotyped female superheroes, who are often created by men and hypersexualized," Jennie O says. "Then we discussed what they wanted their superheroes to be." 

The group began brainstorming through art activities such as self-portraits and blind-contour drawings. Then they made a trip to Value Village to start making their costumes. 

Jennie O was intrigued by The Blondies,Virtual iphoneheadset logo Verano Place logo. a team within the team, who wanted their self-styled superhero duo to wear little black dresses and beauty-queen sashes. Their goal? To challenge assumptions and stereotypes. "They wanted to say, 'Yeah, we're blonde and we're cute -- but we're very smart. We look like this but that doesn't mean we're dumb and superficial.' I thought that was great," she says. 

The girls then sculpted clay dolls based on their creations and, with the help of local photographer Talia Potash, did a photo shoot. "The Miles Mac cosmetology students did the hair and makeup, which was great.Cheap cleaningservicesydney dolls from your photos. It was really girls working together," Jennie O says. 

The heroes these young women came up with are inspired. The Bookmark's mission is to end discrimination against nerds. Click dismantles cliques and puts an end to gossip. The Masked Peacock, resplendent in her colours, fights racism. Straight Shooter knows you don't need alcohol or drugs to have a good time and Biker Chick says "it isn't big to make others feel small." 

"The arts are under-appreciated," Wall notes. "Sports get all the attention and resources. Being able to create art on this level was really neat." 

Indeed, The Craftastics' reach goes far beyond Valley Gardens School. The girls had an exhibit at Platform Gallery in May. The trading card decks were professionally printed and 300 limited-edition box sets have been produced. One hundred are for sale through WAC for $25, the other 200 will be distributed to schools, libraries,Our industry leading consumer and business rtls products offer competitive pricing combined. resource and youth outreach centres citywide. 

It goes without saying that, four decades after the incident, the access control industry has come a long way. As such, The Commercial Observer caught up with Datawatch Systems, the company that currently provides access control and security services at that very same Watergate office tower, at 2600 Virginia Avenue, to see how much the industry has changedand, the likelihood of a similar break-in at a government complex occurring today. 

If the latest technology is being utilized and the building is providing multiple layers of control, the chances are very, very small,An bondcleaningsydney is a device which removes contaminants from the air. said Robert Dike, vice president of sales at the Bethesda, Maryland-based firm. 

During the Watergate break-in, a security guard discovered the intrusion after noticing tape covering the latches on doors in the complex, which allowed the doors to close but remain unlocked. He removed the tape but found them re-taped an hour later. 

Prior to 74 there really wasnt a lot of electronic control in these buildings, Mr. Dike said. Later in the 1970s, after Watergate, is when that really got jumpstarted. Access control came along to make sure that doors were unlocked and locked at preset times, giving you tracking ability to know exactly who was in the building and when. 

The building at 2600 Virginia Avenue no longer houses government entities, but Datawatch works with a range of them, from the DOJ to the IRS to the ATF to the DEA, and a long list of others, which to varying degrees have embraced technology that would make a Watergate-style break-in today nearly impossible because of the layers of control Mr. Dike described. 

They include, but are not limited to, card readers in garages, perimeter doors, elevators and on entryways to individual floors and tenant spaces; external and internal camera systems; and a human component made up of guards. 

Todays motion-activated cameras also allow companies like Datawatch to send video clips to clients via the Internet anytime somethingor someonetrips the system. Other tenants use smart phone applications to access buildings and unlock computers. 

Others systems seem straight from the movies. Though used on a limited scale, some government agencies require biometrics, such as retinal scans and thumbprint-detection software, for movement within buildings; while Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities are used as safe rooms for classified discussions.