A Home for Project Fielding

• • 3ARTS MATCH
  • 229% contributed

We’re about to have our very own woodshop! After operating for six years as an itinerant organization, Project Fielding will have a permanent home base in the Woodlawn neighborhood starting in early 2024. With this new woodshop, which includes classroom space, we can offer power tool camps and design-build training for femme and nonbinary folx. Funds from this campaign will help us purchase essential equipment and other outfitting needs to make our new space safe, beautiful and exquisitely operational.

About This Project

Project Fielding is a teacher’s collective, co-founded by Amber Ginsburg, Donesha Thompson, Billy Dee, Miriam Stevens and myself, Sara Black. Our goal is to foster gender inclusivity and social change through woodworking and design projects. Our work is focused on femme-identified and gender variant youth and adults who want to learn to use woodworking tools in order to build designed objects and structures for their own lives or to support the work of other social justice organizations.

Woodworking and construction remain highly gendered fields, and yet the knowledge, skills, and wisdom that can be born of them are invaluable to all. We are builders, and together we build our world. Our core group of teachers design and build structures for and with social justice organizations who could benefit from some form of infrastructure (a modular structure, a cart, a shelter, etc). Former tooling campers and members of the participating organizations participate in the construction of the structure(s). We call this “Resistance Architecture.”

For the past six years, Project Fielding has been a roving effort, operating in temporary locations including Experimental Station, Hyde Park Art Center, at interventionist sites with STOP (Southside Together Organizing for Power), and at the Breathing Room, to name a few. Over time and during the pandemic, we recognized the benefits of having a consistent location to anchor the magnificent energy and desire for worldbuilding that has been generated at our builds and camps.

We are so fortunate to have identified this new home for our work at the Narrow Bridge Arts Club in Woodlawn that will open in January 2024. It is being developed within a spacious 1923 former synagogue and will be designed as a carbon positive, non-profit art space. The redesign includes a 2,000+ square foot woodshop and classroom space for Project Fielding.

Our goal is to move from annual and episodic programming to an ongoing and sustained woodworking space for our Tooling Camps and Field Build projects. The funds raised through this 3AP campaign will allow Project Fielding to purchase a dust collection system, a state-of-the-art table saw, a jointer and planer, and a mortise and tenon machine, all towards a space where craft, fine furniture, and building projects can happen. Thank you for your support!

Thank yous

Contribute any amount or choose from the levels below.

• $25
  A set of Project Fielding carpenter’s pencils and a thank you note. ($20.00 is tax deductible.)
• $50
  A set of four block-printed notecards with envelopes featuring a hand carved design by Billy Dee (Project Fielding teacher) and a thank you note. ($30.00 is tax deductible.)
• $100
  A piece of original floorboard salvaged from the restoration of the 1923 synagogue featuring a wood burnt hammer design created by Billy Dee, and a thank you note. ($70.00 is tax deductible.)
• $250
  Your choice of: a private tour of the woodshop with a lesson on the chop saw or bandsaw, OR a handcrafted spoon made by Project Fielding, plus a thank you note, a carpenter’s pencil, and 3 block-printed notecards. ($175.00 is tax deductible.)
• $500
  Your choice of: a private lesson in hand carving using a maple handle salvaged from 1923 pews OR a set of 4 handcrafted candlesticks from salvaged wood, plus a thank you note, carpenter’s pencil, and 3 block-printed notecards. ($375.00 is tax deductible.)
• $1000
  Invitation to a 2-hour “making party” with 5 of your friends at the new woodshop, OR a complete set of 4 handcrafted candlesticks, a hand-crafted spoon, floor board design, notecards, and carpenter’s pencils. ($745.00 is tax deductible.)

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Sara Black

Chandler Family Awardee

I hold commitments as a visual artist, researcher, pedagogue, homeschooling parent, greenskeeper and environmental justice activist. My artwork uses durational processes of building, horticultural practices, and material transformation as a time-based method and diseased wood, ecosystem-specific trees/plants, unique landscapes, inherited …

View Sara Black's profile

• 4 updates
• 65 supporters

• Update 1: Only 4 days in! Matching grant and on to our Stretch Goal. THANK YOU!

  Posted on July 21, 2023

   

  To Project Fielding's most generous contributors! 
  Wow, what an amazing week. With your incredible, generous support, not only did we make to 2K in the very first day, thus receiving our 3Arts matching grants of 2K, we flew right past that up to $5,950.00 - a mere $50 dollars away from starting our stretch goal! The true budget for this woodshop is just under 12K. With 42 days left on our campaign, we're going to see what's possible. Imagine not just the most needed stationary tools, but hand tools, clamps, PPE, filtration, a professional shop. 
  We'll keep you posted as we move along. 
  We couldn't do it without you! Or without 3Arts! Thank you for believing in the project and for believing in the power of woodworking for femme and nonbinary people of all ages. 

  Sara and the rest of the PF crew. 

  Update 2: Our matching grant is less than 300 away!

  Posted on August 01, 2023

   

  Project Fielding Supporters,

  This campaign has been so uplifting! A state-of-the-art woodshop is absolutely in the making. We are now just under $300.00 from receiving our 3K (anonymous) matching grant that will lift us to our stretch goal of 12K. Our budget for the shop is just under 15K and this will get us so close to that. 

  You've made this happen. 
  Thank you!

  Project Fielding

  Update 3: Thanks to all of you, we made our match!

  Posted on August 29, 2023

   

  To our most generous supporters,

  We've done an amazing thing: we met our initial goal of $6000.00 with the generous 3Arts match; THEN, we stretched our necks with the offer of an anonymous $3000.00 matching donation to try to reach $12,000.00 (only 3K below our anticipated equipment budget for the shop) and we, YOU, did it! THEN another donation came in from an oh so generous Project Fielding supporter for $500.00 with a matching grant from Netflix (WHAT?!) for the same amount. Folx, we are at $13,278! Can we make it to $15,000.00 in the next three days?! Spread the word and beat the drum. 
  
  Regardless of the final number we are SO overwhelmed and thrilled. THANK YOU! 
  Sara 

  Update 4: Our woodshop is just around the corner!

  Posted on August 30, 2024

  

   

  To our beloved Project Fielding supporters,

  Some time has passed since our last update, and much as transpired! In the early summer we held a convening of Project Fielding teachers where we designed the layout of the woodshop. Since that time, the construction on Narrow Bridge has come much closer to a finish. I've included an image from our shop design session and a link to a video of Amber Ginsburg (Project Fielding and Narrow Bridge) showing off our beautiful shop space. 

  Video

  This month, Project Fielding will begin holding regular meetings and build out sessions for the shop, purchase tools, and get our doors open!! Please stay tuned for your donation thank you gifts as we get our shop online. As always, such gratitude. 

  Sara and the Project Fielding team

• Thank you to the following for contributing to 3Arts with the recommendation that we support this project.

  • Karen Reimer

  • Dianna Frid

  • Rob Duarte

  • mary jane jacob

  • Allison King

  • Sandra Barney

  • rebecca keller

  • Jennifer Knight

  • Laurie Mikva

  • Aaron Hughes

  • Mary Staats

  • Carol Rusoff

  • Marina Rustow

  • Olivia Junell

  • Sage Rossman

  • Ruby Massey

  • Tyler Lotz

  • Susan (Nef) Mart

  • Deborah Krohn

  • Kathryn Larson

  • Jenn Lassa

  • mark jeffery

  • David Wolf

  • Steve Nasralla

  • Dylan Palmer

  • Allison Triebold

  • claire pentecost

  • Anonymous Supporter

  • Barbara Koenen

  • Emily Monson

  • Sarah lewison

  • Charles Vinz

  • Laura Grose

  • Shaurya Kumar

  • Anna-Maria Marshall

  • Karen Klebbe

  • Zeina Zaatari

  • Jay-Marlena Yim-Novak

  • Rose Ginsburg

  • Lindsey Dorr-Niro

  • Candace Hunter

  • Susannah Ribstein

  • Andrea Frazier

  • Allison Pasquesi

  • Debra Couch

  • Katherine Paris

  • Norman Teague

  • Holly and Zach Cahill

  • Tim Romano

  • Mindy Rose Schwartz

  • Lindsay Diaz

  • Anonymous Supporter

  • Shannon Stratton

  • Hannah Givler

  • Lia Rousset

  • Raiselle and Kenneth Resnick

  • Sarah Kanouse

  • Anonymous Supporter

  • Laura Grose with match from Netflix

  • Ryan Thompson

  • Jamika Smith

  • Gerry Black

  • Robin Hewlett

  • Kari Merkl

  • Julie Grutzmacher

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