Opening Note

Through our Badan workshops, we aim to help every student, organizer, volunteer, partner, host, and our instructor, have the highest quality experience in a safe, welcoming, respectful, and collaborative environment.

Below are some guidelines we’ve laid out for our workshops to help us all engage with each other, and with tatreez, in a more intentional way. Thank you for taking the time to read these notes before class!

Definitions

• The “instructor” in these guidelines refers to Badan Collective (Badan for short) or our Tatreez Instructor, Bayan Fares.
• A “student(s)” refers to registered participants attending and participating in Badan classes or workshops.
• An “organizer(s)” refers to the organizations, partners, collaborators, volunteers, speakers, heads of planning committees, or any person involved in the coordination, set up, photography, videography, marketing, fundraising, or tear-down of a workshop, event, or class.
• A “workshop” or “class” is the event in which the instructor gives a history lesson on Palestine, a demonstration on the mechanics of tatreez, a stitching session, and/or a speech.
• A “tatreez artist(s)” refers to fellow tatreez instructors, embroiderers, local tatreez assistants, hosts of tatreez circles, owners of online tatreez databases, and owners of tatreez social media pages. This can also refer to business owners from any field.

Workshop Guidelines for Students

1. Badan workshops are a safe space for all individuals from all walks of life. We encourage participants joining a workshop to uphold common respect, kindness, courtesy, and understanding for each other during the time we are stitching together, the duration of class, and beyond.

2. We encourage students to participate in the workshop for its full duration. This is to help each student receive the full historical context of the craft they are learning as well as leave class with a finished stitched piece. This is also to help prevent class disruptions for late arrivals or early departures.

3. We encourage students to acknowledge there are about 20-60 other participants in the workshop along with themselves, and to be courteous of each person's learning pace. This includes having common courtesy during the demonstration portion led by the instructor as well as the history lesson. Once the lesson is complete and the instructor has announced the group is ready to begin stitching, students may enjoy the hands-on portion of the event with their neighbors and friends in the manner they so choose.

4. We encourage students to be intentional in their practice of tatreez—a craft facing consistent erasure. We encourage students attending our classes to support the Palestinian people as much as they support the art, and to learn more about Palestine’s history as much as they learn the practice of tatreez. This includes understanding the difference between appreciation and appropriation and conducting oneself accordingly.

Under appreciation, we encourage students to:

• Learn and expand their knowledge on tatreez and its historical context.
• Stitch to preserve the tradition for future generations.
• Wear tatreez items while acknowledging their origins.
• Connect the art to its people.
• Support, advocate, stand in solidarity with, and take action to aid the liberation efforts of the Palestinian people, their land, and their arts.

Under appropriation, we encourage students not to:

• Claim tatreez has no Palestinian origins, therefore adding onto the erasure of the craft.
• Wear tatreez and not acknowledge its origins.
• Disconnect the art from its people, i.e. stitch tatreez and ignore the Palestinian people and their cause.
• Stitch tatreez artists’ work without their permission.
• Sell tatreez artists’ designs without their consent.
• Exploit, intentionally or otherwise, the Palestinian culture for profit, marketing, fundraising, sales, growth on social media platforms, or similar activities.

5. Our classes are open to both Palestinians and non-Palestinians alike. We love to see students from all ethnic, national, and religious backgrounds in class! We encourage each non-Palestinian person attending our workshop(s) to demonstrate allyship to the best of their ability to the Palestinian people, their cause, and their liberation.

6. When attending our workshops, we also encourage students to have fun and get creative! We hope you can do so knowing you are in a safe environment, amongst community, and are participating in a collective movement to preserve the tradition of tatreez.

Workshop Permissions for Students

1. Remaining or extra tatreez kits at the end of a workshop are considered Badan property. They must be returned to the instructor after the completion of the workshop, whether all registered students attend or fail to attend. The remaining kits may not be collected, kept, or passed out by organizers or students without knowledge or permission from the instructor.

2. Long-form video recordings (longer than five minutes) are not permitted to be filmed during workshops, for either private or public use.

• Short-form videos and photos are more than welcomed and are encouraged!
• Posting to social media platforms is also welcomed and encouraged.

3. The independent research shared by Badan, the presentation slides, the instruction sheets included in the tatreez kits, and the curated designs shared in the kits may not and are not approved to be disseminated outside of the workshop. Redrawing, digitizing, or copying the curated designs from Badan workshops is strictly prohibited and is not approved for dissemination in any capacity without explicit written permission from the instructor.

• This does not refer to students stitching these designs in community and sharing them with family and friends.
• This refers to individual(s) copying Badan workshop materials and designs and disseminating them in large quantities, for sale or for stitching purposes, to tatreez circles or gatherings of any kind.