BGG2SM is on the vanguard as the only Southern-based Black women-led multidisciplinary project in the menopause and aging landscape, producing a podcast, hosting intergenerational events, and publishing zines. Our platform intentionally engages in reproductive and gender justice advocacy by creating new dialogical tools necessary to support our narrative and culture shift work.
Since 2019, the Black Girl’s Guide to Surviving Menopause has operated at the intersection of reproductive justice and storytelling as an art form. We now also understand that our work is representative of Socially Engaged Art Practice grounded by art, culture, spirit, and ritual.
Socially Engaged Art Practice, also known as social practice or socially engaged art, involves any art form that engages people and communities in debate, collaboration, or social interaction. Such practices can be organized as an outreach or education program or used independently by artists. This is also a mode of cultural organizing.
Socially engaged practice often addresses political issues and is associated with activism. Artists working in this field usually spend a significant amount of time integrating themselves into the specific community they are trying to help, educate, or engage with. Our podcast, zine, and culture/narrative shift storytelling fall into this category of art.
Our team is composed of nine individuals who are a mix of Black creatives, culture organizers, Healing Justice practitioners, and social justice advocates. We are cis, nonbinary, queer, and straight individuals who are grandmothers, mothers, daughters, aunties, siblings, partners, neurodivergent, and cancer survivors. We come from diverse educational backgrounds—from low-
wealth families to college-educated professionals. We are immigrants and 7th-generation Southern-born. As a team that consists of members from Generation X, Millennials, and Gen Z, we aim to create a culture of inclusion, mutual respect, creativity, and care where curiosity, accountability, principled struggle, and liberation are valued and encouraged.
Mary‘s Table is an advisory collective of peri-postmenopausal Black people and allies, of various professional backgrounds, who gather to support BGG2SM Creator + Chief Curatorial Officer, Omisade Burney-Scott’s visioning, resource acquisition, and physical/Spiritual health, in partnership with and in honor of her Beloved, Ancestral Mother, Mary Ella Kinsey Burney, Ibaiye.
Built by Tarryn Designs