Feminist Praxis is living and implementing feminist theory — this is foundational to activism and change. While Feminism resists any structures that negatively impact and limit anyone based on gender, Intersectional feminism specifically acknowledges varying relationships to power based on elements that are related to one’s identity. FCCW’s contemporary feminism pulls from writers, thinkers, artists of color, and people who are queer and/or disabled, all of whom bring layered understandings to experiences of gender and notions of liberation. It is also informed by the wisdom and actions of previous generations of feminists, who brought us rights, access, and opportunities. We continue to evolve our feminist praxis to more effectively support the people most harmed and limited by gendered oppression and other intersecting identities in our current time.

In both historical and contemporary circumstances, people in power have sought to control, suppress, steal, co-opt, and otherwise manipulate creative and cultural production to support unjust, exploitative, and cruel agendas. Communities held together by strong, vibrant creative practices resist dominant powers and protect ancestral knowledge while allowing for an infinite number of possible realities and societies to take shape. We recognize creative work as a core value in a liberated world––beyond just a form of monetary capital––and that necessitates an investment of resources. For FCCW, supporting the cultivation of creative practice is a liberatory endeavor that isn’t just focused on the end products or objects that can be bought and sold, but is ultimately about creating opportunities for connection and channels for communication, play, experimentation, and self-determination.

We draw from queer theory to reshape, rethink, and reimagine our world, outside of the exclusive norms and structures that weren’t meant for queer people. We advocate for joyous, purposeful failure and the rejection of success within capitalist, heteronormative structures. We embrace queerness as a form of defiance, resistance, and an act of liberation. We assert that all people can benefit from the process of making/remaking themselves, their communities, and global society as a whole, according to the values that truly reflect and support our humanity.

We believe that art has the potential to be a political force and that creative work can reconfigure the collective imagination, making way for new understandings of self, community, and beyond. At FCCW, we align with artists and thinkers who create alternatives to the status quo: new ways of doing, being, and working in community with one another. Through our programs and collaborations, we nurture the transformative potential of art to build worlds that are more just, joyful, and free.

Rooted in a lineage of feminist, queer, and creative movements, we respond to the urgencies of our time. Our work evolves through a dialogue with history, with each other, and with the world around us. We apply our theoretical foundations to everyday practice and allow those practices to change us in turn. We embrace evolution as a collective process—an ongoing commitment to listen, learn, and act in alignment with the feminist futures we seek to build.

When something feels aligned, we say “yes” fully; when it does not, we honor that “no” as an act of care and integrity. Acting from the body, we practice passion as discernment and responsibility. Drawing from Audre Lorde’s Uses of the Erotic, we understand the erotic as a deep, bodily knowledge, a prompt to dig for how fully we can feel while making and creating. We believe decisions made from attentiveness, care, and clarity create conditions where everyone involved can feel good in their work and move with purpose. We practice passion as discernment and responsibility with awareness to all senses. This awareness guides how we choose and commit.

We value the ongoing commitment to show up for creative work—making, learning, and organizing as meaningful forms of labor in themselves. We understand that building a more just and liberated world requires practice: trying, failing, learning, and trying again. This work resists extraction and perfectionism, affirming that curiosity, care, experimentation, and persistence determine how transformation takes shape. At FCCW, we model a culture where time and process are honored and compensated. We challenge systems that measure worth by productivity alone.

We engage our imaginations, as many feminists before us did, to envision futures that are more equitable and liberated than what seems possible today. We work to map and live our way toward these possibilities.

We are inspired to build and experiment with new models of sustaining a feminist arts organization, in order to challenge traditional institutional practices. Our inspiration informs how we nurture relationships with artists, collaborators, partners, and our communities, as well as our staff and board. 

We aim to provide fair compensation for creative labor, actively share our tools and knowledge, and support artists––specifically those who have historically had less access to creative resources––so that they can create new, queer, feminist work that guides us into a multiverse of visionary intersectional feminist futures.

FCCW is a hub—we find power and purpose in togetherness. Because FCCW began as a place to hold many visions for a creative, feminist community in Los Angeles, we intentionally make different kinds of invitations for participation in and contribution to FCCW. We strive to share access to space, resources, information, and opportunities for growth and transformation. At our best, FCCW is home to a diversity of projects led by many different communities, and together, we contribute to larger creative and feminist ecosystems.

We are honored to be part of an interconnected network of collectives and organizations as well as individual artists, creatives, builders, educators, scholars, organizers, activists, and so many other skilled people in Los Angeles and around the world. We rely on the exchanges of this ecosystem and the richness of knowledge and experience gathered among us. 

We respect our role in this ecosystem by striving to deepen our own areas of knowledge 

and by making offerings of our space, organizational processes, invitations to collaborate, resources, and advice. As an organization, it’s our intention and commitment to cultivate and disseminate new, queer, feminist inquiries, practices, and art. We turn to our ecosystem when we require expertise beyond our own and embark on something new to us.