Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women

Clothesline Project

The clothesline project is a national art project started by women in Massachusetts as a memorial to the victims and survivors of domestic violence. The project involves designing shirts to remember the women and children murdered as a result of domestic violence and child abuse. The shirts then are hung on a clothesline and displayed in a public location. The purpose is to create a visual memorial to the casualties and survivors of the war against women.

The Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women started the Minnesota clothesline in June 1992 at a statewide conference for battered women and advocates in Brainerd, MN. In October 1992, MCBW co-sponsored a statewide display of the clothesline with the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault, in which over 300 shirts were hung by participants from all over the state to commemorate their own, or other women's and children's, experience as victims of the war against women and children. Included were shirts designed by Arts Against Domestic Violence for each of the women and children who died from domestic violence in 1992. A 1993 Clothesline honoring the women and children murdered in Minnesota in that year as a result of domestic violence premiered at Battered Women's Action Day at the Capitol in March, 1994.

Clotheslines from 1992 to the present honoring the women and children in Minnesota murdered as a result of domestic violence are available for exhibit throughout the state to raise public awareness of the prevalence and severity of domestic violence and child abuse. Clotheslines from the different years travel to communities throughout the state of Minnesota.

The shirts on each Clothesline are designed by volunteer artists. Most of the artists did not know the woman or child they honored with a shirt, but had information collected mainly from news accounts. Beginning in 1993, the Clothesline has included shirts designed by family members and friends for their loved ones.

Besides bearing witness to the victims of the war against women, the Clothesline Project is also a powerful healing tool for survivors of this violence. Survivors can be invited to participate in the Clothesline Project by decorating a shirt paying tribute to their own survival. Organizers planning to exhibit the Clothesline may want to consider offering shirt-making workshops alongside the exhibit. For more information, please contact the National Clothesline Project.

Please read these facts about the victims affected by violence at the National Teen Dating Violence Prevention Initiative. Your outreach for the victims and survivors can help bring a victim or their family out of the darkness and into the light.

MCBW is a well-established, membership organization with 90 member programs located throughout Minnesota with a strong history of effectively carrying out programming that advances women's safety and security. MCBW has existed for almost 30 years as the state's primary voice for battered women. The Coalition has a dedicated and experienced staff, and its capacity is strengthened by the leadership of its members and by a deeply committed and involved board of directors.