This Girlboss Is Making Creativity Easier Than Ever for Teen Girls
Teen girls do amazing things. From developing tampon video games to transforming healthcare with Google Glass, it’s awe-inspiring how many teenage girls have already achieved unquestionable girlboss status just by doing what they love. Molly Logan knows that a platform for expressing that kind of creative power is both the most natural thing in the world AND the most necessary. She and Sybil Robinson Orr created School of Doodle, a new online school that gives teen girls tools to express and develop their creativity.
These days, Molly’s pretty in tune with her own creative power, but it wasn’t always that way. That’s why she’s creating the space she needed but didn’t find when she was a teen. “Doodle really came about because when I was 16, I wanted to publish a book, and I was told I had to wait. And I really don’t like being told I have to wait at all — never have, never will,” Molly tells us. “And I didn’t have the means, because at the time, there was the Internet, but not like it is now, so I couldn’t have a blog. Basically, an adult would have to say, ‘I’m going to help you get to Random House.’ There was no other way to do it.”
In response, she’s built a way for girls to share and promote their own work — on their own terms. Here’s how it works: Through online and in-person workshops, writing and visual art prompts, videos with big-name creators like Samira Wiley and spaces to create, store and share creative work, this free platform is a one-stop creativity shop that takes girls’ power seriously.
“I think people really underestimate teen girls. Like, so beyond underestimate them. I don’t even understand why that happens,” Molly says. “These girls are phenomenal. I have yet to meet any girl who isn’t incredible. Not a single one.”
And what makes School of Doodle really special is the sense of community that it — just over a week after its launch —already has developed.
“They’re so welcoming to each other in a way that I’m not sure, if they were sitting in a high school structure, that would be the case,” Molly says. “It’s sort of incredible. It’s nothing we’re doing other than just literally creating a space — it has to do with the girls. They’re so amazing, generous and kind, and comfortable being silly and ridiculous.”
It’s also important to Molly and the girls who use the site to combine art and activism. A lot of the themes up for exploring are based in feminism and social justice. It comes down to how creativity isn’t “a hobby that most (teen girls) are brought up through,” she says. “Parents don’t understand how that can actually translate into a job where they can make a living and they’re not a starving artist. So we’re showing girls that relationship between being an artist and an activist, and that the best way, actually, to get people’s attention and change their mind is to use art and creativity.”
Her vision is a world where nobody faces those kinds of barriers — whether they’re external or internal. “The fact that people say they’re not creative is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. It’s like, everybody’s creative. It doesn’t matter what you do.” AMEN.
Are you excited to join School of Doodle? And if you’re not a teen girl, how much would you have LOVED something similar when you were a teen? Tweet us your thoughts @BritandCo!
(Photo and video via School of Doodle)
