Women’s Resource Center Adapts Feminist Flea Market Into An Online Event

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Women’s Resource Center hosted its third annual feminist flea market event this year online the week on Nov. 16 due to Covid restrictions. This event is intended to provide a platform for local women, nonbinary, and femme-identified entrepreneurs and makers to showcase their work and to help inspire students of UWM in pursuing their passions. 

When they started this event in 2018, they had five vendors and around 150 attendees, however, they saw a huge increase with the ability to make this virtual. During this week they had four vendors, 753 Instagram TV views and over 900 Facebook views. 

“Overall, looking at your numbers, we definitely engaged with more people than previous years,” said Aliah Papara of the Women’s Resource Center. 

Claire Neville, a recent UWM graduate and owner of High Five Art Co., started their business over the summer as a way to invest their time and creative energy. 

When starting their business, they only had a part-time internship which made it easy to devote time to this project. “I wanted to do something that would fulfill me in an artistic way. It was just a fun experiment for me before having a full-time job,” said Neville. “I hope that people use my art to make their spaces a reflection of their personality.” 

Neville worked as a peer mentor while studying at UWM and knew all of the resource centers the campus offered. So when she saw that the Women’s Resource Center was doing the event virtually, she saw this as an opportunity to reconnect and expose her business to a wider audience. 

Right now she works with search engine optimization, which she never thought she would have a job in. However, she said if their businesses grew into a full-time job, it would be their ultimate dream job. “I would love to say that I created something on my own. If the opportunity arose, I would take it,” said Neville.

Vic Krueger, an artist on Milwaukee’s east side, got involved in the event through Neville. Their art style of choice, fluid art, helps them not be a perfectionist and allows them to express themselves more than other forms. “I’ve been into art my entire life. My parents were artists,” said Krueger. “I’m way too impatient for other forms of painting, even though I love it, that’s why I tried fluid art instead.”

Krueger is focusing on school and work which occupies most of their time, but after they are done with this semester, she wants to focus more on their art.

Loren Nelson, the owner of Lëvor, sells all-natural and organic hair care products with the mission to desegregate the hair care community. She wanted to promote her brand by using this event. 

“We understand that this world consists of many individuals of various races, cultures and backgrounds. So our hair should be a reflection of it and a celebration of it as well,” said Nelson. After being featured in this online event they were able to get more viewers and orders.

Tori Freud, owner of Greater Love Doula Services, is a queer full-spectrum doula and educator in Milwaukee. Their goal was to use this event to share their story and passions with others. Through their job as a doula, they are able to help people build families, birth babies and help people navigate reproductive experiences like loss or abortion. 

Freud worked at the Women’s Resource Center while studying at UWM and has been in contact with them ever since. When they saw the post about it on social media, they figured they would give it a shot.

As a queer doula, they said that there aren’t many in this field that we queer and trans focused. “In the midwest, the queer doula community is small, I know a few within Milwaukee and Madison, and there are others but they don’t necessarily mark themselves as queer or queer and trans focused,” said Freund.

Being open as queer within this career path has made them feel more comfortable. Freud described faking it in the traditional doula mold made them feel like an imposter. “I decided that if I wasn’t going to be myself, it wasn’t going to be worth it. I now feel more open and honest with myself when working with people.”

They hope that after graduating they can switch to doing this job full time and work as a traveling doula as well.