The online world offers the tantalizing promise of exposure for a new generation of artists, with animators flocking to Instagram to form the latest virtual art sharing space. For women, like me, working in commercial animation, Instagram offers a venue to be seen in an industry with chauvinist and industrial roots. By empowering new creators to surmount the studio monolith, social media platforms present an opportunity to forge a personal creative identity online. There are complexities with this new visibility, as sharing platforms encourage sameness by reinforcing linear trajectories that commodify the creative self. Online sharing culture affects creative practice in numerous ways; with a focus on the experience of women in animation, this thesis examines a particular subset of the Instagram phenomenon. Through the creation and facilitation of a participatory workshop, this paper presents a framework to address the developmental needs of the new generation of artists raised on social media. In the workshop, participants are asked to put aside their devices and reflect through a series of drawing activities that raise questions about social media performativity in order to reignite the lost creative self. Further, they investigate ways to maintain a creatively sustainable art practice online. As part of a feminist discourse this project favours a participatory approach to workshop facilitation that uses play as a way for participants to imagine and design their art practice for the digital future.

• https://tabitha-fisher.format.com/