Launching the Indigo Apprenticeship Program – Session #1 Begins!
- Rosa Chang
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
Dear Indigo Shade Map Friends,
I hope your summer is off to a wonderful start!
I’m excited to share some meaningful news as we prepare for our first indigo harvest of 2025. For the past five years, I’ve been carefully refining the process of extracting pigment from Polygonum tinctorium (jjok, 쪽)—indigo plants lovingly grown at Blue Light Junction in Baltimore. This plant not only connects me to the land but also reflects the cultural practices of my ancestors, which I strive to honor by following traditional methods as closely as possible.
This year, I’m launching something especially close to my heart: an Indigo Apprenticeship Program, created in collaboration with Blue Light Junction.
This program is an invitation to step into the slow, intentional rhythm of indigo work—through hands-on practice, shared labor, and community-based learning.
More than just technical training, the apprenticeship offers participants a deep, experiential understanding of the full cycle of indigo: growing, harvesting, and pigment making. It also holds space for cultural storytelling, collective care, and meaningful conversations around sustainability, resilience, and the deeper purpose of working with plants. Also, just fun study group!
Through this blog, I’ll be sharing highlights, reflections, and behind-the-scenes moments from each session—offering a more personal glimpse into the work and what this journey means to me. Let me know if you'd like to adapt this for social media or print materials as well.
🌿 Session #1: July Harvest Schedule
For the first session of the Indigo Apprenticeship Program, we’ll gather three times:
Tuesday, July 15
Thursday, July 17
Saturday, July 19
Our very first gathering will be Tuesday, July 15 at 7:00 AM, when we’ll meet bright and early with Kenya Miles, the founder of Blue Light Junction, at the Farm Alliance Black Butterfly Teaching Farm to harvest indigo together. We’ll continue the processing work at Blue Light Junction later in the week and weekend, following the full cycle from fresh leaves to pigment.
We plan to repeat this full process again in August, once the next round of indigo matures—typically 4–6 weeks, depending on the weather and soil. I’ll share details about that session as the time approaches.
This is just the beginning, and I’m so looking forward to sharing what unfolds. Thank you for being part of the Indigo Shade Map community. I hope you’ll enjoy following along as we document this inaugural indigo apprenticeship journey! Please subscribe our newsletter to catch up!
With gratitude,
Rosa Chang