“In the following conversation, theatremaker Lauren E. Turner recounts her courageous healing journey from the depths of sustained racialized trauma working in a New Orleans theatre to the launching of her own theatre company, No Dream Deferred, into its first season this fall. Given the persistence of racialized trauma in white theatre institutions, we interrogate how — and if — people of color feel they have a place within them.” – HowlRound
How Native Americans In NYC Are Using Art To Strengthen Community
The nation’s largest city has the nation’s largest Native American population, with 112,000 individuals representing more than 75 tribal nations. Most of those people arrive in New York City with no connection to the indigenous communities there and little or no idea how to access available services. The American Indian Community House is one of several organizations in the city that use art to reach out and make themselves known to Native residents, building community and then using that community to help meet more basic needs. – Gothamist
HarperCollins to Launch Native-Focused Imprint
“HarperCollins Children’s Books has announced the debut of Heartdrum, an imprint devoted to publishing books by Native creators that introduce young Native protagonists and showcase the present and future of Indian Country. Scheduled to launch in winter 2021, the imprint is helmed by author Cynthia Leitich Smith, a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, and Rosemary Brosnan, v-p and editorial director at HarperCollins Children’s Books.” – Publishers Weekly
How artists are remembering Tamir Rice, 5 years after his death
“Five years ago, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed in a public park by a Cleveland police officer. The incident quickly became a rallying point for a growing national conversation about violence against black people at the hands of the police, and Rice continues to be a source of inspiration for artists.” – PBS NewsHour
Why on-screen representation matters, according to these teens
“Alec Fields, a junior at Forest Hills High School in Pennsylvania, … was one of 144 middle and high school students who were interviewed about seeing themselves reflected — or not — on the screen. PBS NewsHour turned to our Student Reporting Labs from across the country to hear what students had to say a topic that research shows still has room for growth.” – PBS NewsHour
Would A Wealth Tax Would Hurt Non-Profits?
Tyler Cowen: “The effects of pushing wealth out of the for-profit sector would be far-ranging. Wealthy donors might be more likely to pressure nonprofits for luxury consumption experiences, for example.” – Bloomberg
There’s Now An Artist-In-Residence At The Philadelphia DA’s Office
“It makes perfect sense to DA Larry Krasner, who sees the arts as central to the criminal justice reform movement … ‘the connection between the reforms we’re trying to make in Philadelphia and the people in Philly who are part of that movement are best made in some ways through the arts,'” he said. The first artist in the position is James Hough, who spent years painting parts of murals for Mural Arts Philadelphia while in prison and is now finally seeing his finished work. – The Philadelphia Inquirer
In New Orleans, Replacing Removed Confederate Statues With Paper Monuments
“The Paper Monuments project, a participatory imagining of the monuments New Orleanians would like, stepped into that pause [after old statues were removed] to involve New Orleanians in the conversation about what should come next … [and] to challenge the idea that monuments must be in stone or bronze.” – Next City
Chicago Architecture Biennial Examines How Design Shapes Urban Protest
It’s a study of human behavior. And it’s a study of the ways in which the architecture of public spaces is designed to control the ways humans move, perhaps by funneling people towards an exit or preventing mass gatherings. (Think: Hong Kong.) It also reveals the situations in which the human is no longer at the center, but becomes technology-adjacent. – Los Angeles Times
OSF Commits $15 Million to Efforts to Return Looted African Artifacts
“The Open Society Foundations has announced the launch of a four-year, $15 million initiative aimed at returning cultural objects looted from the African continent. The initiative will support networks and organizations working to return not only art and ceremonial objects but also human remains, natural history specimens, archives, and cultural heritage artifacts to their rightful homes.” – Philanthropy News Digest
Leveraging Libraries for Cultural Engagement: A Model from New York
David Giles: “As one of the designers of Culture Pass, I could not be more pleased with the results so far. After launching in summer 2018 with twenty-nine participating organizations and seven thousand passes per month, we have grown to fifty organizations and eight thousand monthly passes. … In what follows, I will talk more about how Culture Pass functions and how we have partnered with participating institutions to target underserved neighborhoods. I will also explain more about how the museum programs work in the library setting and how they complement the libraries’ own pedagogical emphasis on play, curiosity, and discovery.” – Grantmakers in the Arts
“But Does It Pay?”: Internship Culture and Diversity in Theatre Administration
“The expectation of unpaid internships is a barrier for young people from distressed communities to gain work experience and subsequent entry into the performing arts administration workforce. So, internships are primarily going to people of a certain socioeconomic class, and those young professionals are coming out of the experience with an upper hand against their competition. And we wonder why there is a lack of diversity in performing arts administration.” – HowlRound
Godfrey L. Simmons Jr.: Vision and Mission
“Godfrey L. Simmons Jr. has built a career making room for others. In 2012 he co-founded the community-minded Civic Ensemble in Ithaca, N.Y., and he will next take the reins as artistic director of a theatre with a similar community profile, HartBeat Ensemble in Hartford, Conn., which has an affiliation with the University of Connecticut. We spoke to him recently about his work and his plans for the theatre, at which he’ll start on Dec. 1.” – American Theatre
Native American playwright Larissa FastHorse is taking down white wokeness
“Opening Tuesday at the Geffen Playhouse, The Thanksgiving Play centers on a group of ‘woke’ white thespians who struggle to devise a historically accurate and culturally sensitive elementary school pageant that celebrates both Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Month. Since premiering last fall at New Yorks Playwrights Horizons, the work has been a hit, landing among American Theatre magazine’s annual ranking of the 10 most produced plays for the 2019-2020 season.” – Los Angeles Times
Linguistic and Cultural Revitalization in Indian Country: Lessons for Philanthropy
Brooke Mosay Ammann: “In 2018, First Nations Development Institute and Frontline Solutions released We Need to Change How We Think, a report that served as an introductory communication bridge between philanthropy and Native organizations. I want to further the conversation by including the perspective of a particularly well-developed Native organization, Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Institute (WOLI), both to make general observations and to highlight some that are specific to indigenous language and culture revitalization.” – Nonprofit Quarterly
Why Hasn’t Harriet Wilson, the First Black Female Novelist, Been Given Her Due?
“The lack of widespread acknowledgement or recognition for Harriet E. Wilson, the first African American novelist and author of Our Nig (1859), comes as a surprise. A New Englander, Wilson reclaimed in her work the domestic, maternal, and liberating space of 19th-century women’s fiction. She constructed a fiction which in turn dismantles Frenchman of Letters Phillipe Vilain’s ‘autofiction’ definition with its requisite of the first-person.” – Zora
The ‘Active (Read: Ongoing) Practice’ of Equitable Evaluation
“The Associations Advancing Equitable Evaluation Practices (AAEEP)* came together earlier this year to support and advance the equitable evaluation field of study and practice. As a part of this commitment, we offered an introductory webinar to our members sharing experiences of two foundations, Kresge and the Oregon Community Foundation, who are testing the waters of equitable evaluation. With an overwhelming interest in the webinar (we sold out at 500 registrants 10 days before the webinar!), some of their learnings feel potent enough to share, and begin with the value of practice.” – Philanthropy New York
How a constellation of 6 artists — all women — helped make Modernism more Mexican
“[Clara Porset] is at the heart of an ongoing exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago that looks at the ways in which six Modern artists — all women — were engaging Mexican art and crafts in the middle of the 20th century. … These were figures who blurred the line between art and design and between craft and industrial production and who, in the process, helped make international Modernism more Mexican.” – Los Angeles Times
Here are three bilingual art initiatives that connect with Spanish-speaking Philadelphians
“Of the nearly 22% of the city’s 1.5 million residents who speak a language other than English at home, the largest group are Spanish-speaking. Here are three art initiatives in Philly aimed at serving Spanish-bilingual audiences.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
Artist Delano Dunn on exploring racial identity through his work
“My work is not happy work. It’s very difficult work. It’s very powerful work, I like to think. So I make stuff very colorful. I make it bright. I make it look like a piece of candy, so that you want to come up and unwrap it. And when you do and you put it in your mouth, it tastes like salt.” – PBS NewsHour
Red Clay Dance founder named Harvard Community Impact Scholar
“The HBS Club of Chicago – Nonprofit Leadership Fund, Community Impact Scholars Pilot Program has sent its first participant to the Harvard Extension School (HES) for leadership development. … [The first Community Impact Scholar is] Founding Artistic Director and CEO of the Red Clay Dance Company, Vershawn Sanders-Ward. … The Red Clay Dance Company’s goal is to awaken ‘global’ change through creating, performing, and teaching dances of the African Diaspora with the hope of transforming cultural and socio-economic inequities in local and global communities.” – AfriClassical
Melina Matsoukas’s Unflinching Eye
“Provocative subject matter isn’t foreign to [the director of Queen & Slim], who was raised in the Bronx by a Cuban mother and a Jewish Greek father, whom she describes as ‘freedom fighters.’ She’s the visionary behind a number of cultural touchstones from the past decade … [and in] an industry that lacks opportunities for female directors, Matsoukas is one of the few with a major-studio release this year. Perhaps most notable is her talent for capturing the inextricable beauty and brutality of life for black Americans, and the necessity of exuberance in the face of hardship.” – The Atlantic
Disney+ Is Attaching Warnings To Its Classic Movies About “Outdated Cultural Depictions”
Users of the service have seen the warnings attached to some of the company’s best-known animated films, such as Dumbo, Peter Pan and Lady and the Tramp, with text that reads: “This program is presented as originally created. It may contain outdated cultural depictions.” – The Guardian
The Latest Jobs Program For Actors? Anti-Sexual Harassment Training Videos
“New or expanded laws mandating sexual harassment training in states like New York and California, as well as a nationwide awakening to a very real problem, have fostered a market for workplace training videos and for actors who can bring #MeToo to life, usually in roles lasting just a minute or two.” – The New York Times
New Prize For Arts And Social Activism To Be Named For Lena Horne
The Lena Horne Prize for Artists Creating Social Impact, sponsored by the Town Hall in New York City, “will recognize those who ‘promote awareness and create social change.’ The inaugural winner will be honored in February. The recipient will receive a $100,000 donation to be directed to a charity of their choice.” – Yahoo! (AP)