On the Ground: The Art of Social Practice – EMERGENCE Plenary Session

Post lead image:  Ramekon O’Arwisters artwork. 

 

On the Ground: The Art of Social Practice -EMERGENCE 2015 Plenary Session

YBCA Forum @ 2PM

Participating:  Deirdre Visser, Curator of The ARTS at CIIS
Ashara Saran Ekundayo, Impact Hub Oakland, LLC , Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer Omi Gallery, Director/Curator
Ramekon O’Arwisters, Social-practice artist, Curator of Exhibitions at the San Francisco Airport Museum
Ebony McKinney [ABBA] Arts for a Better Bay Area co-founder, Fellowship Director/co-founder, Emerging Arts Professionals SF/BA

Facilitated by Conference Keynote Roberto Bedoya

Participatory art is not new, but approaches are always evolving. Join a roundtable of artists who bring  social practice into their work to create projects aimed at social change and empowerment in their communities.

Panelist Bios

 

imgresDeirdre Visser is Curator of The Arts at CIIS. As curator and educator she strives to promote pluralism in the arts, to support artists in the creation of new work, and to foster dynamic and critical dialogues within and across communities that propose integrative approaches to the urgent questions we collectively face. Her exhibitions, publications and public programming with The Arts at CIIS have connected history to the present, both ethically and strategically, to look for common themes and engage historical context in a deeper understanding of the present. She has mounted exhibitions and convened public dialogues about such topics as the representation of African American men; the history of the Chicano Movement and the ways it informs the work of young Chicana artists across California today; the legacy of the Black Panther Party; and the intersections between contemporary photographic practice and representational pluralism. [https://www.linkedin.com/pub/deirdre-visser/4/589/871]

 

Asjara-Saran-EkundayoAshara Saran Ekundayo is a cultural strategist and convener who consultants with start-ups and organizations to assess and build capacity for increased community engagement in their ventures through the uses of social permaculture design, creative arts practice, exhibition, and project management. Her combined passions for media, food, art and tech also inspire her to produce events such as Pecha Kucha Night Oakland and “Grits & Greens” and she can be heard on KPOO Radio amplifying the voices of women creatives with her “Sweetwater Sessions” segment as part the weekly Ibeji Lounge show.  Most recently Ashara serves as the Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Impact Hub Oakland and is also the Director for Omi Gallery located in Oakland, CA.  She also participates in the Urban Futures Think Tank at YBCA, and holds Advisory Board Positions with KQED Arts, Urban Protoyping, and the City of Oakland Cultural Funding Program.  She is a 2014 Emerging Arts Professional Fellow and Institute For the Future just pinged her as 2015 Fellow4Good inquiring on the Future of Collaboration and Spirituality.  She happily Tweets from @Blublakwomyn

 

unnamed-2Ramekon O’Arwisters is a social-practice artist who creates collaborative, community-based art projects infused with folk-art traditions and techniques to foster and support a culture of community building.  O’Arwisters’s Crochet Jams invite the public, friends, volunteers, and associates to participate in the traditional folk art of making rag rugs.  As a thought leader, O’Arwisters engages the public in thinking differently about the role of art within community and the power of art within society.  He has had exhibitions at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco, and the Kato Gallery in Tokyo. His work has been included in numerous San Francisco group exhibitions including the African American Art & Cultural Complex, and the Museum of the African Diaspora.  In 2013 he participated in a residency at the M. H. de Young Museum in San Francisco.  He was awarded an Artadia Award in 2002 and a second San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant in 2011.  O’Arwisters received a Masters of Divinity from Duke University. He is currently a curator of exhibitions at the SFO Museum and a guest lecturer at various Bay Area colleges. Ramekon was awarded the 2014 Eureka Award from the Fleishhacker Foundation.  [http://crochetjam.com/home.html]

 

EAPLeadership2014-15_EbonyEbony McKinney is the Founding Director of Emerging Arts Professionals/SFBA, a network focused on empowerment, leadership, and growth of next generation arts and culture workers in the San Francisco Bay Area through knowledge sharing, learning opportunities, and partnerships. She was instrumental in helping to establish the statewide California NextGen Arts Leadership Initiative funded by The James Irvine Foundation and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. She currently serves on the Citizen’s Advisory Committee at Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, the Funding Advisory Council for Oakland Cultural Affairs and is a member of the Emerging Leader Council of American for the Arts. She’s also served on selection panel for the Joyce Foundations Emerging Leaders of Color Fellowship.[https://www.linkedin.com/in/ebonymckinney]

 


Bedoya (2)
Facilitated by Roberto Bedoya is the Executive Director of the Tucson Pima Arts Council, Tucson AZ. He is also a writer and arts consultant who works in the area of support systems for artists. As an arts consultant he has worked on projects for the Creative Capital Foundation and the Arizona Commission on the Arts (Creative Capital’s State Research Project), The Ford Foundation (Mapping Native American Cultural Policy), The Ford and Rockefeller Foundations (Creative Practice in the 21st Century), and The Urban Institute (Investing in Creativity: A Study of the Support Structure for US Artists and the Arts and Culture Indicators in Community Building Project).  His writing has appeared in numerous publications including The New Gatekeepers: Emerging Challenges to Free Expression in the Arts, (Columbia University Press, 2003) CMYK, the Hungry Mind Review, the Los Angeles Times, and the Movement Research Performance Journal. He is the author of the white paper “The Color Line and US Cultural Policy: An Essay with Dialogue” and “Creative Placemaking and the Politics of Belonging and Dis-Belonging”, He sits on the board of the National Association of Media Arts and Culture. Bedoya has been a Rockefeller Fellow at New York University and a Visiting Scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.

 

The Independent Curator – Evolving Definitions – Morning Working Session

 

The Independent Curator – Evolving Definitions – A Working Session

Conference Room – 12:00pm  (Closed Working Session)

Meeting Lead:  Ernesto Sopprani, Director, Airspace Queer Performance Residency Program; EMERGENCE lead Curator, SF/BA EAP, Co-Founder Director, THEOFFCENTER, Independent Cultural Worker, Curator, Artist Advocate.

Local independent curators / Cultural Producers gather to discuss curatorial processes across disciplines. We will share challenges and contribute ideas to help understand the evolving role of the independent curator.  Following the model adopted by SOMArts TheNews’ Curators Roundtable – This group of independent cultural producers / Curators will be tasked with a collective knowledge exploration.  Asking what is most immediate, finding effective ways to bridge across practices. Knowledge cultivated in this session will be openly shared and will help inform future programing at EAP, other service organizations/ possible partners as well as the independent producer community.

Lead Bio

EAPLeadership2014-15_ErnestoErnesto Sopprani coordinates location-specific and primarily community-based performance projects. Whether as an artist or as an arch-collaborator, his work is geared towards investigating innovative and self-sustainable models of presenting art and performance, specifically queer work, which expands upon the common definition of Queer and challenges his and his community’s relationship to live performance.  As Director of THEOFFCENTER, Ernesto has overseen the production, curation and execution of dozens of site-specific, research-based art interventions, a number of large scale performance festivals, multiple performer centered art programs both at presenting houses (YBCA, Mission Cultural Center, Mission Dance, The Magic Theatre, SOMArts and others) as well as public spaces (BART trains, city streets, and a privately owned boxing ring). Ernesto, an experimentalist of prose and form at heart, is the co-founder of 11 11 ArtGroup, a creative partnership funded with life partner and collaborator Evan Johnson; 11 11’s goal is to create and present queer[ed] text based theatre and sound installations.  Ernesto was participant of the 2011 YBCA’s Bay Area Now 6 program. After being a fellows forEmerging Arts Professionals.’s 2011 class, he became part of leadership where he has served in many roles, of which the present one is of Curator of EMERGENCE 2015.

Connections Across the Region: Next Gen Networks Collaboration – Afternoon Working Session

 

Connections Across the Region: Next Gen Networks Collaboration Meeting

Conference Room – 2:50pm  (Closed Working Session)

Meeting Lead:  Adam Fong, Ex. Director, Center for New Music; Director of National Initiatives, SF/BA EAP, Emerging Leaders Network Council, American for the Arts

A working group of network leaders convenes to support and influence planning of regional gatherings. Engaging with broader networks offers an important opportunity for learning and development. This group is tasked with bringing forward the needs of their respective networks. Knowledge cultivated in this session will support stronger inter-network connections, and help inform future programming of both EAP and other hosts and facilitators of convenings, such as Center for Cultural Innovation and Americans for the Arts.

Lead Bio

EAPLeadership2014-15_AdamAdam Fong has worked as a composer, performer, and producer of new music since completing his MFA in Music Composition at California Institute of the Arts, where he studied with James Tenney and Wadada Leo Smith. As Associate Director of Other Minds (2006–2012), Fong produced six editions of the annual Other Minds Festival, dubbed the “premier new music festival on the West Coast” (Los Angeles Times), and many special projects including the CD reissues of Conlon Nancarrow’s Studies for Player Piano and The Complete Music of Carl Ruggles, tribute concerts to Ruth Crawford Seeger, Henry Cowell, and Dane Rudhyar, a celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Fluxus, and the American Premiere of 18 Microtonal Ragas based on “Solo for Voice 58″ by John Cage. Fong’s own compositions have been performed internationally in Auckland, London, Berlin, Tübingen and Darmstadt, at many US universities, and throughout California, by performers including the two-piano team Dennis Russell Davies and Maki Namekawa. In 2008, he co-founded Emerging Arts Professionals/San Francisco Bay Area, a network dedicated to the development and growth of next generation arts and culture workers; he was Chair of Business Development in 2010-11 and Director from 2011-14. Adam also holds a master’s degree from Stanford University (English). He has lectured on experimental music and received international publication of his scholarly and creative work, and serves on advisory boards, panels, and committees at the local and national level.

Data Driven – Leveraging Arts Data for Greater Impact – EMERGENCE 2015 – Afternoon Panel

Data Driven – Leveraging Arts Data for Greater Impact

Big Forum – 2:50pm

Facilitated by Danielle Siembieda, Digital Marketing, Community Engagement Specialist

Guest Panelists:  

Lex Leifheit, Ex. Director at SOMArts; Co founder, Arts for a Better Bay Area
Ian Heisters, Artist and Creative Technology Consultant, Heisters Generative
Darin Jensen, GIS (geographic information system) instructor, UC Berkeley, Mission Possible and Intranational International Boulevard: A Street’s Atlas

We are surrounded by data driven decision making from the business and tech communities, what does this mean for the arts? Join artists and administrators in a discussion about the data we can leverage to create greater impact and understand our landscape. We will specifically be looking to projects like Arts for A Better Bay Area and the Arts Education field that show the intrinsic value of arts experiences through different forms and to different audiences.

Panelist Bios

Lex LeifheitLex Leifheit became executive director of  SOMArts (South of Market Arts, Resources, Technology and Services) in October 2008. During her 6 1/2-year tenure, she: Established a 9-month incubator for community-focused cultural producers, the Commons Curatorial Residency Program,  Increased operating budget from $800k to $1.6 million, full-time staff from 1 to 5 and number of nonprofits served annually to 100+, Implemented numerous business practices to enhance the long-term stability of the organization and modernized systems, and Leveraged numerous technology partnerships to extend the reach of arts programming and support services. In 2014, with her co-founder Ebony McKinney, Lex established Arts for a Better Bay Area, an organization to increase support for the arts, share knowledge around public policy, and spark cross-sector partnerships. Over 500 people participated in the Arts Budget Coalition, a project of ABBA. http://betterbayarea.tumblr.com/.  This June Lex will move on from SOMArts to become the Nonprofit Business Development Manager in the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development.

 

Ian HeistersIan Heisters uses dance, installation, and data as media for playing with issues around community and humanism. His installations and performances have shown at local and national venues including Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Crystal Bridges Museum, CounterPULSE, The Asian Art Museum, and The Berkeley Art Museum. In addition to his personal practice, Ian is a researcher and advisor specializing in performance, digital media, data visualization, and sensor systems for various projects with SFMoMA, UC Berkeley, and the open source community. This research is complemented by teaching art, design, and programming at Gray Area Foundation for the Arts. Previously, he executed commercial projects with Stamen Design, Pivotal Labs, and Stimulant among others. A native of Northern California, he is based in Berkeley, California, where he tries to spend as much time as possible in the outdoors with his wife and son. [For more information visit Heisters Generative]

 

Darin JensenDarin Jensen is the Staff Cartographer and a Continuing Lecturer in the Department of Geography.  He has directed multiple hyper-local atlas projects along with his students he continues to produce experiential mapping projects (“Mission Possible: A Neighborhood Atlas” was published in 2012 and can be viewed at missionpossiblesf.org). Darin is also the founder of Guerrilla Cartography, which published “Food: An Atlas” in 2013 (a crowdsourced and crowdfunded atlas of the geography of food) and is currently working on “Water: An Atlas.” Visit guerrillacartography.net to download a free pdf of the food atlas and to join our mailing list.

 


EAPLeadership2014-15_Danielle

Facilitated by Danielle Siembieda is an art service provider and creative entrepreneur in the San Francisco Bay Area. She works at the intersection of Social Practice, Institutional Critique, Intervention and New Media. Most of her work includes an emphasis on the environment and technology. Her most recent project, “The Art Inspector” began in 2009 as a method to reduce the carbon footprint of art. This project has been funded Silicon Valley Energy Watch to conduct energy assessments on artist studios and take them through an eco-art makeover. She has been an artist in residence at the TechShop SJ where she create a body of work around cyborg politics and the anthropocene. Some of her other roles include being a board member of the Women’s Environmental Art Directory; art consultant to the San Francisco Department of the Environment, and outreach coordinator for CODAME Art + Tech. Siembieda has a MFA in Digital Media Art at San Jose State University at the CADRE Laboratory for New Media with a focus on green technologies, sustainable materials. [ www.siembieda.com]


Respecting the In-Between and Beyond of Re-generative Practice in the Arts – EMERGENCE 2015 – Morning Workshop

Respecting the In-Between and Beyond of Re-generative Practice in the Arts


Youth Arts Lounge Room – 12:00pm

Lead by
Angela ‘Mictlanxochitl’ Anderson, Ph.D. student, M.A., Student Alliance Coordinator at CIIS
Cristina Ibarra, Former Program Manager, Education & Community Engagement, ArtSpan, San Francisco,
Creatix TiaraCreative Producer, Artist, and Writer  at The Merch Girl, International

Read the Community Hackpad from this session!

We invite participants into an exploration of the plurality of regenerative practices that lie at the heart of true sustainability in the arts. This session builds off intimate conversations around regenerative practice with focus points around movement, indigeneity, and diaspora. Participants will be invited into an embodied inquiry about what is regenerative practices that will guide a dialogue about the challenge of defining regenerative practice as a whole.  The goal is to empower respectful, inclusive, and culturally competent approaches to regenerative practice within arts and cultural organizations.

Session Lead by

 

Angela-AndersonAngela ‘Mictlanxochitl’ Anderson, Ph.D. student, M.A. is currently a scholar practitioner and artist whose doctoral studies are exploring the intersections of epistemology, indigenous knowledge and spirituality.  Both her art and her studies are an extension of her spiritual work within traditions of Mesoamerican, Native American, and Andean lineages.  At CIIS, she lead a $10,000 Social Innovation Grant from California Campus Compact that enabled CIIS students to initiate the“Mindfulness & Community Resilience” project at a charter school in the Tenderloin Community.  In the Bay area community, Angela works alongside local artists around creative endeavors aiming to create and honor sacred space and indigenous traditions. She received an M.A. in public policy and a certificate in health administration and policy from the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Public Policy in 2004, and completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Notre Dame in 2000. Angela is currently the Student Alliance Coordinator at California Institute of Integral Studies.

 

Cristina-IbarraCristina Ibarra wants to rock your world. She knows the arts are a great way to do this and has dedicated the last five years to empowering artists and youth to use their talents and creativity to inspire us all. She’s an enabler. She’s an administrator. She’s an artist. She’s a facilitator. Whether in the space between a tango embrace or a ukelele chord, behind an office desk or in front of an audience, Cristina’s mission is to help people connect with themselves, the world, and others around them through the sublime experience of art. Most recently Programs Manager at ArtSpan, Cristina has worked with various arts non-profits and organizations in San Francisco, including the Red Poppy Art House, Independent Arts & Media, Project Tango, and the SF Arts Providers Alliance. She currently participates as a curator and organizer for MAPP (Mission Arts Performance Project), and performs with local music groups including the Hitsville Soul Sisters, Beautiful Earthquake, and others. In 2011, Cristina was an artist-in-residence at EDELO in Chiapas, Mexico, where she worked on rethinking alternative organizational models and began a forthcoming photography project. In her down time (yeah right!), Cristina enjoys dancing, traveling, and exploring the East Bay.

 

Creatix-TiaraCreatrix Tiara works with creative arts & media productions, community cultural development, and education to explore ideas around community, identity, liminality, belonging, and social justice. She is highly skilled at building bridges and connections across cultures and demographics, adapting to quickly-changing circumstances, taking initiative, working with new media and technology, researching resources and networks, and producing in multiple creative and media forms.

 

 

 


 

OUTSIDE RESOURCES

  • Applied Arts and Health – Network of Researchers and Practitioners – Applied Arts and Health includes any artform which is used in an applied way to intentionally bring about change within a health context. – http://appliedartsandhealth.ning.com/
  • Rhizomaticac Arts – Cultivating 21st century creative professionals with skills to grow. (LA based) http://www.rhizomaticarts.com/

 

 

Collective Approaches – State of the Arts & Society – EMERGENCE 2015 – Morning Panel

 

Collective Approaches – State of the Arts & Society

Forum – 12:00pm

Panelists:

Rhiannon MacFadyen, Founder/Director of A Simple Collective
Ashara Saran Ekundayo, Impact Hub Oakland, LLC , Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer Omi Gallery, Director/Curator
Julie Potter,Creative Ecosystems Senior Program Manager, YBCA
Kristi Holohan is a member of Rock Paper Scissors, founder of Arts and Creative Expression (ACE Arts). 

How do we harness social, cultural and financial capital through collective impact and efforts? Artists working in collaboration achieve many practical and values based goals. Participants of this roundtable will share moments/tactics for their successes and challenges relevant to artists/arts organizations working in and outside of alternative forms to the Non-Profit and For-Profit dichotomy.

Panel Participants

Rhiannon-MacFadyenRhiannon Evans MacFadyen is a curator and project-based artist, as well as an independent consultant for artists, small institutions, and budding collectors. A San Francisco native, having over 15 years of in-depth experience in the arts–including 10+ years in the commercial gallery world and a number of years with Bay Area folkloric performance companies–Rhiannon has focused on projects that push boundaries of scale, scope, medium, venue, and content. In 2013 she founded A Simple Collective: an organization dedicated to fostering creative independence for professionals, and professional independence for creatives, and ASC Projects: an experimental project space in San Francisco’s Mission district. Deeply involved with several community-building, cultural, and arts marketing organizations, she spearheaded the creation and curation of Yerba Buena Night: the free outdoor arts festival in downtown San Francisco, now in its fourth year, and is on the Advisory Board for WEAD (Women’s Environmental Artist Directory) and Curatorial Committee for Root Division. She has curated exhibitions at Visual Aid Gallery, the New Media Lounge at Yerba Buena Night, ASC Projects, and SCOPE New York, and her shows and words have been included is The New Asterisk Magazine, SFArts.org, Art Practical, and KQED, among other publications.

 

Asjara-Saran-EkundayoAshara Saran Ekundayo is a cultural strategist and convener who consultants with start-ups and organizations to assess and build capacity for increased community engagement in their ventures through the uses of social permaculture design, creative arts practice, exhibition, and project management. Her combined passions for media, food, art and tech also inspire her to produce events such as Pecha Kucha Night Oakland and “Grits & Greens” and she can be heard on KPOO Radio amplifying the voices of women creatives with her “Sweetwater Sessions” segment as part the weekly Ibeji Lounge show.  Most recently Ashara serves as the Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Impact Hub Oakland and is also the Director for Omi Gallery located in Oakland, CA.  She also participates in the Urban Futures Think Tank at YBCA, and holds Advisory Board Positions with KQED Arts, Urban Protoyping, and the City of Oakland Cultural Funding Program.  She is a 2014 Emerging Arts Professional Fellow and Institute For the Future just pinged her as 2015 Fellow4Good inquiring on the Future of Collaboration and Spirituality.  She happily Tweets from @Blublakwomyn

 

Julie-PotterJulie Potter is a community engagement specialist, performance curator and writer based in San Francisco. As the YBCA:You Senior Program Manager at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Potter designs programs stimulating the frequency, diversity and community of art-going, including the Smart Night Out and Smart Night Outing performance programs. She also conducts creative case management developing individualized curricula as part of YBCA:You and manages inquiry-based networks as part of the Programs and Pedagogy team at YBCA. Potter was the 2013 Writer in Residence at the ODC Theater and completed studies in the 2013 class at Wesleyan University’s Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance. Potter has been a guest curator for ConVerge at YBCA, presenting Unproductive Time/A Party With Rules in 2014 and An Evening of Word/Playin 2013. She also curated Dance Discourse Project #13: Dancing in the Museum presented by Dancers’ Group, CounterPulse and the de Young Museum. Potter was a 2011-12 Emerging Arts Professionals Fellow organizing public programs in the Bay Area including Artist As Citizen, The Artist-Administrator Balancing Act and Collaborators in Situ.

 

Screen Shot 2015-05-28 at 11.18.45 PM

Kristi Holohan was raised in a craft family from Finnish-American decent and works in diverse mediums in the Bay Area.  Her personal work in visual and textile Art is heavily influenced by her relationships and constant street presence in Oakland community, policy and advocacy work, political comics and satire, through membership at Rock Paper Scissors Collective-as gallery curator and community/youth director, as an educator in Arts from an oppression/liberation framework with Restorative Practices, and her current mentor fine artist and muralist Dan Fontes.  Most always surrounded by Oakland community, natural urban homesteading and youth interns, Her work in visual Arts, curation, organizing, and education has been locally and nationally recognized for its base and intent in intensive community incorporation.   [kristi.holohan@gmail.com]

Crossing Into Race and Privilege in the Arts – EMERGENCE 2015 – Afternoon Workshop

 

Crossing Into Race and Privilege in the Arts

Youth Arts Lounge Room – 2:50pm

Lead by Angela Anderson Guerrero, Lauren Benetua, Jay Marie HillDorothy Santos and Manish Vaidya

A conversation about diversity, identity and the ways that history, culture, public policy and institutional practices interact to impact the way we address race and privilege in our sector. The session will invite us all to talk very explicitly about what #BlackLivesMatter looks like in practice via a multi-generational and multi-racial diaspora in the Bay Area. The goal of the session is to walk out with tightly bound commitments and new allegiances that lives far beyond the room and space.

Read the Community Hackpad from this session!

Session Lead by

Angela-AndersonAngela ‘Mictlanxochitl’ Anderson, Ph.D. student, M.A. is currently a scholar practitioner and artist whose doctoral studies are exploring the intersections of epistemology, indigenous knowledge and spirituality.  Both her art and her studies are an extension of her spiritual work within traditions of Mesoamerican, Native American, and Andean lineages.  At CIIS, she lead a $10,000 Social Innovation Grant from California Campus Compact that enabled CIIS students to initiate the“Mindfulness & Community Resilience” project at a charter school in the Tenderloin Community.  In the Bay area community, Angela works alongside local artists around creative endeavors aiming to create and honor sacred space and indigenous traditions. She received an M.A. in public policy and a certificate in health administration and policy from the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Public Policy in 2004, and completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Notre Dame in 2000. Angela is currently the Student Alliance Coordinator at California Institute of Integral Studies

 

Lauren-B-PicLauren Benetua,  American Arts Incubator Program Assistant, ZERO1 Garage and Network Coordinator, San Jose Peace and Justice Center – Lauren is an arts advocate and aspiring curator in love with art for social change, especially from indigenous perspectives and diasporic voices. She is dedicated to improve social and cultural bridging through unexpected and unconventional ways, especially participatory community arts projects. Her research interests focus on ways indigenous textiles, cloth, and clothing are forms of transmitting knowledge, history, and cultural identity, and can be used as tools to uplift the (often marginalized) women and communities from which they originate. On the weekends, you can find her nose deep in coloring books and researching archives of Indigenous and Third World Resistance movements.

 

Jay-Marie-HillJay-Marie Hill, Administrative Mgr at Robert Moses’ Kin Dance Company – Jay-Marie is a Black, Boricua y White Masculine, Queer Woman, born and raised in the Bay Area. She is a graduate of Stanford University (B.A) in Theater and Performance Studies and the University of Southern California (M.A., Teaching). In all of her work – as a teacher, mentor, arts administrator, and artist – she seeks to support artists and organizations that further her desire to help Youth and People of Color feel empowered to take on the task of healing and transforming their communities and our world.  Having worked with several different arts organizations in the Bay Area, Jay-Marie always leaves a mark of professionalism, deep relationships, and fun in her wake. Her participation in the invite-only Brown Boi Project in 2010 – a national leadership development program for Masculine of Center People of Color – helped re-ground her focus in a desire to elevate Art and Blackness as a tactic to achieve liberation for people of all backgrounds. She found that in her current position at Robert Moses’ Kin and resonates deeply with RMK’s mission: to create phenomenal art that – rather than look beyond the differences that make us human – both recognizes and celebrates them.

 

Dorothy-SantosDorothy Santos, Arts Editor for Hyphen Magazine and The New Asterisk Magazine ​Dorothy is a writer and editor whose research areas include computational aesthetics, programming, coding, open source culture and their effects on contemporary art. Born and raised in San Francisco, California, she holds Bachelor’s degrees in Philosophy and Psychology from the University of San Francisco, and received her Master’s degree in Visual and Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts. She currently serves as an editor for the New Asterisk magazine, Hyphen, and The Civic Beat. Her work appears in Hyperallergic, Art21, Art Practical, Creative Applications Network, Daily Serving, Planting Rice, and Stretcher. She has lectured and spoken at the de Young Museum, San Francisco Art Institute, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and ZERO1: The Art and Technology Network. She serves as a board member for the SOMArts Cultural Center.

 

Manish-VaidyaManish Vaidya is Civic Engagement Coordinator, Queer Cultural Center; Founder and Artistic Director, Peacock Rebellion.  Manish is a comedian; life coach to burned-out activists; program coordinator at Queer Cultural Center, home of the National Queer Arts Festival; and the founding Artistic Director of Peacock Rebellion, a social justice arts organization for queer and trans people of color.

 

 

 


 

PROJECT
We Hear You: lolzculturalequity, a Resource and Support Hub for the Voiceless 
The Cultural Equity team founded and runs lolzCulturalEquity, a multi-site hub that seeks to empower Bay Area artists, arts administrators, and cultural producers through its use as a destination for creatives to anonymously share experiences regarding cultural equity-related challenges within the Bay Area arts community. This media platform allowed the the EAP Cultural Equity Research team the opportunity to serve our community as well as connect artists to organizational resources and individuals ready and willing to empower others. In addition to the online web format, the team created a dedicated warmline for sharing of and support thru uncomfortable and unacceptable, non-urgent incidents. The number allowed our community to leave a message detailing these incidents and experiences of cultural (in)equity, thus providing an outlet that had never before been offered to our community. If requested by the caller, one of the lolz Cultural Equity founders followed up the caller via email or by phone within 48 hours. All information was kept confidential. – http://lolzculturalequity.tumblr.com/

RESOURCES
Online
  • Microaggressions. Power, privilege and everyday life – This blog seeks to provide a visual representation of the everyday.  http://www.microaggressions.com/
  • Media Diversified is a young and growing non-profit organisation which seeks to cultivate and promote skilled writers of colour by providing advice and contacts and by promoting content online through its own platform. http://mediadiversified.org/
Local Organizations