Saturday Feb 6, 2016: CULTURAL EQUITY

Cultural Equity: Almost 43% of California residents speak a language other than English at home, a proportion far higher than any other state. Additionally, no single racial or ethnic group forms a majority of California’s population, making the state a minority-majority state. How can arts mangers advance the conversation on cultural equity? Is it about engaging new and diverse participants, providing more support for community arts, tacking institutional or systemic marginalization or rethinking creative placemaking strategies?

Guest Speakers

Mohammed Soriano-Bilal is probably best known as the voice of reason on MTV’s Real World San Francisco. He is an accomplished diversity consultant, a hip-hop writer/artist, and an award-winning producer of both music and film. Soriano-Bilal has facilitated of over 450 diversity and inclusion presentations, with clients including Alcatel-Lucent Technologies, Progressive Insurance, Blue Shield, and the US Treasury. As an recording artist/producer, Soriano-Bilal released four albums (one on Epic Records) and collaborated with such luminaries as Santana, Public Enemy, Living Legends and Mos Def. His music has been featured in the Sundance Award-winning film, Drylongso, and on TV shows such as Moesha, and NBC’s mini-series, Kingpin. His plays and original compositions have graced the stages of Theater Artaud, the Carpenter Performing Arts Center, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. As a weekly San Francisco Bay Guardian columnist, his Howling at the Moon column reached over 100,000 readers. As a media producer, Soriano-Bilal produced dozens of films, shows and campaigns, including director Robert Townsend’s award-winning series, Diary of Single Mom; If I Were President, an election campaign featuring Danny Glover and Mos Def; and Vocabulary of Change, Conversations Between Angela Davis & Tim Wise. Throughout his career, he has raised over $7.5M for projects to empower low-income Americans. Currently, Soriano-Bilal serves as the Executive Director of the African American Art & Culture Complex. | Mohammed’s LinkedIn

Ani Rivera – Bio TBA | Ani’s LinkedIn

Readings

Required Readings:

  1. Placemaking and the Politics of Belonging and Dis-belonging by Roberto Bedoya
  2. EXPLAINING WHITE PRIVILEGE TO A BROKE WHITE PERSON by Gina Crosley-Corcoran
  3. Othering and Belonging video by John A. Powell, Director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society

If you’d like to read further: 

Group Notes