 Okay, my name is Lydia Clements of the Clements Family Farm, and I'm very happy today to be with my colleague, Rajni Eddins. So this presentation is a sense of place how African-American and African diaspora arts and culture and a rare farm are improving mental health and community well-being in a amount of all places. Okay. So this is a creative place-making project. We won an award from Art Place America, a couple of years ago, which really enabled us to do a lot more intensively and a lot more loudly what our family and our farm have actually been doing for nearly 60 years. Since 1962 on this beautiful farm in Vermont, we've been engaging in arts, culture, and agriculture and celebrating our heritage. Next, African-American land ownership and why is this place important? These beautiful people here are my parents. Jack and Lydia Clements, 96 years old. I feel at home when I look deep in their eyes. Their age is quite symbolic of African-American history and land ownership. They're nearly one century old. When my parents were born in the 1920s, their families and African-Americans around the country owned a total of 44 million acres. Now, at the age of 96, African-Americans own 3.5 million acres. We've lost 93% of our land assets. Yeah, we own of all the farms in the United States, only half of 1%, 0.4% of farms in the nation. African-Americans represent about 13.2% of the population and we own 0.4%. That's nationwide. This gives you a little click again. You'll see the little puzzle, the pieces of the pie. When my folks were born in the 20s, the African-American owned land represented that piece of the pie. The pie is about a billion acres, 970 billion acres, million acres of farmland in the United States in 1920. In the 2012 Ag Census, that was the piece of the pie for African-Americans. All right, there are a lot of discussions we can have about why, what happened? But one of the big reasons, one of the first big reasons was called the Great Migration, beginning in the 1920s. When my parents' families and 6 million other African-Americans made a mass exit out of the South. And you can all imagine why. And left the South, left their farms and went to the Midwest and California to take up urban lifestyles. Other professional jobs to get the heck out of farming and the oppression that they're experiencing in the Southeast. 148 magnificent acres of prime farmland, forest land, and six phenomenal historic buildings that were constructed originally in the 1800s. Of course, this land I must acknowledge was stolen from the Adamaki people. And then established in the 1800s by white settlers. And then our folks came along in 1962 and purchased it. Our farm is one of 23 historic landmarks on the Vermont African-American Heritage Trail. And may I note that of the 23 landmarks on Vermont's African-American Heritage Trail, we're the only site that's actually owned by African-Americans and operated by African-Americans. We are in Vermont, but that is an important point to make. And again, we've been offering African-American arts and culture programming to Vermont since 1962 in a very informal family way. And then that Art Place America Grant, 350,000 big ones, boom, brought us up into a different level. Next. This is Vermont, 94.5% white. Vermont loves to say we're the second white estate in the nation, but we're really pretty much tied with Maine as the white estate in the nation. In our population, only 1.2% are black. And these are the six towns that we work with through the Art Place America Grant. These are six towns right around the farm. And the blue column is Charlotte, where the farm is based. You can see that's the least diverse of the six towns. It's about 97, 98% white. And then there's us. And our farm in Charlotte. Next. So what are we doing with this creative place making a sense of place project? Our big goal is to use place, arts, and culture to improve community, mental health, and social well-being in Vermont. That's our big goal. And we're doing that through three major areas. I'm gonna just say them first and then we'll go through the slides. The first area is creating a sense of place, creating an emotional attachment to a place for people who come to the farm and who know about the farm. The second area is to reduce the social exclusion of black people in this very white state through arts, culture, and place. Another objective under this community, health, and social well-being is to address white fragility. And a final objective, of course, is to build community, a multicultural community, place, art, and culture, and people. So on the first one about fostering emotional attachment, how are we doing this? Again, the farm has about six, seven historic buildings which each have their own stories and meaning and importance to our family and to the local community over 200 years. Again, our family has owned these buildings in this farm for about 60 years. One of the things we did to foster emotional attachment beyond what we'd already been doing informally as a family was to organize last year with our big Art Place America grant a place-making design charrette. And we invited arts and culture leaders including the Vermont Arts Council, the Vermont Humanities Council and about 40 architects and artists to the farm to engage in a day of visioning and place-making. To think about one of the buildings which is a beautiful, two-level historic dairy barn and think about what could this space become as a center for visual and performing arts for African-American and African diaspora culture and heritage. And so over the course of two days we had the adults and we also had kids come in and look at the space and imagine what they would do with that space. The second area that we're working in again is on this issue of finding our black people in Vermont. Our people of African descent and bringing them together to reduce that social exclusion. Black people are out there in Vermont shining. The way you would look up at a night sky. Now in Vermont you can see all the stars clearly because there's not a whole lot of light. But in other areas you're gonna see like little moon. That's kind of what it is like for black people in Vermont, shining, but not in a beautiful sky where you can really see them. They're far apart and they're scattered. But when you bring them together, oh my goodness. Oh my goodness for the community and oh my goodness for the artists themselves or the African-Americans themselves. This slide says a thousand words in one picture. We have Chol from Sudan, Julio from Haiti, Mike from Jamaica, and McKaylin from Mali. They all live in the Burlington area. None of them had known each other before. Chol on the left here in the blue shirt is our program administrator. He declares that he is not an artist. But the other three are artists. And one of the joys was A, just coming together in the same room on the farm and starting to talk about school programs we're going to be doing together. And B, the joy of discovering the diversity and similarity of African heritage. A Jamaican musician watches a step dancer and listens to her rhythms and says, oh my God, that's like a traditional rhythm from Jamaica. Or actually he said, oh my God, I can't do the Jamaican actually. You know how lovely and belting it is? That's how he said it. He was amazed that her step dancing reminded him of some of the traditional rhythms of Jamaica. None of them knew that step dancing actually had some origins in South Africa and the gumboot dancing and all of that. So I started telling them about the history of step dancing. And then meanwhile, the Haitian painter started drawing and saying, this reminds me of, and so it was amazing just to get black people together in a room to realize how diverse and how similar and how rich our cultures are. And then we took all that into the classrooms. So in terms of dealing with social exclusion, to bring people together who are otherwise marginalized, to affirm their identities and their culture, and then to give them something wonderful and productive to do where they're reflected in the faces of these beautiful children. We value you, we see you, we admire you, we like you, we appreciate you. They left that room unclogged now. When's the next one? I said, well, we'll see. We'll see. What's the next one? Next? White fragility. How many of you guys have heard of white fragility? All right, great, so I don't have to explain that. But y'all know what Vermont is like. Vermont, Vermont is voted for Obama. They voted for Bernie. They're progressive, they're liberal. They can't stand what's happening at the national level, at the administration, and yet how many have actually really talked to a black person? Okay, you have. You have progressive liberal white people who have never actually had to, it's kind of a cognitive dissonance thing, right? You're being told you're actually benefiting from white privilege, white supremacy, institutional racism, you don't know what to do with all that. And then who do you talk with? The colleague across the street who you've been like, just said hello to by the water cooler. I mean, you've never actually connected with a black person. So how do you start? And often, unfortunately, I've been on the other side of the situation. Your first real connection across race, black person to white person, might be a conflict. Something happened in the school, like what happened in my case. An angry mom comes into the school to confront the principal because something happened to her child. And that's your first interaction. And suddenly the principal is saying, my eye grew up with black people. My childhood friend was a black person. I'm not a racist. When I never said you were a racist, however, this happened. And so immediately the connection becomes the confrontational and very negative one on both sides. Art and culture can help in that first step to addressing white fragility. Get past the white fragility, so you actually can have a meaningful conversation without people feeling stressed on both sides. Black folks not so stressed, white folks not so stressed, or white folks not feeling so fragile because you're engaged in something really cool. Co-creating, learning about a culture, perfecting your art with artists who are teaching you who happen to be black. When you get that first connection, the rest of the conversations come from. That first connection is creative, positive, affirming for both people, exciting. So that's what part of the farm's work is and the sense of places is creating an environment where white folks can come and not feel quite so fragile and can connect with black people the way they've been dreaming and desiring to connect and in a way that doesn't make them feel like, I hope I don't say the wrong thing, I'm not trying to be politically correct, I'm not sure how to even talk to you. You don't have to, just let's do some art together. Next. I'm waiting for the candy, no candy coming. Yeah. The next one is community engagements and community building is through the art that we're able to connect, build empathy, have a shared experience and actually feel like we belong together. Rajni Eddin's here as a collaborating artist with the farm is in this picture, you can't see him terribly well, but led a very powerful spoken word engagement with the community. One of the most powerful engagements we've had, usually our groups are about like this, little less, 40 people, where we bring art and then eventually some kind of conversation might happen. Not deliberate, but just happens and through the art and his spoken word poetry, we had some very powerful emotional reactions, a lot of healing, a lot of frank and candid discussions and afterwards a lot of hugging, but it was very real for people and it was interesting that after that engagement, let me see, most of the time, I started getting a lot of emails, white books have gone home and they started reading the newspaper with a different lens now and started sending the articles that they probably have been in the newspaper every day, the same kinds of articles, but saying, look at this, I just saw this, look at this, I just noticed this because now suddenly they've connected and they've felt some empathy and they've spent some resonance and so yes, these quality, small engagements, not huge amounts of people where you're sitting in a room, it's almost like a family room, feels like family and you can have those joyful conversations and also some hard and emotional conversations in a place that feels safe and with quality artists, quality people who are really engaging your creative soul as well and encouraging some conversations. Next please. So specifics, we are a black-owned farm in Vermont, are not even a 501c3 yet, we have fiscal agents. So, getting ourselves into the arena of the non-profit 501c3, even with a big brand, it's not easy. We're trailblazing in a lot of ways, there are not many black-owned organizations in the nation, let alone in Vermont and so one of the strategic things we did, quickly, was to find VIP champions. Let me tell you, this beautiful woman in the center surrounded by some Vermont Arts Council people I meet soon. Standing in our barn, she is one of the lead architects of the Smithsonian National African American History and Culture Museum in Washington, DC. How many of you have been to that museum? She designed that, all right? With a team of architects, she was one of the lead architects. Zena Howard, I cove called Zena. I said, well Zena we have no way, even with a big art place in America grant, there's no way we could pay your fees but let me tell you about this farm and I just cove called her and the story is pretty compelling and compelling enough that she waved her fees and came and spent three days on the farm with us to lead these kinds of conversations with arts and culture leaders, artists, architects about the creative place making and the importance of preserving a place that reflects cultural heritage, history and identity especially in a place like Vermont, especially for an African American community, what that meant, having Zena Howard as a champion is huge. It's huge for anybody but particularly if you're a black lead organization, a small family farm, to have someone like that come is an important tactic, you know, if you're starting out or collaborating with other nonprofits who are POC led, this is an important one in terms of gaining credibility and then also the storytelling and continuously telling the story about the place, the place itself and the people who created that place is another important tactic in terms of elevating the importance of what you're doing. We'll go on to the next slide. In terms of our reaching out to black artists who I said are those shining stars in a dark sky, you can't quite find them, how do you find them in Vermont? A call to artists proposal is a great way to find artists, any artists, but especially I think it was probably the first time in Vermont to my knowledge that there was a call for artists proposals that specifically said we want arts and culture proposals that celebrate African-American and African diaspora culture and heritage. First time, I think, specifically saying that's what we want. We didn't say you have to be black, we just said if your art is celebrating in a real way, African-American, African diaspora art and culture, please apply. That brought out the stars from all over the place. What was also surprising is it even brought out stars from other places in New England. And one of our criteria was it has to be within those six towns supported by art place. However, if you partner with an artist from one of those six towns, you will also be eligible for the grant. And so that brought people, even a guy in California, and he said I'm walking across the United States as part of my own art project, but I want to find someone in your project and partner with them. He didn't actually get a grant, but it was kind of cool that someone walking from California applied. So that was a great way to find artists and to be seen also in the community. Whoa, one of those family farm has given out grants. Okay, next slide. Also this is again back at the charrette. We had Art Place America representatives come last year to involve all these artists and architects on the creative place making, getting artists and the community involved very early in your project and saying hey, what are your ideas? I mean we got this money, we have a proposal, but we want to really hear from you really. And so actually according time, space, and funds to really hear people and spend quality time listening to their ideas a whole day dedicated to just thinking about potentials for that use of space. And you'll see it's a diverse crowd. We have our black artists and our white artists, our community members in that room all talking together. Next slide. I'm over. I'm over. Oh my God, you guys did do a lot of discussion, but let me just wrap up really quickly and say we did do a survey. We found that we are having an impact on mental health and community well-being. White folks are feeling less fragile. They're saying yes, I had some quality interactions for the first time with black people. Yes, I want to come back and I want to bring friends back. So we do actually have data that shows this and we think that we're developing a model here. It's very important in these times for how do we as arts and culture folks bridge the divide, address the hate, and create a culture of love. So thank you very much. So now I think we open it up for discussions and I also want to again highlight that Rajni is a wealth of knowledge and deep-lived experience as a poet and author who's lived in Vermont for six, seven years now. Nine years, goodness. So, opening it up, yes. My question is just, because we didn't get to hear from Rajni, what do you want to add to this presentation from your perspective? Oh my goodness, well, I've lived in Vermont nine years now and it has been a challenging place for me to be, you know, I've made a lot of connections. I come originally from Seattle, Washington. I was born in San Jose, California. So I came in 2010 because my godmother was ill at the time and my mom kind of pulled my ears. If you don't come over, I'm gonna die. I was like, I probably gotta go. So it was part of the culture shock when I first arrived here and most of my background is using spoken word and hip hop and theater as a tool to empower youth through self-expression and also to address implicit bias and racism in different capacity. And what I learned was that was a great need here. And I'm thankful for being connected with Liddy and the Clemens Family Farm because it is such a crucial resource for black folks and people of color. I mean, for community in general, for white folks too. But we need a space to be able to have affirmation of our mental health and our existence and creative expression to kind of find some solace in an area that can be pretty challenging. I worked in the schools probably for about nine years now. I started the fall of 2010 when I first arrived and I saw that there is a great need for youth to see themselves reflected. Especially children of color, especially children of African and African American descent. In positive ways and I've always had a great facility in working with youth because my mother was a foster parent over 70 children. And she was also the founder of the first black writers group of the Northwest African American Riders Alliance. So that connection between art and serving youth is like family for me. So those pieces being able to connect with youth in vibrant ways and holding space in areas where that might not happen otherwise has been beautiful. But it also shows me that there's work to be done. So I'm happy for this opportunity to work with Lydia in that capacity to see that we can develop more resources to hold space for community and tandem and also specifically for the equity needs of people of African descent. Right, so I'm from Leuphort, Rhode Island and we have, I wanted to know if you all had any pushback from the outside community on creating a space for people of color because where I live, it's like, well, why do you guys need that? Why can't all of us be, you know, and I'm really trying to carve a space because we don't see ourself anywhere in Leuphort and I don't know how to speak to that when they keep giving pushback of why you do need it. So what was your experience with that? Well, I think we've seen people just for showing up and speaking with truth to power in our own community and our own circle. And I think that speaks to what Lydia said earlier about white fragility, you know, you have a lot of people who are pretty glaringly ignorant about the historical and present-day reality of human beings' experience today and it shows, you know, but I think that the way that we can address it is by holding space for the teachable moments. You know, we have experienced that too, but that's not gonna stop us, you know, because it's more so about making sure that people have the opportunity to learn that everybody has value here and there are crucial pieces that some people who have always seen themselves reflected have gotten that other folks who have not are needing. So if we really care about the well-being of all people, we'll try to do some deep-seated consideration of those things. Otherwise it just continue to be the same reactionary response, you know, but that's why I love art as an import because it can take people into space and suspend disbelief, put yourself in someone else's shoes and empathetic space in your mind and see the bridge to that mutual understanding. I'll just add one word is that we have a leg up over you in that we've been in the same place, owning it, since 1962, so that we're established in the community and have an asset that, you know, everybody has to acknowledge, okay, that's kind of important what you've got there. However, even so, even so, even with our status in the community and the fact that we have, we own, we own this property. We still don't have that property conserved because we don't fit into land conservation and easement boxes. This land, this 148 acre property, which we have been trying for almost 10 years to get conserved is not conserved. So there are a lot of, you know, even so, even with all that we have, it's, we don't fit in the box often and there may be a bit of that institutional racism about, well, why is your farm so important? There may be that, so it's just to acknowledge that what you're facing is real. Even for us, it's a challenge. So if you don't have land that you own, that's going to be even more of a challenge. You had to. You had mentioned during the slides about the public dialogue, the community group that was there. I wondered if you could give us a couple of specifics about how that dialogue moved through its process to bring people to a space of being able to be vulnerable and building trust and so forth. I'm going to let Rajne again answer that because the best session we had was the one co-led by Rajne and also his co-speaker was, co-artist was Kaya Morris. You may know that name. She is also an artist if you didn't know that as well as being a former legislator who had to step down with his racism. She was his co-facilitator of that session. Can you hear me? Yes. Your question is how were people able to be brought to a place to be vulnerable? Yeah. I think that Kaya Morris and I, we did a really good job of being vulnerable ourselves and it wasn't necessarily about brow-beating white people or like, you know, it was some people think that whenever a person of color is honest, that's just taking place. I think it's more so about offering a genuine experience and letting folks know, hey, this is part of our story. You know, we both shared some pieces that were profoundly emotional for us, and visually so, and that offering is a profound gift when you share it with people. Because you're sharing a part of yourself that not everyone sees and it has a parasympathetic response in people when you do that. And people saw that and took it in and saw that we were almost moved to tears and then were able to ask some pretty insightful questions based on their resonating responses. And I think that's what it takes artistically and just humanity-wise when you hold a space, a dynamic container where everybody feels safe to express themselves and feel seen, valued, heard, affirmed, then growth can take place, and new understandings can be grown and that changes the dynamic of kind of keeping people with perpetual spaces of guardedness and then keeping ourselves separate and emotionless to present some type of professional posture rather than to be genuine and sincere. Great, thank you. And then there's my brother and then there's I'm back there, listen to my brother and then go. You said that the best was when he gets the open word. Do you have some for us, Ken? No. Do we have time, Lydia? I'm gonna ask the... We have five minutes. 15 minutes? Five minutes. Five minutes. Five. Woo! I'll do something real short. All right, this is quick. All right, this is a piece called Middle Passage. I wrote this when I was 17 for an event called the MAFA. To celebrate the ancestors who were brought in ships. There should be oceans of tears. There should be oceans of tears. This ink is not my blood. What right have I to speak? What right have I to speak? Think my words, the salty oblivion to swallow this globe. Submerging continents. Mother's one perfect tear for her children. There were children in that small cramped space giving birth in fetal position to stillborn cosmos. Tiny infinites with mayhem as midwife. Below deck. Below death. Below breath was hope, hidden in heartbeat rhythm. And now sometimes I see our children are. Below deck. Crammed in into small cramped space. But the wooden planks are blocks and stoops and streets. But our heart beating hope tells me to have to live that metaphor. But we're the lineage of stars and suns. Look at the sky and see your reflection. Forget for us to have a stinky ocean strengthen. But galaxies do litter the seafloor. No one can ever take away our before. They sunk so that we soar. They hung so that we soar. They sunk and sung with tears in their lungs so that we soar. This is not a metaphor. This is not a metaphor. This ain't no metaphor. Middle Passage. You said for all artists to celebrate the African diaspora and you open it up to white artists, how was that process? I mean, I can sort of see all kinds of possibilities and was there, was this a jurid thing or were the proposals specific? Can you share some of the criteria for that? Actually, the proposal is still, the call is still up online. All it is, all it is, cool. From last year, so don't apply. No, no, I don't, I'm not provided. Yes, it was open to anybody. We did have a few white artists apply and we had a jury, representatives of each of the six towns that were, are covered by our project. Some white, some black. And the jury decided, for example, the proposals there, maybe four or five that kind of were shortlisted which were five white artists, only white artists, but still weren't connecting their black art but not connecting the culture or the heritage part and not showing us how that art would build community. So some of the criteria were, you have to show us how you can build community with this with the black experience with black culture. So again, a lot of white people could be hard to do but it's not impossible to do. But that, those criteria they eventually fell off. We had a jury who reviewed and then we all came together to discuss the shortlisted proposals and then find the ones. Thank you. One last, I'm sorry, there were other people but one more, whoever has had their hand up along the side, can't say it. Question? Yeah, sorry, I didn't know if there was any more in the back. Kind of going off the proposals, I was just curious as to what methods you used to get. Call out, as you said that these stars were all very scattered around and it looked like you had a clip from the video but how did you get the word out to bring these people to end up applying? That is a really good question. It was amazing, because we were trying to talk to people. So we had posters, we had our artists that we were collaborating with, put posters wherever they went, where they knew the small public, some of the black people and artists and people in the diaspora were. We had it printed in seven days, which is the big state newspaper on the website. We did a lot of social media sharing and that's how we did it. Okay. All right, I think it's time to meddle in. All right, we can't even do it. Ha ha, I think it's time.