 excited to introduce to you this next panel which explores the role of everyday creativity in transforming communities and in particular how each of the organizations represented supports and instigates the creative power of the communities they're embedded in. Please welcome Kemi Ilesami, Executive Director of the Laundromat Project, Ebony, Ebony Noel Golden, Founder and CEO of Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative, and Shadeh Liptov, CEO of the National Black Theater. I'm so excited to have this chance to connect with you all here on stage and in front of our beautiful audience. It's been a really exciting roller coaster and we're ready to take it to another exploration that in particular what I'm excited about this next panel is that we're privileging the perspective of community engagement and everyday creativity. So I wanted to open up with this idea that Robin Kelly and others have written and talked about which is this notion of radical imagination and how essential it is for liberation because not only does it allow us to resist oppressive institutions but it actually allows us to envision what we want to replace those institutions with. So I want to open it up with this with this concept and to ask each of you or whoever wants to jump in. I know our time is short. How does this notion of radical imagination connect to the idea of art and creativity and how is this reflected in the work that you do every day? I've been inspired today by the James Baldwin quotes and thinking about literature and some of the other things that others have brought up so far this morning. So I looked up a quote from The Salt Eaters, the opening of Salt Eaters by Tony Cade Bambara that I wanted to share that I go back to you as a touch point and I'll connect it. So the book opens up with are you sure sweetheart that you want to be well? Just so you're sure sweetheart and ready to be healed because wholeness is no trifling matter, a whole lot of weight when you're well. And I really think a lot about the laundromat project's work as building a culture and a community of wellness and owning our imaginations in its most radical form is about that pursuit of being well and being able to sit in every complexity and nuance and contradiction and joy and beauty that we deserve to hold. We serve communities of color communities living on modest income right here in New York City. We're building a community of artists and neighbors who are using creativity as a path towards wellness and towards creating change in the places where they live and where they grow and where they breathe and where they raise families and all those beautiful things and we're doing it by supporting artist projects that are community engaged and community responsive. We're working with artists that want to do this work with a moral compass with respect for the communities in which they are taking apart etc. And we have a community hub in the South Bronx where we get to go again and again and again and I think that'll come up in some of our conversation but this idea of being well for me is very rooted to the ideal radical wellness. Yeah I'm feeling in this moment that radical imagination is the only way we can be visionary in future forward and how we want this world to look in the now and in the liberated Afro future. And there is a song by Bernice Johnson Regan that happens at the beginning of Their Eyes Were Watching God the film version. The song is there's a new world coming everything's gonna be turning over everything's gonna be turning where you gonna be standing when it comes. And I think for me being in a practice of radical imagination means I am learning how to choose where I want to stand. Do I want to stand still? Do I want to stand scared? Do I want to stand afraid? Do I want to stand with folks who are pushing for that new world? And an art and radical imagination I just I think it can be interchangeable. For me it is interchangeable and it really provides the foundation for my work as an artist as an educator as a strategist working with communities and working with organizations that are supporting the absolute necessity for artists to be at decision makers at all levels and parts of our communities. And right now the pictures that you see are from a work of love and a work of art that I've been able to bring this idea of radical imagination into 125th and Freedom, which is my most current performance project public art project that traveled from First Avenue to to all the way west riverside not riverside what's the where do we go Kim and you can it was a part river yes yes and a five hour durational performance piece that was really looking at how we can reimagine our communities and be creatively a part of those conversations around change around legacy and around public space so yeah yeah starts with our psychic shackles and the commitment to disappear them and it's something that we practice at National Black Theater which for me is a game changer it's something that I call the over under faster so what's the over under factor immediately ASAP get over any conversation that has you be under something so under capitalized under represented under resource right we have a tendency especially in POC communities especially when you're serving a specific neighborhood or community that you get labeled with and sometimes resources come from that being underprivileged get over being under right that's the first step of radical imagination imagine your identity created from your own kind of connection and your own urgency to be your ancestors wildest dream so that's the first part just get over being under and the imagine and when you can take that leap right you take that leap of to your point time travel this astro projection into what a black future this season at MBT we're calling the black to the future what is possible right the audacity the radicalness of what is possible when not you're under nothing and so for me that is this that is why we've been on the corner of 125th street of the avenue for a half a century we didn't luck up on it you know it was radical in our imagination yeah well jumping on on that point and thank you all for sharing those ideas one thing that's interesting about this word radical which you know can can scare and can excite but if we if you look at the epistemology of the word it comes from the word roots yes and so connected to this idea is both the idea of getting to the core what's at the core of the issue but also it links us to this idea of being grounded and a couple of you just in your last response kind of naturally gravitated to to what what this actually means in terms of a community a geography and so I'm wondering if you can talk with us a little bit about this idea of being embodied being grounded holding space and how that connects to the work you do I'll say very quickly so it was funny I was doing a panel at the Apollo and some very wealthy white man came on before us to talk to us about our community was awesome the Apollo you know he said and it's so wonderful that you guys have made it that you know you you're here for this moment as if it was accidental right like this we locked up on our property but that's not how it works right we all know that and so the rootedness the national black theater started in 1968 by my mother dr barbarians here we started in the same building an old jewelry factory studio museum and national black theater under the same roof and we're both starting to 50 right something was happening in 68 a lot of things burned to the ground it was a six alarm fire the commercial real estate one space which was a Kentucky fried chicken and the next space was a dry cleaner and the explosion from the grease and the chemicals created the building to come down so rooted we show up the next day and we're all homeless right and my mother said in 1983 crack has officially hit our communities everything in Harlem looks bombed out she was like I want to buy the property people like you are crazy and she was like no it's the most famous address in the world and people are looking at this Kentucky fried chicken that burned to the ground and old jewelry factory where you're like doing rituals and painting and people couldn't see point is she said you could go anywhere in the world and say Fifth Avenue and everybody immediately knows New York City and opulence breakfast at Tiffany's Fifth Avenue you say 125th street you know we're talking about Harlem we're talking about black culture and we're talking about that cultural corridor she said I wanted to own the corner of the two that intercede and build a temple to the excellence and the beauty of our authentic story of power so rejecting what is possible because now you know once when history is fancy it wasn't dead and so the point is holding space for what's possible next and watering that every single day like your life depends on it and your community's life depends on it because you know what it does God bless National Black Theater I got goosebumps chills I think it's really for me this concept of rootedness and the radical is really about legacy and what we know about where we come from and as a person who moves around the country I'm from Houston Texas I've been in New York for 10 years I lived in North Carolina I lived in DC so I've been moving for work for love for education since I was a kid basically and what I I think was kept to me rooted in my practice rooted is having a very a real critical sense of family of accountability of chosen family and of blood family and of accountability to the communities that I've been a part of just because I've transitioned out of them doesn't mean I forget about people or forget about what they've taught me I think it's also important to honor your teachers honor your master teachers honor the people who have invested in you as a way of staying rooted in practice and rooted in an understanding of being a bridge to the next person and the next person so for me rootedness is a is it is about place even though I'm not from Harlem in particular Harlem is a cultural mecca that black artists have gone to and wanted to be in since the beginning of Harlem and so it's really important again and talking about cultural rootedness to know who's put in the work who's guided you who's made it possible for you to walk March up and down 125th Street today talking about you know free free us freedom now and I feel like for me the concept of of being rooted and the radical is it is becoming increasingly important as our community shift as we experience what it means to be experiencing gentrification as our community as people leave and move further away with the digital kind of world that we're in right now to know who you are where you are where you're from while you're there what helps you to get there and what's important to help this these communities to thrive I think is intimately for me a ritual practice and Shade mentioned ritual I think we're all talking about ritual rituals what you do is what you do every day and the idea of ritual being something that's about talking to your neighbor you know if they're if the if the children on on your corner need something it's not it doesn't have to be these grand gestures how you welcome people how you really pay attention to the needs of your community of the need your needs of your family needs of your household very intimate encounters I think for me is what is what is really informing my ideas of what how to be rooted and how to be radical to be intimately involved with people and not to just see people as passbys or or a step ladders to get to the next thing or the next idea that you want to accomplish coming home to self coming home to what you've been taught coming home to legacy is yeah it's what's really standing out for me right now yes the launch of my project has worked very intimately with Ms. Golden here over the last five years she works with us as a cultural organizing consultant and guru so lots of what I'll say might resonate with what you just heard and when we were discussing this earlier some of these ideas around rootedness and holding space I was thinking a lot about units of time which you've both brought up so 50 years for nbt studio museum so five decades five hours that I went on a journey with ebony and a group of just beautiful people across 125th street I'd never been to 1st avenue 125th street and then the launch of my project we're 12 years old and we've been very much rooted in New York City so also unit units of time as well as scale kind of how do these things kind of fit together and in the last five years we have anchored ourselves in three neighborhoods which is a deliberate choice they are bedside harlem and hunts point longwood in the south Bronx and the motivation around that was about issues of sweat equity accountability reciprocity and this factor of time and rootedness what does it mean to come back again and again we do we work in a variety of ways but one of the key ways we work is we commission artists and residents over a six month period in each of those neighborhoods and occasionally others as well but so that those are smaller units of time that are six months often those artists end up doing things and being feeling committed and you don't leave just because you've left or because the thing has officially ended but also as an organization we wanted to be able to say work we're here we remain we care we will listen we will show up for the event we will talk to the kids we will learn the names we will say hello we will help when it's needed and we will ask for help when we need it because we don't assume that that's only happening in one direction we will be held accountable when we don't live up to our best and we will ask questions when we need to figure out what's going on so all of that relates to a certain level of rootedness in the sense that you act differently you if you know that you will be held to account and if you know that you will be returning it's a different way that you move in the world with a certain level of intentionality and care and that again that sense of let us figure out we want to be well we want to be well together and for communities of color for people of color so yes there's a geography of that particularly that the LP works in and that has come up here but the LP also works with the community of artists they're 150 strong over that 12 years that we've worked with through our signature program and that's the community that we care about and return to and work with and have that sense of rootedness and reciprocity and so in one another it is about building family it is about building community can I see one quick yeah because the second part of that question was about holding space and that's something that these women appear to maybe better than anybody else and I think we'd be remissed if we didn't just touch on that for a hot second and what I would say is on my hardest day MBT we do something called holistic producing so we use our plays as as conversation pieces so we curate a dramaturgical lobby exhibit where we tease out a social justice message you see that you go in you see the play and then we have a talk back at the end and you know I run a multi-million dollar cultural arts organization we're constantly raising money constantly doing all these things that you would be on about but my hardest moment in my work and in my practice is that talk back because the amount of space you have to hold mm-hmm for everyone to be heard seen nurtured for their pain to feel sacred it's the hardest job and I know in all of our different practices the holding of space especially in the communities in which we work is the the most challenging and the most invisible and that is a part of the alchemy of how I think we can and we do the impact the work that we do is the holding space part I want to talk about this too because I think people thank you for bringing this back up because I'd forgotten that part I think oftentimes in a big part of the work that I do folks come to me with a question or a problem that isn't easy to solve and so oftentimes in terms of especially when I'm working with artists and I'm oftentimes working with artists who haven't received the type of training or the type of apprenticeship or mentorship that would come from folks like us up here right so how do you find yourself how do you find yourself in a world where you know a lot of what you want to know isn't valued and how do you hold space for people when you know that they are having they're having a transformative experience that they may not understand for the next 40 years so this goes back to radical imagination and it is a and it is a strategy to push into those spaces and to hold people in those spaces and to conjure wellness for people in those spaces as they're doing the unnecessary work of decolonizing themselves and this is this this is the emotional labor that's come up this been coming up a lot lately this is the this is the ritual work that we can't really you can't find it in a book there's no blueprint there's no recipe there's only attunement that can help folks really get there you know attunement alignment with self and with legacy that can really help people to get there and and then we have to talk about how do we take care of ourselves in the midst of doing all of this holding space for other people which oftentimes is the last thing on the to-do list that is a mile long are you well not are you well am I well and so yeah and that actually I want to jump in the fuse and everything that I'm hearing come up here which is the role of black women and I don't think it's an accident that we have three powerhouse black women here on stage four connection between the work that you've been put on this earth to continue but you're also interested in recognizing a link always to always the shoulders of those that you're standing on top of so I'm wondering if we could take a moment to think about and to explore this idea of those shoulders that we're standing on on on top of and what has been historically the role of black and brown women in infusing remembering the power of everyday creativity in communities well I don't know anything without my teachers and and this is this is what I was just talking about in terms of mentorship and one mentorship and apprenticeship I don't do anything new everything that I do even what I'm saying right now is because someone decided that I was important enough to to teach and this is a this is a major thing I think you know in terms of the work that we do the professionalization of these rooted ways of being in the world we have to remember the roots and it's important if we don't remember that then it becomes just kind of I don't I don't know it it's it's not as powerful it's not as powerful for me doing the work in the name of my mother my organization is Betty's daughter arts collaborative and I'll never change the name of it uh Betty's daughter I am Betty's daughter what I do as Betty's daughter arts collaborative I am doing my mother's work my mother's retired now and I'm continuing her legacy and I don't really make a lot of moves that she doesn't agree with she you may not know it if you you know it may look like I made the decision but I I'm working inside of a framework I'm working inside of a lineage and a legacy that is is and that I think is really important to understand where you come from you know and and I keep I can keep saying this over and over again it's so important to me um and it's important I think that we lift up names and we and we honor and we build lives that are monuments to the people who have the black women the brown women the folks who have made sure that we could sit here on the stage and look shiny on a Friday you know it's very important it's very important and I feel like um on my best day I am basically you know at at the root I am giving what my teachers have given to me um and this is and this is often you know when I speak and we don't we didn't have a time to do it I'd go through and I list 15 people I am doing this because of this person and this person this person and this person and you know it's important it's important um and I I really lift that up yeah yeah river that east river all the way to the west side it has a tide it has a rhythm yeah it has a beat now let's get deeper with it how why 125th street what was that channel doing the native americans use that channel to get from one side to the next that is a running underneath everything that we do I would be remiss on the best day when I'm fucking brilliant I am a divine listener and it's that river that talks to us right it's that river that tells you when the tide is high when the tide is low and you always have to be respectful so you have these people pouring millions and millions and millions and hundreds of millions dollars into their construction most of it is going to how the fuck is the basement not gonna flood when the tide comes up so our ancestors are always talking and communicating to us our nature ancestors our plant ancestors our river ancestors yes yes we have the privilege of being able to be expressed by our blood memory and so for me and the work that we do at MBT it is all about feeding that rhythm that river and asking for the benevolence to be kind enough to wake up another day to be able to serve and the last thing I'll say about being a black woman is we as women of color black women and I really want to say this in this room in this day and age right now today build your village, build your village, feed your village, I keep cursing mama I know better, build your village, yes, yes, build your village, come on, come on, shout out, screw your brand, it will come, yes, the kitchen table on the front porch in the garden in the church basement for centuries building village forgetting about not not yeah F in the brand yeah I wonder if I'm so interesting just like conceptually about the Laundromat project this is this idea of like the Laundromat you know and I think in just connecting back to this idea of the every day and can we take a moment to infuse and remember the power possible in the every day can you can you jump in there maybe around this this thread of black women radical creativity in the every day and who are the people who are instigating and and reminding us of the power at that location absolutely so first of all I have to shout out Lisa Wilson who's the founder of the Laundromat product of black women and and sort of nurturing this idea in the late 90s and here we are and the idea from that very beginning was this idea of being rooted in community being rooted in the places like she grew up in Philadelphia black community in Philadelphia but eventually really birthing the Laundromat project in Bed Stuy historically black neighborhood that is changing and what does that mean and who's holding down the conversation and the and the fight to figure out how to hold on to that place and to hold on to the meaning of that place are often black women that are at those meetings at those community events and in as we're having this as I was listening to this amazing conversation build your village build find where's your team all of those amazing things I can't help but think about the women in Hunts Point and in Longwood where again we've had this apartment for about three years as an organization so Laundromat has really expanded to be the metaphor so Laundromats were originally the focus because of the places we're in a city like New York where we all have to do our laundry and we don't have them in our apartments typically is a place where different generations meet different genders meet people of different races etc is very much across a path that different people cross but don't necessarily speak to one another so how how could art and creativity be infused in this place that in a space that has people literally waiting I'm waiting for the cycle you know the spin cycle the whatever cycle to happen and I'm just sitting and trying to figure out what to do well you're surrounded by people you're surrounded by your neighbors in that moment so having a film festival in a Laundromat or having a photo session or telling and collecting stories of immigrants was one of the ways or some of the kinds of projects that we've done over that time and the idea was to help turn strangers into neighbors but we've since expanded by listening to artists sometimes Laundromat itself was too limiting to or not the exact right literally physical environment that people need to do their projects so they happen on sidewalks now they happen in community gardens they happen in parks libraries wherever it makes sense that there's kind of a community gathered and it is about saying that people's ideas their imaginations what they care about what they can make it's not about expertise for us we're working with amazing artists but we're often saying to people your creativity is what it is and it doesn't have to mean that you can draw someone that looks exactly like the thing you're looking at in fact if you do something different that what is it that you can bring of yourself to this moment how can we say that what you what you think and what you care about and what you can imagine is both radical and valued is very much at the source of what we're trying to communicate like it matters that you can think about something other than survival which is so key and so necessary and so front of mind but we have to move past and through survival to something better and different and radical and it is through infusing arts creativity holding up artists as one value one valued member of a community and all the things that they bring is kind of what we're trying to do amazing thank you all we're out of time