 I've been affiliated with ACI for a very long time now. In addition to having the great privilege of working with youth United artists, I have worked with ACI for a long time. I was the 2015 to 2016 Artist of Residence. I'm an International Artist of Residence. I had the opportunity through ACI to live and work in Nigeria, specifically in the jungle, in the June, studying traditional weaving and dyeing. And because of ACI, that has had an amazing impact on my artwork, and I'm able to come back and work with my community and teach me these to my community in Boston. So I'm very thankful for ACI for the work that they do, and the impact they've had in my life. So next up, to begin our closing keynote, we have Julia Ryan from the Mayor's Office of Art and Culture. First off, I want to thank you all so much for coming today to this amazing summit. My name is Julia Ryan. I work for the Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture in Boston, and I work with her artist resource manager. So I basically focus on ways to best support local Boston-based artists from a city perspective, and I try to really work sincerely as an advocate for local artists, helping the city respond to their needs so that they can stay good and live successfully. So thank you so much for having me. It's a wonderful job. I really moved by it. I grew up in Jamaica Plain, and I grew up with a lot of wonderful opportunities to be exposed to art and to arts learning. I come from a poor background. My parents grew up in public housing in Boston and in Lowell and didn't have access to artist opportunities like I did. It's something that's really important for me and my siblings, Ryan and JP, and I think for me that's really helped me kind of follow this route of giving back to Boston, giving back to the arts and trying to make sure I see a city that can always allow young people, all adults, artists, arts enthusiasts to really thrive here and to really benefit from this wonderful opportunity to be a human and be a human who can make art. I appreciate art. So I do want to say I think it's so exciting that we're all here today. I think we all owe big round of applause to Arts Connect International. This is a historic summit in Boston. We are Bostonians here. We are people from around the country here. We are people from different art forms. We are all putting our heads together to think back how we can do this work more equitably. We're all learning and growing together. I know I'm really grateful for ACI, for their team, for their arts leaders, for their artists leaders who are helping us learn and who we can also learn with. So I'm really grateful for that today. I'm also so excited to see so many partners come together for this event today. I've looked around the room. I've seen so many different arts institutions. I've seen funders. I've seen artists that I have the honor to work with. I've seen arts service organizations, arts collective, dance groups, et cetera. And it's so exciting to see everyone in the same room. And I think that having this space is incredible. This is the first time this has happened here in Boston, right? This is a first ever equity summit. It doesn't feel that way. People are so engaged. It's so passionate. And I think it feels as if we're all really excited to have this conversation and I really hope we can continue to have it in years to come. The city of Boston a few years ago published a cultural plan called Boston Creates, which is a 10 year plan to, in many ways, create a city where the arts can really thrive and where artists can thrive and where everyone can have access to arts opportunities. One of our goals of Boston Creates was to really be heard from the public that we really needed to do a better job of thinking about equity in the arts. And that was something that normally we should think about through our cultural plan, but we should be thinking about and planning for it through policy and programming and funding through the city. And so one of our goals of our plan is to cultivate a city where all cultural traditions are expressed, are able to express, are represented, are promoted, and are actively resourced. And where everyone have opportunities to engage with art and culture in a way that's accessible and holistic way. So we are working really hard toward this goal. We are a few years into working on our cultural plan and putting it into action. And there's a few ways we've been doing this. One of them is through our residence program, which we have had the privilege of funding from the past three years and we plan to continue doing so. This program has allowed local artists to embed themselves in city departments in spaces where you might not historically expect an artist anywhere from the police department to all of our communities. Centers throughout the city to different departments to do permitting and the maybe gritty of licensure and stuff like that. Artists to help really help the city think about ways that we can creatively improve our programs and also how we can do a better job using social practice art to build community engagement and build relationships. So that's something that we're really excited to continue doing. Another thing that we have been working on recently is we created a new award for our arts and cultural organizational grant that we annually make available for local arts and cultural organizations to apply for, which is a grant to help fund all of the work that they're doing in Boston. We recently created an award to specifically highlight organizations that are really examples of leaders and models of what an equitable organization should be from their hiring practices to their programming to the ways that they fund artists to kind of any way that they are doing their work in a radical and different way and are really honoring equity in our city. And I'm so excited to say that one of those three awardees for this new award was Arts Connect International. So there's a round of applause for them to say that this summit is one of the many examples of the ways that they're doing that work and they're really leading the charge and that we can learn from them. I'm so proud of that work. I'm so proud to continue working for an institution where we are prioritizing putting money in the hands of artists and arts organizations throughout our city. We will continue to do that. We're excited to continue doing that. And anytime you want to encourage us to continue doing that, I'm happy to have you reach out and to hear from you and hear from different communities throughout the city about what it is that we really should be working on. I highly encourage everyone to check out the cultural plans. You haven't had an opportunity to really hold us accountable today. I think that's a really important part of it. And we really just hope to be our partner in implementing it going forward. So thank you all so much for having us. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you all for being here, growing together. And I'm so excited to introduce four poets. Some more poets will be sharing their work with us today. So the first poet we have is Malaysia Brown. We will be sharing work today with us. And we will be lingering my Angela. Even Birdhead Bear is one of my favorite pieces. It's one of my best works. And I think I want to try to make it in the life of the kids. Got it. When you look at me, what do you see? You probably see the black in me. You probably don't see my divinity. You probably see something I'm not trying to be. Not trying to rewind back to black history. You probably see a lotus branch hanging on that populous tree. Populously growing. Or perhaps you just don't see my leaves. But the problem is that I'm trying and I'm crying because I can't see, I can't believe and I can't achieve. As I get older, I shouldn't be getting smoldered. I should be getting faster, stronger, higher and closer. But I can't. I can't and I want to. I can't and I want you. I want you to see that there is something more to me. Here I am as delicate as I can be. And my cotton fields are roses out of the concrete. I want you to set me free like Maya Angelou did with her Caged Bird. A bird's tune can never be heard if you pluck its feathers. A Caged Bird can never be heard if you control the weather. Stop taking advantage of me. Stop taking that T-A-K-I-N-G. Stop torturing me. Stop scorching me. Stop pitching your hopes and your dreams in me. You're giving me way too much responsibility. I'm just 16. Can't you see? Can't you see what you've done to me? I'm only 16 but I'm brighter than 23. Sometimes I feel like my mind is older than me. Like my mind has growner than me. Like my mind took my sight from me. You turn me into an old soul. An old soul cannot be Phoenix. Cannot rise from the ashes. And now my mind is my eyes are blinded. Now I can't see. Now I can't preach and not hear. Look what you've done to this legendary bird. Reduce to its eggshells. Whose church are fractured and will never be heard. Now, excuse me. Why my mind programmed me to think. And please do not disturb. Who made this amazing event possible? I'm sure many of you know how much work it takes to put on an event like this. So let's get it up first. Healing and regenerative for me. My role are very beautiful. And I look forward to having my competition with you all. And then I just wanted to honor and thank the amazing girl. Is that Alicia? Yes. That was amazing. And then we're going to work with you right now. He's a girl. And now you work tonight. So I'm just going to make a few poems. I'm going to turn this time around so I don't go overboard. But they're all from my Needless collection, which just got accepted for publication by the students books. And this one is called The Flood. So I think you all know we're in some need of some major revolutions. And every revolution needs a poet, a set of dancers, and musicians and artists to keep us all connected to our channel. And to keep us inspired. And to also do the work of healing and visioning, which I think is what's happening today. So this poem is in that spirit. And it's a speculative poem. It's called The Flood. In the theater of a musician swept full lips and rotten wood off the stage. On the night of the performance, their costumes fluttered rad in the after. Rigged light flickered like an intermittent bird called Themsteady. The audience breathed a single pot animal. At the curtain's rise, the hard knot in every one of our throats burst became a whale. The dancers raised their arms in unison. A slow procession of tears flowed from our eyes to chin to lap. The drummers drummed. Our tears pooled on the floor lapsed at our ankles. Wind and string instruments winged through bullet holes and hunger. When we all finally swallowed the last melts, the theater was a salty lake. Folding chairs became boats. On the tree floated out into the night, our bodies strangely light, mirrors to the stars in the cloudless sky, wings unfurling on our backs, which is a form of poetry that originated in Malaysia. And the lines repeat in a particular pattern, and they kind of circle back on themselves. Which is how I think social change happens, right? It's not a straight linear line. It's no, no, it's kind of iterative. It's called correct pronunciation. Citizens of now, show your papers. Proof of employment, home address, full name. The raised seal textured under your fingertips bristled path into America. Proof of employment, home address, full name. Terror roars at the white hand at the ballot box. Slips are passed into Americans who make them see. This reckoning of rude peach, a soft spot turning terror. A white hand at the ballot box, a trick. It will take the rest of our lives, this reckoning. Eat the peach, cut the soft spot out, take your power back. A trick that will take the rest of our lives. Scales, walls of metal and cement taking your power back. We gather like water, waves slacking walls of metal and cement no edges but constant motion. We gather like water, waves wearing a waste stone, edges with constant motion, the work of undoing, wearing a waste stone, making space for our names. The work of undoing all the ways we've been with mispronounced, our full name, taking up space so that citizen flames by paper. I think at 2016 I was invited by the poet Deryl Harris to take part in what she was calling an experiment in joy. And the week that I was doing it, the cops killed Alton Sterling and Orlando Hatfield. So it wasn't so joyful. And I wasn't really sure what to do with this experiment and I've been working on it for about three years now. So I think it might be close to done, so I'll share with you. A lot of experiment in revolution. Between structural change and my offended body, an exploded box. Our arms link the whole way home. Fire works a new name then to my mouth again. Her name there is race, the twisted road, standard land, time and sugar, Alton Sterling, justice throttle, Philando Castile. So we're living in each other's hands. Impossible for dead heteroses. For all of us, this incident. No law sounds to carry steady July sun. Catch the back feet home. Bodies breaking the crops freeway. Breaking the starless night. Showing up with their salt on my lips. Call it like it is queer and drenched with color. In blood, our muscles, our spears, our voices, sirens, our torsos, drums. A large experiment in bodily revolution. Joy, come get me. Soldiers were taking away babies from their parent's arms. Which is the Mexican border. And as a Japanese-American woman, whose relatives were interned, incarcerated during World War II, I wrote this poem of the way I'm going to work through my agency, my responsibility, and the actions I'm going to take. Root and ride. I am descended from immigrants and internees, laborers and settlers. Speeds break through loose soil at the U.S. border. Babies wrenched from parents by men whose paycheck I write, laying in rows of caught eyeballs. We were told in a barrack we were the nails counted down any way we were abandoned in the winter desert where the wind was spammed and the grey mountains and mobile sun rose over them and the moon set behind them and the winds, the grains of sand into the corner of our mouths and the crevices of our teeth brought no trace of the ocean from where we came. Seas root with lights. A child wakes 2.30 a.m. screaming in one prison for mother and another. No mountains, no flights. We were 50 in a barrack. We were children under the eye of a bayonet. We were starved in moonlight and we made dresses from newspapers and we began to disintegrate and as we began to disintegrate we began to burn and in the screaming of bird rows into the nights to meet the moon's broad wings and the flooding. Poor me, my arrow moon let us find our way. I vow to be the small flame. My people, we have found two shallower roots in this land full of boulders we inherited. But when the satellites fall I vow to use my good sense of direction to find me. Bonds make provisions. I vow all the spells to turn our capillaries and branches see quaking sky. We will not be undone. To the end, we vow to keep our fire lit until we find our free. Thank you so much. It's been a wonderful weekend and I'm very grateful to all of you for sharing this with me. I'm glad you're watching the live stream. I'm going to read sad poems today because I've just been thinking a lot about how we are often given our pain and trauma is published into the platforms but our joy is not. So I just want to make space for my joy. I just want to contain my own magnificent. It's built out of me no matter how hard I try to control it. The universe sees me and swells with anticipation of what I might become. The universe looks at me and whispers you are still full of potential. A man looks me up and down and wonders how he can split me into pieces make me smaller but my body has never learned before any man. Some days I am so holy that my body threatens to break beneath the weight of its own brilliance. I do not apologize for my abundance. When the world ends it will sing my name with its dying breath. When the world ends I will devour it from doing. So large so magnificent so full of potential. Okay. My grandmother who does not speak English tells me she loves me by making me a cup of instant coffee every morning. Not the gross poverty stuff you find in best lit grocery store aisles 10 minutes before closing time but the good stuff. Real intonation coffee that invigorates you with the jolt of electricity in every fit. It becomes our wordless ritual. I get up at 6 am enter the kitchen with my bed head and I pour her a cup pour myself a cup and we sit. The curls was seen at ride of the scalding hot coffee thing everything that we had. Whenever it turns to the United States I bring back an industrial sized bag of intonation coffee. This becomes my new ritual. Every morning I boil the water pour the coffee to my travel mug and sit it slowly on the train letting it warm me like my grandmother's hug and I tell you that our love is like instant coffee this is what I mean. Worthless intimacy comfort of feeling a home that rise like steam from a coffee cup whenever we touch. There's God in this instant coffee in my grandmother's kitchen in the house of worship. There's God in our love for you and our bond in our house of worship. What I'm trying to say is I've made you this kind of coffee. Here, take a sip. I made it for you. So few markets. The Isle of Granite and other neat substitutes. Oh devilish tube up chuck. Oh luscious organic fruits and vegetables untainted by pesticides. We sing your praises. You're humble disciples as you bless our outstretched palms of bargain within your wall. I kneel to you, the hipster is God and ask for whatever abundance you choose to bestow. In your vast temple there is no place more sacred than my thirst. At just $2.9 from orange peach mango juice to the modest luxury. The top of the cart from Greece go ahead and taste the goodness and how can I resist this divine invitation? Like even a paradise I too have been seduced by the promise of goodness, of sweetness of planting my thirst in the holy nectar. I've placed the cart into my basket like a mother lacer child of the crib. Oh Trader Joe's I've found out twice this dingle drop. Thank you. This is the Virginia Penitentiary System. Since then I've been on national TV a couple times and the every word that I write is the thought that the guys that I was just in the pod with the guys that I was sharing the sales with the CBO TV and I told them we could do something different. I told them we could be more than what they labeled us. I told them we could live life. So I get chances to go back to the Penitentiary and speak as I do things like I'm doing here today and it just wells my heart out with joy to look at them in the face and say I told you. I was going to show them. So I'm going to do a couple poems for you guys today. The first one is called Please Don't Judge Us and it's just that look at people that grew up differently than some of you have. Some of you have grown up like this and can relate to some of the details in this so just bother me. Please don't judge us. No. You see a lot of us were the victims of the ones that loved us and all of us had waived with fathers and undereducated mothers. I know dudes that hustled their cousins all day with their brothers but we're just the victims of the ones that loved us. Please. Don't judge us. You see we only wanted acceptance. So as out of lessons we fell past this familiar fault and on the foul perception we thought drugs would get us paid and we prayed because it would protect us. You see a lot of us know no other life than the life lived by others before us so we run in circles to any feeling because as kids we used to think it's important. Shoot. I remember filming the drug dealer supporter. Dude drove me to school. He bought me to George's. He taught me money over everything that I was afforded. We were conditioned to see that working the jobs hard but the older dudes got checked for unemployment and no matter what we'd never trust any member of the law's enforcement. They never had nothing for us. We just didn't take family from us no matter how hard we begged them to be just the victim of the ones that loved them no matter how hard we begged them to please. Don't judge them. See they don't understand it. This all started with babies, bottles and pampers. We were the sons of fathers that acted as some fathered examples. If her mother had a husband that was abusive she may not know what love is. It's a vicious cycle when so many others get caught in his clutches and so many others will soon have kids that are destined to suffer and it hurts. Looking in the eyes of those kids their hearts destiny touches. Stand at the back of the squad car when they're arresting a couple. Fresh out of crime penped into an oven we raise our destruction. We're raising a world where it's all of us nothing. We're raising our mothers who always wanted marriage but you see they'd never be trusted. They were always victims of the ones that loved them but please don't judge them. Don't call our women product to the project that fall beyond in a palm on my chest my hand with my heart and I swear to God we try. It's just that the world the reality of the world's Venice is a lie and the only way we can live is to fight for our lives in a cold cold world. When we see rap songs raise our sons we love it our girls. And the judicial system well you see they allow judge to slam a gavel and say a verdict that takes a dad from his son to decide he don't deserve and it's wild. The court system is purpose he pick a person that picks out a point of fingers at people that's if they're worthless but he's the service they've had and they self is perfect. I promise these prosecutors are putting places to hurt us. And it's clear they see we are relevant. Where a sex offender could have slapped on the wrist but a 72-year-old black kid could hit with it. The state will treat equally insulting my intelligence now apologize to my family for my incarceration I spent eight years going. Eight years long and I was wrong. I tried to explain that I succumbed to circumstances far beyond my knowledge's reach resulting in my actions extending the distance further than my understanding can see. Back against the wall suffocated under circumstances in y'all I needed money to eat but thinking about it leaves this sour taste in my mouth. Because now making it out may have been more a problem than previously received but in moments of stress reflex overpowered contemplation and situations to see. So hindsight doesn't accurately express what I momentarily believed. It was back against the wall suffocated under circumstances in y'all I needed money to breathe I'm just grateful that I had a family that still does. I'm even more grateful that they pray to a lord of ugly in a world so ugly and I'm just asking y'all to do the same please. Don't just me. Please. The age of 20 this next poem is the first three weeks of me being home in a mental thing as you go through. Just return to society after a time so long that some of my friends came up and thought I was dead and heard I'd die and I just popped up out of nowhere but this is called go there. I was struggling really struggling. You see dealing with the return to society through incarceration is complicated. I even had difficulty engaging in casual conversation. I used to hear there's reluctance in my eyes and I gave off this vibe of frustration. You see anxiety weighs heavy. They used to deal with it all. Institutionalization of enemies. The fight against it exhausted. Keep in mind I was going before Twitter and Instagram back when Michael Jackson was alive and Bush was in office. Coming home it could be hard to relate or hard to find a place and even harder to keep pace. Simple things as a man get difficult like a man trying to date especially she feels like you're vulnerable and your position allows you to be easily motivated to shape. Or she feels you're able to piece the past quote from her heart. She feels some obligation to replace or what if you too have been through it and said they have suffered. They feel you had an obligation to be made to scream you when you consider it an off in the high market fall victim to the obligation they create. You see I never wanted any bomb based off no charity case and I ain't going to try to force love a love obviously ain't. I can't promise to provide the energy or relationship required if I feel like I can. I have so many demons I gotta face and it just wouldn't be fair. I said I have so many demons I gotta face and I don't think you want to go there because if we go there we gotta go where I was projected and predicted to be another statistic. I'm the oldest of three kids one sister, one brother, the son of two fellas and figure the reflection of my father and mother raised by one parent with daddy the father leaving a woman and her kids off these 22nd Columbus, Ohio, single bedroom apartment couple sheets and a blanket on a mattress on a coffin they tell us home is where the heart is but what about with Roman's house and I don't know about my father the father and maybe he did or not and delivered his kid he did without a care regardless of how desperate we live. The effect of this is a kid on the edge who didn't care, a kid in a position where both Robert and Victor were terribly scared but that's a whole other form we ain't finna go there. We're not gonna go there because I don't think I can go there. I don't even know if I know how. The society has brought harm to my art and reality is hollowed it out so as a poet I seem calm and composed but inside I'm hollowing out like maybe I do need love but I ain't ever know loving things throughout so I travel about bitter and beaten, marked and scarred suffocating under the weight of my own shortcomings I'm opposed to those that want to be there out of fear. Myself destructed will bring hurt to those that honestly care. I'm a victim of a pain that I love. I don't share and I've been here my whole life praying that y'all gotta go there you see. They tell me to look at the bigger picture. What doesn't seem wrong is the problem of the bigger picture is not fully developed and the frame wasn't built too strong so when they tried to post it to show it couldn't hold it, it collapsed and folded so now that image is falling so as far as the future holds y'all I can't call. I just know why I write what I write and I spit what I share. I know what it feels like to weigh your heart on your sleeve and bail on your fears. I know what it feels like to feel like this entire world doesn't care because I've been where I've been y'all and I'm just glad to know y'all got to go there. Peace, thank y'all, thank you. I'm from the arts and I'm also a foreign artist myself. It has been inspiring two days for me here at the summit and hearing and learning about different ways of how people are working towards running after these to the field. I believe that that's the one way that we can dismantle these systemic issues it's the room here in each other's stories and educating ourselves and then changing the way that we contribute to the systemic inequities ourselves. So I want to take this moment to thank all the artists and the panelists who came and share their stories, their words, their art it's, we just really appreciate your courage and your willingness to be here. So thank you all. And we energize to continue this journey both as an arts administrator and also an artist. So, we are closing this Saturday event with a fireslide keynote chat and I'm thrilled to introduce to you the amazing folks who will be participating in it. So I'm going to read their files. So, first off Paulette Forbes is the founder, CEO and artistic director of Serendipity a diversity led based arts organization coordinating Black Dance International Frontiers an annual dance festival and Black History Month Leicester Serendipity's initiatives range from continued professional development opportunities, publications producing diverse dance and theater supporting emerging artists and arts leaders and heritage projects Paulette has over 25 years experience as a cultural leader behind the development of Black arts centers in the UK alongside national projects such as the Cultural Olympiad and as a consultant for the Common Cause Project led by University of Bristol. He is an Associate Professor of Arts Administration at Florida State University in the Department of Art Education His research on arts management internships and creative justice issues in the cultural sector of years and highly regarded academic journals and he is a great presenter of major conferences nationally and internationally as a member of the AAAE Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force he helped develop initiatives that aimed to create a more diverse, equitable and inclusive workforce in arts administration. Dr. Tyler is also a member of the Brokering Intercultural Exchange Network which explores the role of cultural managers as intercultural brokers in the context of globalization. Let's start out together. It's a writer, activist and Basquiat scholar She is the curator of the upcoming exhibition Basquiat's Debate The Untold Story opening at the Guggenheim June 21st Her work has been published in days. Harper's Bazaar, New York Magazine and L.com where she was an interviewing writer from 2014 to 2016. A co-founder of Mother's Against Police Brutality Chandra was the curator and co-organizer of the 2016 exhibition and programming at Williams College Museum of Art Defacement, Ambivalence, Identity and Black Lives Matter. That's what I'm going to do. Aisha Upchurch, the dancing diplomat is a dancer, instructor and education consultant committed to youth advocacy, social justice and transformative education Whether on stage or in the classroom hip-hop and movement are embedded in her approach as she creates facilitates and designs experiences for necessary and liberatory conversations spoken or embodied. She is on faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she is teaching new courses on hip-hop education and embodied learning as well as launching hip-hop lab, a collaborative lab for high school and graduate students to experience, explore and experiment with hip-hop arts and education. Let's put our hands together. Lastly, Jennifer Bailey, our very own ASEAN board member who is the moderator today is a professor at Boston College focused on entrepreneurship creative innovation and ideation products. So let's put our hands together for all of them and enjoy. Nina, thank you My name is ACI and your friends and family for being here. What do you get when you put a dancer, curator, an academic publisher and a festival organizer together? What do you get in the future? That's what you get. This is one thing I would say about them. The other thing I would say is that you're a passion panel that we know in practice right out in Seoul. You respond to some questions or anything from this ASEAN group. So we don't want you to learn about entities that we don't have the privilege of defining anyone. We help people to define themselves. I ask you an opening question to Paulette. In your own words who are you? Who am I? I would say that I am an administrator and I got there by default in that I started out as a wanted to dance. I got taught to dance by my father but the opportunity to dance was very far from you for me. You could have a Julie Stringer get back and Tassel will meet it but that would be about as far as you went. Still having a passion to work in the arts I pursued a career as an administrator within that rock frustration and so now who am I? I say that I am an administrator I am a producer I am an educator I am an activist in terms of work that I currently do because I think having that holistic approach where one thing feeds the other is the best way of describing me so a number of different things. Thank you. Hello I would say I there are so many different iterations at times that I occupied but fundamentally I am a writer it is defining and foundational practice and vision that appears in whatever it is that I am doing and so whether that is curating or organizing or actually writing it is really being channeled through that I would say that I would say joining you probably say joining first you are both active here who are you? That is when it is followed who am I? In my current position I am a professor so I have suggested I am an academic but I got there by being an artist I was a musician I studied opera I sang gospel I am a researcher I am an educator but the thing that I care most about is creative justice which really is a manifestation of all people who have been creative and expressive wise on their own terms and so I am an agent of creative justice Thank you Very powerful, the energy all of us are ready Asia I am afraid to ask Do you know your first mountain? Yeah Who are you? Yeah, so I have a thing that I would like to say I am a seed planter and a soil agitator and I am dope I am a dismantling oppression and pushing education I do that as an artist as a dancer, as a choreographer as an educator in various spaces, K-12 higher I do that because I just was born that way I am curious and I am passionate and um that is who I am and I am sitting down, though I do feel like everybody can do just a quick shake out Just where you are, just shake it out Yeah, uh huh Okay, that's how long it has to be Thank you, thank you We are both shaking up so we just want to make sure who is shaking in the right way So I am curious where will it affect you on where we start because there is a lot of work to be done So from where do you stay from the work you are doing tell us what I am trying to tell you about what your day feels like what are the things that you are occupying your mind and within that, if you were to define equity in the arts, what is the critical challenge that you see in the work that you are doing to take some help to understand what that work is when you are able to fully grasp the breath and definitely work from the bios and when you are dating the biosite in the work you are doing and as you do that work what is the critical challenge with respect to equity or call that perhaps to start with you what is the critical challenge that you receive in the work What is the critical challenge Well, funding always remains a challenge so there is always funding Sorry Funding always remains a challenge but I think the challenge really is about how we perceive ourselves so although and who controls us so for me there is a relationship with what I call the parent and the parent is the funder and so as a diverse organisation you know we want to appeal to the funder and do what the funder wants rather than what we want so the challenge is really to be yourself and that's the challenge to be yourself Do you want to do that perhaps I do very well So to repeat the question the funder What did you do? What was my day? My day is one of the challenges in terms of what we are trying to do we are located inside of the university but we are independent within that university and trying to maintain your independence and have your own vision and voice is not easy so for me my day is that I am the centre stage I am the main thing I don't see myself on the margins of anything not interested in taking that space not interested in being part of that space but always trying to be put in that space of being marginal of being on the outskirts and trying to get into the centre we are the centre in terms of what we do so my day is a constant battle to keep the funding but also looking at how we're funding so I think that we need to be commercial and I also think that we're entitled in terms of what we should get in terms of subsidy and so it's taking what your entitlement is and also the challenge of making sure that we don't look at the commercial opportunity it is dealing with the institution of the university it is dealing with the institution of the funding system it is dealing with all these different institutions to just to perform another perspective in terms of black arts and culture so every day there is frustration but there is fun and they think you need to enjoy what you're doing and every day we're trying to break down some of the barriers that we are continually faced with so my day ranges from one minute I'll be doing some stuff on the digital archive next I'll be curating part of the project then I might be in the studio with a dancer and also I edit all the publications that we produce in complete state so my day-to-day is never the same sometimes I work from offices which if anyone knows me knows that I am not necessarily an institutional person so it's very different to the business system so to speak and so some days I'm working from there working from home or doing studio visits but a lot of what I'm doing is literal exclamation as popular as a key parent art the scholarship is unique and a lot of the work that I've had to do for those exhibitions is original research new research that has been extremely demanding from being able to even for wall text we have to do where I have to do original research because the research is not there so that relates to quality and equity I think a big part of that question and thinking about Baskia in particular is how people consume him how he engages with the market how he engages with Baskia whether that's an institution whether that's the gallery market system and thinking about the ways in which now that larger museums are recognizing that for decades and in some cases centuries where they've been operating from is not actually the center but the periphery and now that that interest you know the interest is moving toward a center and a center that's founded very resolutely in blackness what happens when you have gatekeepers at these institutions that have been trained institutionalized in a way in which they know absolutely nothing about blackness it's not their training, it's not their vision it's not an interest it's not the way in which one lives how then are they entrusted to tell these stories and are they willing or capable to move out of the way to either make room for the people who are followed by to do this work to do this work where the resource is going to come around to train people to do this work not just you're not okay we're going to hire a black curator just because they are these identities, I mean it's a rigor there scholarship there and you know what is this going to cost in terms of all sorts of resources to make sure that these artists not just Basquiat but an entire canon are getting the respect and dignity and rigor that they deserve we're going to do something we're going to keep pop and harbourage because we don't go together what are you doing, how do you got there and what are the critical challenges you're still seeing in the work great, but the first to pop would but I'm going to challenge that what hip hop magazine was founded at harbour wow the source so hip hop and harbour have been homies for a minute but what is qualified as peripheral or like history that used to be ignored but then it's harboured and all the 1636s it's like there's still people show up in spaces right so yeah the source of everything was started there by some students in 1980 so there you go this was already panel time and beyond that the hip hop archive was founded by Marcella Morgan and she started it in Sanford when she came to harbour she brought it there so there has been a history of hip hop in harbour which is not necessarily exceptional because hip hop is everywhere so there's also that and so hip hop has been part of my human living history I founded on my porch in st. Louis in the 80s that's I just I feel like that's where you meet hip hop but now we can meet it in the academy but why that's important is because in the sector of education we use language like formal education and informal education and I purposely don't try to buy into that because I think actually some of the most formative learning that has stuck with me that has actually been helpful happened on the block in the neighbourhood in those community settings that were intergenerational no offense to anybody who's like a math my sister's one and I don't know but we're really good all the time the advanced AP capital hasn't come to the fight but my ability to know how to sit in circles in communal spaces in Cyprus my ability to sit in intergenerational spaces to learn with young people to let that language that is happening in transacting for all of us through hip hop is something that has been quite telling me so that is the work behind the hip hop education lab that I started it's called hip hop X and it's EX to see like what does it mean to have a laboratory experience where high school students and graduate students were studying education a radical idea to have people studying education in spaces with young people Shots fired, take them high you need them but the idea is to see what happens when we are pivoting what do we mean by teaching and learning by sitting and turning it off from hip hop which is a shared experience we got on the train at a different point I don't know a lot about these local rappers but I need to sit and see what's going on with young people we had a beautiful exploration happen off of just studying the message by doing master of flash that opened up to all these amazing personal stories being shared and young people offering schools don't care about us so we don't care about schools but where there is care there is learning we know that and it's a document over and over again so hip hop is the access of letting care get the forefront and so that's kind of the idea behind the hip hop education lab and just you know shameless use of this space if you all around us having April 6 we're having a free conference at Harvard and people and help people eat it and jamming out together because I have this also radical but it's so simple notion that what schooling looked different but if it had nothing to do with brick and mortar building better to pay anyway what if it had to do about just share culture learning from each other by they often created together might something radical and don't happen perspective do you have a definition of equity see and as you're doing oh sure and you need to work what's your critical challenge that you see right I remember those questions also mainly boring boring days all over the city boring equity I was just sharing that like I think I think if you ask me this question in a month I might have a slightly clearer definition but I think equity is a verb more than this noun that we are fixated with sometimes you know the image equity versus equality of three people that have been and created sometimes and so I think a lot of times it's like we're trying to get somewhere but the other fact is we actually do not know what it's like to live in an equitable society and so I think it's important to be driven by images and ideas of what it means but I like to think about the work of it is very important it is action it is nuance it is joyful it is messy it is showing up every day it is it me and you even if you did ask for it one day you want to sleep in we should get that e-mail and there it is and so I think equity is like work and it is also going where not in this where how many crates am I standing on and am I willing to acknowledge that I might be standing on more than the person next to me and why is it easier for me to point out what they got and not where am I what if I internalize this also impressive messaging so I think it's that's the verb of it it's like this kind of action of like reflecting just as far as the fact that I'm in is thinking about who's at the table and I'll just go back to the idea of the lab is anybody focused on education reform who doesn't have a space for young people at the table your money you just let out it's not going to work and I think that in conversations with young people that's some of the most important learning that I get and so that's the opportunity I think we face is to go can we keep radically collaborating can we keep maybe by invitation maybe by a little force shifting some chairs at the table so that those who need to be to push the proverbial needle are there or are we really actually having just a silent conversation where choir and choir leaders just say the same things over and over again Thank you, nice to meet you I'm telling you something interesting kind of articulation equity has created justice what about that innovation what is the greatest injustice you've seen in the work you're doing okay so to me equity is different from equality in that equality everybody is the same thing right even if you might need something different to be successful so equity actually is an assessment of what people need to be successful what intervention they need to be successful and you have to actually ask them what intervention do you need to be successful or something like it so it also acknowledges that marginalizing oppressed groups of people will need different things to be successful women in general need very different things to be successful than just under men right but if you truncate women if you look at women of color versus trans women women of all type yeah that should ask them what they need to be successful that's what equity is equity is only one part of creative justice though if we were to actually achieve the manifestation of all people living creative and expressive lives on their own terms it's going to take access to diversity equity and inclusion not just equity equity is only one piece of it there are four pillars of it you need all four pillars to be successful the four pillars suggest different strategies and different approaches and if you wanted to break it down and be very very specific for example when it comes to access and diversity women in the arts management workforce that's why I know I'm an arts administration professor they're overrepresented and they're overrepresented because about 77% of the arts management workforce is female so in terms of access and diversity we die but we still have a lot of work to do when it comes to equity and inclusion women pay the same as their real counterparts we're doing the same work are the policies inclusive enough so that women don't have to decide whether they're going to have a family or a career and so it's a very big philosophy or way of linking and to pinpoint one creative injustice I don't think that's fair I could give you a list it's highly problematic that 90 to 95% of all of Africa's cultural products exist in Europe is that not weird if we wanted to the Mona Lisa or some of the other cultural products that Europeans really value and courted them in Africa they wouldn't like that with that so I'm okay that we've done that and so we're getting into these discussions about repatriating art where the first president he commissioned this report to try to start having that conversation and he out, I'm sorry but the museum and the arts market you know saying well we don't like it essentially how do you establish a problem who would really belong to well you take it from those people just get it back just get it back right you know these things will not be really given everything including an access very, very kindly returned so in the work let's talk about the action and the activism we have to go take it say that what does that look like or what is that taking back it's all because this is a lot of the American model the UK model and we're funded very differently we're funded through the arts council England and you have four year funding rounds and to get into that is hard work and it's a thing called you become a national portfolio organisation and it's about 900 and if I look at the sector that I'm in partly within that it stands and of those 964 of those 900 is stands of those 64 1200 of those 12 that are diversity for African and of those four only two female so you start to look at what does equity look like and what does access look like and what have we really got and so what we have to do is then I am in for guerrilla tactics and in a way of getting things done you just have to take over and take some stage and take it back for yourself so if you get a rejection you put the application back in within a week then you get another rejection and you put it back in and then you take the second rejection and you say well actually you just rejects me even though I hit all the criteria and you start to challenge it because you've got nothing to lose you've got absolutely nothing to lose and you have to press do whatever what if you've got solutions you haven't got anything in the first place so you just need to take back that control it also for me is about changing the model changing the model of a parent and looking at that model and having a different approach to it and saying that actually we are entrepreneurial we are a business business case as well so you have to have a clear business case alongside taking what you're entitled to and the business model is really really important if we look out for me from a Caribbean background and we look at Carnival Carnival used to get all its money from being very very entrepreneurial and from lots of different sources now everyone else is taking those different sources from Carnival's dining on his ass and we've got no money coming in as a stage we need to create different models and we need to also we need to open up the landscape so we can see what has gone before so the whole thing about the archiving and research so we're doing all these different things simultaneously this is where you help get some out of that so take a look at that so what we're doing is we're not just doing on a dance festival we're also writing for ourselves all our publications have got black writers in it all our publications are owned by the artists by you, not by me it's not the whole length books these are your voices and we need to punctuate what has already gone before so we open up that ground so it's given a different dialogue and so our voices are in it our voices are missing from the conversation if you put it on the internet it's gone in five years so we need to find other ways of making sure that we're in that we're part of that so for me as the pose I'm always a bit of an activist I talk about my guerrilla style of doing things it is really and it's a thing that I talked to the panel about before it's about being confident but not being arrogant to the fine line between the two but actually instilling that confidence where we can take back and control and write and talk you know passionately and positively about our work and not go just thinking there's a begging bowl because once we went with the begging bowl we actually lost a lot of stuff as well we didn't gain as much as we thought thank you well you know at the last of our end of fighter I think your personal question what are you fighting is good fighting for our equity what are you from a personal institution that will be a substantial part of that fight we're fighting while working well so wait is it a question like what does it when you're fighting is it a fight of our equity what are the good weapons that would be the most substantial weapon to the war for you to fight she had told us some big arguments yes I'm not sure I'm not sure but what are you going to do maybe from our state of study how are you going to fight well um I think I think kind of thinking about Basquiat and sort of myself sort of separately maneuvering through institutions I think that you have to really really know who you are um because um I think when you're engaging with institutions that are virulently white and have invested in that identity and have weaponized um there are resources to protect that position um no matter whether you're an artist whether you're a career whether you are even a museum goer you have to really know who you are because you're going to get messaging and visual that just are not who you are after it and so in terms of being able to fight that big fight you know I shared earlier I think that it really behooves I think people of color who are engaging administratively with museums that maybe have one foot in one foot out whatever that looks like to be able to have distance so that um there's room to move because I think just very frankly um we're talking about and this is not necessarily just the moving on we're talking about institutions, museums um you know career institutions in a way that have been um deeply white for a very long time decades, centuries and to say that they're not violent it's just not after it no one would believe me if I said that no one would believe me if I sat here and said no the moving on is not violent so I think that you um you know I think that that's both consulting to me and what people know about the history and the time that we're in and also the history of these museums um so that being said I think that being able to have a relationship and a distance where you can both say the truth but with the art um bring the artists in um but also recognize that even though we're having conversations about changing the boards, changing territorial um rooms um what what what does it look like you know for I don't know who would need her moment to curate we also have to acknowledge that some of these institutions may be so toxic that it is just not healthy for people of color to be there it's in-house and so what can we do to make sure that it is safe for people of color or other marginalized people to be in these institutions full time I'm curious how we look at other industries for property industry corporate um education um arena industry are we and we're all kind of working on this with equity. Are we in the art industry ahead of the curve with respect to other art industries of corporate academia are we behind what do we have to do yeah just curious where are we who are we just to answer I'll take that one um I think that we are a reflection of the society that we exist in so I don't know that we're behind or at the same place I think that's the most honest answer that I can give and I think people in the cultural sector some of them have fooled themselves into thinking that because we're connected to culture and we're practicing artists and we're connected to our humanity in these exceptional ways that we have transcended racism, sexism, neuro-sexism, ableism all of theisms that we have not so it's a blind spot for us if we don't be honest with ourselves and grapple with the fact that we are a reflection of the society in which we exist. Now because we're so close to our humanity we can use our humanity as a way to lead society if we are to be more honest about that. So when I do that media and I compare the last 15 years I've seen a shape, I remember a clear shift in terms of being able to see myself reflected in the media. Why that but why is it that when I go into a museum to reflect and source actually a name and see that you are able to go? Why is that? Why is the media and the corporate industry able to make that shape or even when I go into a corner I see myself more reflected there when I turn on my TV I see myself reflected in those instances when I go into a museum I do not see myself so I remember you were lagging and the phrase what's the problem? So capitalism I think is the reason why it looks like there's been some change in certain sectors money is that's why you have all these shows that we didn't have before the Black Panther that movie why 2018 that movie has been made so much earlier and the thing is the for-profit and non-profit industries both exist in a capitalist society I think that the white supremacy that is kind of the root of a non-profit structure has prevented more progress in terms of what we can see because yeah 46% of museums boards are white that is very true and so until we can figure out a way to make it so that there are financial repercussions for not being more reflective of the actual society in which we exist it's going to keep moving slower Okay, today we have a fundamental challenge here which is you're saying that in some degrees in the for-profit industry we can take advantage of the fact of the audience the fine power is diverse and so you can leverage that to move the people forward so we're kind of in a little bit of a conundrum here and this is a little bit of a vicious cycle because the audience and the venues don't have a diverse audience then what's the incentive there's no incentive so this is where the creative potential of this group will really come in so we've got to get it and I bet you do get it now your work or your peer's work that is really shifting the people what have you seen that has disrupted this industry so far what we could look to at potentials for the future more than this way no pressure but ignore that whole life fix it now that pressure actually fix it well you know I'm magical and I'm real at the same time so you know there's that okay so coming from the educational world I think there are some things that are happening that are exciting and also could be I just think indicative what I personally think should happen is at the school churches that we have they need a simultaneous like internal disruption and dismantling and we also need folks who are working on the outside there's Sean Ching right always that we're so ready to disrupt the dismantlement we don't have people who have competencies we build so that we don't replicate but we've been internally making script then we just get all that for a big fat zero nothing so I'd like to point to a couple examples especially in the crossroads so there's the high school recording arts Minneapolis okay also they open a campus in LA this past year and that is how every student has an individualized environment plan so thinking about how an education where if students have IEPs there's a bit of that individual attention but a whole school that's going hey you might actually know what you and how you learn and we're going to put entrepreneurship also in the mix of this as to pop is a pivot because I think one of the opportunities and what that school is a model for me is like let's not forget that artists and art organizations are businesses I think we like to sector arts world how we want to follow that I have to really challenge ourselves anti business mindset we are accidentally kind of upholding like you can't take care of your pocket and know how to speak that language and know how to see how that fits with another like folks that you're out interacting with and I don't know how far it's going to go from you so to know that there's a school where there's financial literacy and entrepreneurship written to it I think that is in a way pipining people to be in leadership of arts organizations better than what we have now the opportunity shift I say with a lot of people who are retiring from leadership and arts we might be able to disrupt the statistics of predominantly white female leadership the boards are still very, very white but if our young people don't know the business in my business and if they are still struck by all my now museums are where all the white people go that's what I suffer from then they're not looking to step into that they don't understand that that's a place where they can then they go on like in education when you have schools there's a school in Colorado that's starting on this because we're also involved with the hiring of the board one young lady who I met she's 15 she said if you want to be a board member you actually have to come into the building you can't be with an absentia like fictitious person that's a 15 year old okay trying to say young people are so hip and so knowledgeable and they're still there trying to school young people's input that's going to impact when people are entering this quote unquote job sector or what that means so I just want to highlight that that's not going to be a light switch I mean I think there's doesn't been more well developed then the plan and the business structure of white supremacy like they didn't leave any corner untouched like hetero-patriarchal like white supremacy was like we got every nook and cranny of this and so I also want to say like there's going to be no rough like a wave answer and it's work it is a verb over time so I think education how do you think of schooling and what we put on the table and what is centered hopefully not Eurocentric modes of teaching or learning I think that's going to be critical because there are models popping up more so that keeps me hopeful I'm going to give you my trip to the nation where I'm finally going to the UT so okay so one of the things that I appreciate about what the museum built in the U.S. it was first they got the member foundation to fund this diversity art museum set in 2015 and so because sometimes people like to pretend like what we were saying isn't the truth so continue to report some kind of service and research and I said was the truth and they were like oh we're not diverse we just had one conference and we talked to five people so then what they did was they got the Melon and the Walton Family Foundation to get a $4 million or $6 million of art to support an initiative to start their own business programs across the country to diversify their museum staff and their readers and just this year they announced a $4 million initiative between the four Melon and the Walton Family Foundation to fund this four diversity inclusion network because they realized you know what if all of our initiatives work and there's this group of critical mass of diverse professionals who could go work in museums but the boards don't want to hire them so I really like that they're thinking about it from a systems thinking approach and they're thinking about all the systems that they will need to dismantle to actually become more diverse Thank you. Hey girl. I need you to make a model that you see that would be pretty successful. I think I know this is not right. So I said earlier that it's always kind of weird to me that I'm an institution that's because when researching Basquiat and Keith Herring on my own I was at an undergrad actually the top college for our history for undergrad which was Louis College and I kind of went into college knowing what I wanted to study but Basquiat, Keith Herring Francesco Palmense, the artist of the age just was not a curriculum so I began studying these artists on my own and one of my engineers from college was here and he came back to that and so I didn't know what it would be and so coming from TV and away and my graduate work is in television you you know TV is a numbers game in a lot of ways it's about do you have an audience and I think that the kind of golden age of black and of black content and constant people of color because you know in the early 2010s people were creating web series and showing even if they could not even if these things didn't go to pilot that there is an entire market out there that studios were totally ignoring and so kind of coming from that training that it's about who do you have an audience or not I kind of took that and applied it to the museum or to the art world so what I did was before this went to the food behind this started out as a digital project and I've taken a website now because it's just harder to protect the entire day of the work and I think we were dealing with the realities of dealing with the artists like Fosca the intellectual and it's for me we're my work intersects with not just Fosca Haring but in Warhol Picasso I think that the art world at the Lucian level is just like a different beast in a lot of ways so it's just to say that with the digital project I partnered with Williams to do a one painting exhibition of this painting and we did programming and that was a strategic decision in a lot of ways one I personally wanted to bring Fosca back to Williams but also I knew that this would, where it's positioned would have the eyes and ears that would be far over and I just showed that one there was a need to engage Fosca critically and there was an audience for that and I think it kind of went from there. Thank you. Your model I think is the most audacious because you've taken on the entire arts value chain more of what you do can you talk to us about why you pursued that model why some of the computers are excessive see for that model and can there be insights you can draw on from? I suppose the need for the model is when I sit here and talk about museums we've only just acknowledged that we have museums in terms of it being a place for black people in the UK you know I talk about the funding system I should laugh at that 75% of it is goes to the royals the Royal Opera House, the Royal List the Royal whatever and the rest of the money is divvied up between absolutely everything within the arts and museums have gone into the arts in terms of how the structures have changed recently if you then start to look at diversity within that if you then break it down by culture in terms of heritage there's none a lot where do we go and find our heritage when we look at museums doing the project archiving the past, reflecting the future meant that we needed to find somewhere where we could put it out there so the publications of that the digital archive we set is that challenging the institutions and trying to break down doors, make sure that our work is not just located on the internet but in the British library so you know that it's there so our work will get lost but so the only way I think is making the connections between the different parts of the work and we started out as a regional project and more and more people keep saying to us that we're national we're more international than we are regional and making strategic partnerships and having those friends internationally is the way because then it's about collectively working together so the books that we have produced are not just about black British art it is about the diaspora so you find the voices in there the voices and people that you'll know from the US but then you'll find people in there from Martinique from Rwanda they are the voices of the diaspora because we need to pull together and it's with some of those voices because people respect things more when it's come from abroad you don't respect stuff when it's on your own for whatever reason it doesn't really matter that's the way it seems to work but when you've got that weight coming from somewhere else so it's important to join up those dots and work together and I think in terms of the model that we're doing we've joined it up on the very local level in terms of the heritage, the education and the arts but we've also tried to join it up on the international level because we are diaspora and so it makes perfect sense to me to be working with people in Africa working with people in the Caribbean to be working with people in the States that's what I've heard things that will give you a challenge and inspire a peace that will create more welcome you into the main lobby area for the best hour of the day it's really important how to keep you too so two things one we have this lovely little drink ticket so first drink is on us the people that you can grab these from Artanago right here, Joy right here, Electra right here and I've got a statue so please come say hi there are also soft beverages as well as beer and wine so whatever your flavor we've got you and then I also would like to take a second for us to just recognize the co-hosts of the happy hour again, we've had our partners that are doing really incredible work and wanting to make sure that we recognize them so we have Hayesha from WOKA, women of color in the arts we have Audrey from women of color in the arts and we look forward to meeting you all for brunch tomorrow morning Pajamas are completely welcome