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From Nonprofit Quarterly: The cultural sector is seeking alternatives to business-as-usual. This article is the second in the series, “Remember the Future: Culture and Systems Change,” co-produced by Art.coop and NPQ. In this series, queer, trans, and BIPOC artists and cultural bearers reflect upon the unique role that culture has played and can play in activating and enacting structural change—and in building a solidarity economy.

“Another term for the systems we practice as a company and have represented through our art is solidarity economy. We at Applied Mechanics didn’t know we were moving and dreaming into solidarity economy until recent connections reflected this back to us.”

“The idea of a solidarity economy resonates with our vision of liberation. Like many artists, our collective members face tensions between our dreams and economic pressures. To pay the bills, we are fiscally sponsored by Headlong Dance Theater, a Philadelphia nonprofit with an aligned mission, and Fractured Atlas, a New York City nonprofit that supports artists nationally. In Practicing Cooperation: Mutual Aid Beyond Capitalism, published last year, Andrew Zitcer of Drexel University documents the tensions between ideals and monetary pressures at Headlong, but emphasizes too the ‘urban possibility of creative democracy’ (203) that is core to Headlong—and to us.”

“Our collective welcomes this opportunity to deepen intention. Our work is never finished. We celebrate that. We are always learning, using our hearts as our compass, our truth as swords. (Thank you, Assata Shakur). To center our value of mutual thriving for all, we must believe that “No one is free until we are all free” (Thank you, Fannie Lou Hamer). Our group’s intention, while remaining flexible and humble, is to keep moving the needle of change towards collective liberation in the imaginations of our audiences. However small that movement may be, its ripples are cosmic; it is enough, and it never stops.”

“This struggle towards the next world is a work of art, one in which it is important to remain brave and vulnerable. At every step on the journey to creating this new world, there is compost—critical to building soil. Every offering—kindness, presence, art, patience—is valuable. There is no such thing as wrong or unfinished.”

“Each mistake—erasure, self-criticism, tension—is an opportunity to grow closer to each other and our highest selves. Every creation is a seed. The process is the soil. The sun and rain are our joy and conflict. They are inextricable from each other and equally indispensable.”

“Artists—and we are all artists—are microorganisms that nurture seeds. Whatever is harvested will be honored, and every hand that was a part of it thanked, including the Earth from which the harvest was born. This is how we find our way, together.”

Read the full article here.

From National Coalition for Arts’ Preparedness: “Following the recent tornadoes, a major disaster declaration for Alabama was declared on January 15. All categories of Public Assistance (PA) have just opened up for 9 AL counties: Autauga, Barbour, Chambers, Conecuh, Coosa, Dallas, Elmore, Hale, and Tallapoosa. Private non-profit cultural institutions and arts organizations in these counties are now eligible to apply for repair of their facility as well as of any damaged collections materials.”

For Artists:
The Entertainment Community Fund – https://entertainmentcommunity.org/
MusiCares – https://www.musicares.org/
CERF+/The Artists Safety Net – https://cerfplus.org/
NYFA/New York Foundation for the Arts – https://www.nyfa.org/online-resources/emergency-resources/

For Organizations:
Cultural institutions and arts organizations can call the National Heritage Responders hotline: 202.661.8068. The National Heritage Responders, a team of trained conservators and collections care professionals administered by the Foundation for Advancement in Conservation, are available 24/7 to provide phone advice and guidance.
Museums with damage to their collections may be eligible for FAIC funding/assistance for an assessment: https://www.culturalheritage.org/resources/collections-care/cap/emergency-cap.

For Funders:
Funders and service organizations can learn ways to streamline and expedite assistance to artists and organizations through The Essential Guidelines for Arts Responders Organizing in the Aftermath of Disaster – https://www.ncaper.org/post/essential-guidelines-for-arts-responders-organizing-in-the-aftermath-of-disaster.

For Everyone:
For questions about salvaging heirlooms and other objects/artifacts can email the National Heritage Responders at NHRpublichelpline@culturalheritage.org, and HENTF’s (the Heritage Emergency National Task Force) Save Your Family Treasures guidance is available at https://www.fema.gov/assistance/save-family-treasures. Here you can find the downloadable FEMA fact sheets After the Flood: Advice for Salvaging Damaged Family Treasures and Salvaging Water-Damaged Family Valuables and Heirlooms, available in multiple languages.

You and/or your organization may be eligible for FEMA assistance if you are in an area designated under a presidentially-declared disaster. To help demystify federal disaster relief, read An Arts Field Guide to Federal Disaster Relief, available free online in English and Spanish: https://www.ncaper.org/general-8-1.

Preparedness Resources:
If you have not been affected, we encourage you to take some time to begin or update your Readiness Plan for your own organization or practice; resources include www.artsready.org and www.performingartsreadiness.org for organizations, and www.cerfplus.org for artists.

From Good Work Institute: “At the start of a New Year, dedicate some attention to a fresh approach to your working relationships! In this 7-week workshop, we will cultivate our capacity to connect with ourselves and others and practice nonviolent communication skills that can support our working together productively, authentically, and with care, in service of our work towards collective liberation.”

“When we pour ourselves into work we care about, we want to know it matters. We want to know that our collective efforts to bring about needed changes and work toward Just Transition will be fruitful. How disheartening, exhausting, and frustrating it is to see our hard work fall short as conflict slows down the momentum of our work or, worse yet, leads us to step away from collaborative efforts.”

“The legacies of a domination paradigm (capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and scarcity to name a few) have left us without the skills we need in order to collaborate effectively and to find generativity in conflict which, on some scale, is inevitable.”

“Nonviolent Communication (NVC) offers us a toolkit to deepen our own embodied self-connection and build our capacity to relate to ourselves and one another with empathy so that we can show up more fully and authentically to our work in the world. As we begin to unpack the way that domination culture has shaped our very language, we can learn new/old ways of communicating that bring us more deeply into alignment with our values, our purpose, and into connection with one another as we work together to build the world we long for.”

Learn more and register here.

“Jawole Willa Jo Zollar is the founder of the legendary ensemble Urban Bush Women. She is also a winner of the MacArthur Genius Award. I met Jawole at a Creative Change Retreat, an intersection of artists and activists that used to be held at the Sundance Resort, in Provo, Utah. One of my favorite gatherings to facilitate,” said Gibrán Rivera “I was immediately moved by Jawole’s presence, and I could sense how she was tuning into a deeper energy in my facilitation. We started to get to know each other and quickly learned that not only do we share values and aspirations for a more embodied and generative approach to change. But we also share a powerful spiritual alignment.” Listen to the podcast episode here.

We at Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA) must express our grief at the loss of 18 innocent lives and injuring 10 others in the shootings at Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay this January. It is especially devastating as Lunar New Year celebrations are a time for joy and family, culture and community.

This violence against the Asian American community – which has been a strategic practice from before the Chinese Exclusion Act and which has seen a horrific rise throughout the COVID-19 pandemic – is a literal example of the reason that GIA advocates for racial justice in arts funding – to support the expression and full humanity of Asian people who have been dehumanized, in ways both subtle and direct, by our public and private institutions throughout our country’s history, and still to this day.

“No race or ethnic group has a monopoly on violence. No group is immune to our society’s obsession and love affair with guns. No group is exempt from mental health challenges or despair,” said Naomi Ishisaka for the Seattle Times. “We are struggling with this complexity in the Tyre Nichols killing as well, with some having trouble understanding how Black cops could beat another Black man so brutally.”

Creativity and cultural expression by Black and Indigenous people, and people of color, has long explored different ways of truth-telling and valuing each other, our environment, our health, our safety, and our humanity, whether it is Mel Chin’s bringing attention to how corporate industries poison the water and soil in low-income communities of color, Guadalupe Maravilla’s organizing of mutual aid for low-income residents during the coronavirus pandemic. Artists and activists alike who center cultural and narrative shift create opportunity for us all to envision another, perhaps just, future and the steps we must all take to build it.

Eddie Torres, GIA president & CEO, reminded us of a time when he asked an activist where they felt it most important for advocacy and activism to take place. In response to his question, she said, “The place where you are.” Supporting the creativity and cultural expression of Black people and African, Latine, Arab, Asian, Native American communities is only one of many elements – but an essential element – of racial equity toward the goal of racial justice in our nation.

It is for these reasons that we also stand against any government censorship of school curricula or training in anti-racism, critical race theory, or the transparent sharing of the history of our nation. GIA embraces history, anti-racism, and critical race theory in our work.

Our commitment to action and advocacy is clear. We stand beside Asian and Black communities as they demand justice and action. As this movement grows, we call upon our community and the grantmaking sector to invest in movements led by these communities, and community-identified/-led solutions that will support healing, restitution, and a just future.

We call upon the wisdom of Dr. Maya Angelou today as a guide for directing our actions in response to our emotions, “So, use that anger. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.”

A sense of community and belonging is a right, not a privilege. To our membership, our peers, our field – we stand by you as we continue the fight against racism, violence, state-supported police brutality, and cultural-suppression in our country.

From the California Black Freedom Fund: “We, the undersigned, lead philanthropic institutions throughout California that came together to seed and establish the California Black Freedom Fund. Established just two and a half years ago following the brutal murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and countless others, the California Black Freedom Fund was created to mobilize the resources necessary to build Black power and eradicate systemic and institutional racism.”

“Now, just days into 2023, we are grappling with similar situations. On January 3, in Los Angeles, Keenan Anderson was killed by a taser an officer deployed while Keenan was lying face-down on his stomach – one of three police killings in LA in one week. Takar Smith and Oscar Sanchez also lost their lives to police violence. On January 7, in Memphis, Tennessee, Tyre Nichols was brutally beaten and killed by five officers during a traffic stop. Nationally, police killed at least 1,176 people in 2022 – about 100 a month – making last year the deadliest year on record for police violence since killings began being tracked.”

“While the nation is grieving, some are making statements telling Black people how to express their outrage. That’s not the focus of our letter. Our letter is a call to action for everyone concerned with the brutalization of Black people and Black communities. Our letter is a call to action for those who might dare to dream of a world where police violence is a mere figment of our past – a distant object in the rearview mirror of our nation’s history. Our letter is a call to action for those who desire to transform moments of despair at injustice into a sustained movement to dismantle systemic racism and racial inequities.”

“Historically, philanthropy has responded to flashpoints of police violence and mass mobilizations with an uptick in temporary funding directed toward Black communities, and more broadly, communities of color. These surges in funding often are short-term, tactical or narrowly focused. Then, when the urgency of the moment recedes, new momentum to build lasting, organized power in Black communities is lost, and resources to build multiracial coalitions disappear.”

“This time, we must keep the momentum. We call on private, corporate and community foundations to invest in Black-led movement organizations pushing back against systemic barriers and expanding access to opportunity. In addition, we need a groundswell of investments from everyday people, high-net worth donors, and companies.”

Read the full letter and learn how to support here.

“Like you, I’ve been thinking about the police brutally murdering Tyre Nichols in Memphis, the latest in the countless murders of Black people by the police,” said Vu Le for Nonprofit AF. “I’m thinking of Tyre Nichols, who loved skateboarding and photography and who had a son a little younger than my six-year-old, and I’m thinking of his family, whom he was just trying to get home to. I cannot imagine their pain.”

“This murder came while so many of us are still grieving the mass shooting deaths of people in Monterey Park, Half Moon Bay, and other places too numerous for many of us to keep track of anymore (about 40 over the past four weeks). This is where we are at for this new year. Endless death and injustice, not just sanctioned but sponsored by our government. And those of us in nonprofit and philanthropy, for all the good we do, often feel powerless.”

“But our sector’s job is to address inequity and injustice, so we need to focus. The statements we’ll be making condemning police violence and anti-Blackness have been a start, but they are not enough, and in fact, they can often lull us into a sense of complacency, kind of like a long-form of “thoughts and prayers.” We need to, as an entire united sector, work together to end white supremacy and its many manifestations, and we need to do it differently and more effectively.”

“To be successful in pushing back against injustice like the above, the progressive-leaning wing of our sector must stop wasting time with meaningless and distracting priorities and start working together to implement equally wide-reaching and creative strategies. We can call it collective impact or whatever, but we need to do more of it, and at scales that would match the conservative movement’s investment in furthering its values. Here are a few things to consider:”

We need a common agenda uniting every issue we’re trying to address
Progressive-leaning foundations need to fund completely differently
Nonprofits need to stop being so nice and get a lot angrier

“I want us to get angrier. Not just at the various forms of relentless injustice we have been tasked with doing something about, but also at the fact that we are expected to do it with 10% of the resources we need, resources that come with endless conditions and restrictions. We’ve been conditioned to be calm and level-headed and grateful, and over time, our imagination has been dimmed, our common vision narrower and narrower. It’s been affecting our ability to work together collectively to advance a just and equitable world. We need to restore both our righteous anger and our imagination.”

Read the full article here.