As the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture releases its Racial Equity Statement, Director Randy Engstrom writes on how the arts can lead the way to cross-sector, community-wide change:
Arts are how we can achieve racial equity in our institutions, and in our lives. They hold the power to capture, nourish and move us. They serve as a vehicle for radical social change, and are an effective strategy to address the pressing issues of our time. We believe that we need to center the arts in our strategy, but look beyond our field to affect change structurally, in partnership with the community, City departments, other institutions and jurisdictions, so we can help build racial equity in housing, criminal justice, education, jobs, the environment and more.