With funding from the Ford Foundation, Dance/NYC has launched a $500,000 fund to make operating grants to “small dance makers” with annual operating budgets between $25,000 and $1 million, with priority given to groups led by ALAANA artists. As reported by Crain’s New York Business:
Racial Equity
Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA) is committed to addressing structural inequities and increasing philanthropic and government support for BIPOC artists and arts organizations. Racial equity is a lens through which GIA aims to conduct all of its work, as well as a specific area of its programming.
Since 2008, GIA has been elevating racial equity as a critical issue affecting the field. To actualize this work within the sector, GIA published its Racial Equity in Arts Funding Statement of Purpose in 2015. Through webinars, articles, convenings, and conference sessions, GIA provides training and information to support arts funders in addressing historic and structural inequity through their grantmaking practices as part of an effort for racial justice as a means toward justice for all.
GIA believes that all oppressed groups should benefit from funding. We give primacy to race because racism is the means by which oppressed groups are manipulated into opposing programs that assist them. Therefore, Grantmakers in the Arts’ equity work – including our discussions of support for trans artists, artists with disabilities and for disability arts – is NOT race-exclusive but IS race-explicit. GIA’s vision for the future of our work is to increasingly reveal how the liberation of all oppressed people is interdependent.
GIA has made a strategic decision to foreground racial equity in our work for several reasons:
- Within other oppressed peoples’ communities (including women, members of the lgbtqi community, people with disabilities, and others), it has been well-documented that people of color still face the worst social outcomes.
- GIA feels that others’ strategies of combining considerations of race with other considerations too often result in racialized people being pushed into the background or ignored.
- The U.S.’ creation of race was established to keep oppressed peoples separate.
Unless we articulate our support for racialized peoples, while calling out this separation strategy, we inadvertently reinforce this separation strategy.
Specific themes of our racial equity programming include:
- The analysis of how funding practices create structural challenges for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color)/ALAANA (African, Latinx, Asian, Arab, Native-American) organizations (Eurocentric quality standards, matching requirements, among others).
- The impact of these practices, as manifest in racialized disparities in levels of funding.
- An exploration of the use of coded language to justify racial inequity (i.e. referring to white audiences as “general” or “mainstream,” while organizations of color are “culturally-specific.”
When it comes to self-identifying language, GIA seeks to use terms that communicate our respect. We do not seek to impose language on members of any group. We respect the manner in which anyone prefers to self-identify. When referring to issues of racial equity, “we use the term BIPOC to highlight the unique relationship to whiteness that Indigenous and Black people have, which shapes the experiences of and relationship to white supremacy for all people of color within a U.S. context.” We take this explanation and practice from the BIPOC Project.
GIA has also used the racial and ethnic identifiers African, Latinx, Asian, Arab, and Native American. We have used African, Latinx, Asian, Arab, Native American – represented using the acronym ALAANA – because we know that many believe the term, “people of color,” conflates together entire groups of people and as a contrast to white. This results in a continued centering of whiteness as the norm and the standard from which other identities deviate.
GIA does not refer to organizations that are founded by, led by, and feature the work of ALAANA/BIPOC communities as “culturally-specific,” as we believe this term centers whiteness as the norm from which other organizations deviate.
GIA is committed to communicating respectfully. GIA does not ask that anyone self-identify with or use any term other than ones they prefer.
by Monica
Race Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation has selected sixty New York City arts and cultural organizations to participate in their Racial Equity in the Arts Innovation Lab, a year-long training program to improve racial equity in the arts and culture sector.
by Monica
The Building Movement Project has released a report about the gap in representation of ALAANA individuals in leadership positions at nonprofits. The report has implications for organizations of all types, including recommendations for funders. As reported by Nonprofit Quarterly:
Recently, Caroline served on the jury of a government arts council. Among the forms she had to fill out were the standard nondiscrimination forms required of any vendor doing business in this city. It gave her pause, as one individual, to agree that her “firm” would not discriminate against “its employees” on the basis of “Race, color, creed, religion, national origin, ancestry, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity (transgender status), domestic partner status, marital status, disability, AIDS/HIV status, height, weight.”
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by Monica
On June 14, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) will host a webinar highlighting what national grantmakers can learn from ALAANA-led social movements and philanthropic institutions in the South:
[The South has] a vibrant history of successful movements for racial and social justice, yet grassroots Southern leaders are often overlooked by philanthropy and lack funding to pursue their own agendas.
The South is already home to a strong ecosystem of people-of-color (POC)-led philanthropic institutions that can help drive resources for racial and social justice. This webinar will explore the crucial role of POC-led philanthropy in the South, with an emphasis on the powerful potential for significant impact not only in the Southern region, but nationally.
by Monica
From KPCC:
The [Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors] voted unanimously to advance a proposal, brought forward by supervisors Hilda Solis and Sheila Kuehl, with specific recommendations to increase ethnic, socio-economic and gender diversity in the staffing and audience of arts organizations.
Those recommendations come after 18 months of work. The [LA County Arts Commission] has held town hall meetings attended by 650 community members and solicited input from peers in other cities.
by Monica
PolicyLink has released a report supported by The Kresge Foundation revealing how arts and culture strategies are used to help create sustainable and equitable communities. Creating Change through Arts, Culture, and Equitable Development: A Policy and Practice Primer highlights both promising and proven practices that demonstrate equity-focused arts and culture policies, strategies, and tools. The report describes the role of arts and culture across many sectors: transportation, housing, economic development and financial security, health and food, youth and education, open space and recreation, and technology and information access.
The League of American Orchestras’ upcoming national conference in Detroit falls just days before the fiftieth anniversary of the 1967 Detroit uprising, the largest urban disruption in America since the Civil War. According to Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) president Anne Parsons, the 1967 riot was the context for the orchestra’s fellowship program for African American musicians.
Read More...Story matters, and we are at a pivotal moment in which there is a growing understanding that narratives that move hearts and minds are critical. Those of us who work at the intersection of the arts and social justice have known this for some time — in the words of Jeff Chang, “cultural change precedes political change” — but it has become apparent to many others that without compelling storytelling, policy platforms do not stick.
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