GIA Blog

Today’s post focuses primarily on young people and the arts, and artists, with a little bit of, well, everything that’s inspiring me. First, I want to take a moment to share some sage advice I received at breakfast as I was making choices about what sessions to attend. There’s not always congruence between what I should attend based on the work I do, and what I may want to attend. In the end, I decide to lean into inspiration, trusting what moves me. I thank Dr. Anh Thang Dao-Shah (Senior Racial Equity and Policy Analyst, San Francisco Arts Commission) for reminding me to:

Well, I’m not actually in Oakland at the moment but am writing this blog from the International House Library on the University of California, Berkeley campus where I’m staying as a guest in the Ambassador Suite. That’s right, friends. I went to the 2018 GIA Conference in Oakland and ended up reliving my college days at a school I would love to have attended. My first visit to UC Berkley was in 2011, accompanying the Seattle Youth Speaks team to Brave New Voices, the annual youth international poetry slam competition – a monumental event filled with creative expression, arts, education, civic discourse and social justice pedagogy. During that trip, I witnessed Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense speak on campus to an eager intergenerational crowd of students, artists and community.

Sitting here in the second half of the day at the preconference session for “Culture at the Intersection of Race, Space, and Place,” my overriding takeaway is about the transformative power of the arts. Let me explain what I mean by that. It seems like everywhere you turn these days in the social justice/progressive nonprofit world, the catch phrase is “transformative not transactional change.”

GIA Conference blogger, Tram Nguyen reports from the conference, happening now in Oakland, California:

The preconference session on “Culture at the Intersection of Race, Space and Place” has my worlds colliding this Sunday morning in downtown Oakland.

The preconference session on “Culture at the Intersection of Race, Space and Place” has my worlds colliding this Sunday morning in downtown Oakland. In the spirit of storytelling—as panelists Roberto Bedoya and Favianna Rodriguez modeled—I am both a longtime Oakland resident, a current local government employee (in the county public health department), and a prior chronicler of race, space and place as a journalist at ColorLines.com.

Not only in the United States these political times are divisive. But, as Hilary Pearson, president of Philanthropic Foundations Canada (PFC) says, "funders of civil society organizations can risk more to work with them to support experiments, pilots, new ways to figure out and test approaches and to reinforce inclusion and engagement."

Nia King interviews queer and trans artists of color about their lives and their work for her podcast We Want the Airwaves. In 2014, she self-published her first collection of interviews, Queer & Trans Artists of Color: Stories of Some of Our Lives, with co-editors Jessica Glennon-Zukoff and Terra Mikalson. She self-published Queer & Trans Artists of Color, Volume 2, edited by Elena Rose, in 2016. She is currently working on Queer & Trans Artists of Color, Volume 3. Nia’s freelance reporting and comics have appeared at Colorlines.com and the East Bay Express.

Tram Nguyen currently works as a management analyst leading housing and health equity policy at Alameda County Public Health Department. She was the executive editor of ColorLines magazine from 2001-2007, and has worked for racial equity through multiple initiatives, including authoring the book We Are All Suspects Now: Untold Stories from Immigrant Communities After 9/11 (Beacon, 2004). Tram holds a Masters in Public Policy from UC Berkeley’s Goldman School.

A new report says a growing number of funders are responding to demands that they be more accountable, transparent, and collaborative through participatory grantmaking.

Lara Davis is an artist, arts administrator, and creative strategist working at the intersection of culture, public education, and social justice. She is the arts education manager for Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture, and is part of the Visionary Justice StoryLab. Lara co-chairs A.R.E. (Artists for Racial Equity) Network, a National Guild for Community Arts Education network for artists and administrators of color and serves on the National Advisory Committee for the Teaching Artists Guild. She is a 2017-2018 Marshall Memorial Fellow, received the Guild’s 2017 Service Award, and is a 2015 recipient of the Americans for the Arts Emerging Leader Award.