How do you support artists whose work questions, argues, provokes, disrupts and refuses to accept anything less than an equitable cultural ecosystem?

This is the question that drove me to the 2015 Americans for the Arts Pre-Conference on Cultural Equity in Chicago.

I am looking for answers.

I am looking for some clear footing to build action steps forward.  Now.

Why?

Because I, and many of my friends and colleagues have spent way too much time talking, and not doing.

What I want answers to

Let me begin with some questions that came up in response to Fusing Arts, Culture and Social Change: High Impact Strategies for Philanthropy, a report released by the National Committee on Responsive Philanthropy (NCPR) by Holly Sidford at the 2011 Grantmakers in the Arts conference in San Francisco.

Questions such as:

·         Is equity about access, outreach, and distribution of philanthropic funds?

·         Or is it about the essential roles that art and culture play in public life and social well-being?

·         How does equity in arts and cultural funding relate to racial and ethnic equity?

·         What about equity in arts and culturally based economic development?

Discussing these questions led to more questions.  More questions, more talk.  More talk, less action.

So…

In response to the following questions, I offer a series of T shirts that can be worn on select occasions such as budget testimony hearings or community board meetings…

What are we talking about when we talk about cultural equity?

In a session intriguingly titled, Art as a Force for Equity, here are some answers, retorts and challenges offered by Chay Yew, Victory Gardens Theater, Maria Gaspar, 96 Acres Project, Jane M. Saks, Project&, David Feiner, Albany Park Theater and Sixto Wagan, University of Houston.

Give the community radical access to creative process.

Give people a place for:

• access
• equity
• agency
• reflection

Give art respect.

Art is a distinct and powerful experience, dangerous in the most possible ways.

Art is not a first responder. It is a second responder that provides:

• sustenance
• humanity
• healing, teaching
• an experience of beauty
• a way to feel human, to respect human dignity

The challenge is: how do second responders shift paradigms?

Art has the power to shift the canon, to create something that would not have been, to create value for the unrealized.

To realize the dream, speak the dream out loud. Again. Again, many times and with many people.

Appreciate the merits of jumping first. Here’s a secret insight: people will follow if you do something first.

What is the purpose of revolutionary artist?

This question was raised in a session titled, Partnership & Power, and met with responses from Pemon Rami, DuSable Museum of African American History, Masequa Myers, South Side Community Art Center, Bill Michel & Emily H. Lansana, Logan Center for the Arts, Rebecca Zorach, University of Chicago, Heather Robinson, Beverly Art Center, and John Haworth, National Museum of the American Indian.

Art is the rehearsal for revolution.

The purpose of the revolutionary artist is revolution.

See me.

“That was a good spreadsheet, I think of it often.”

What can the artists’ role be in the future of public art?

Within the Short Stacks: Artist Talks presentations by Sara Daleiden, MKE<-> LAX, Lauren Woods, Artist, Maria Gaspar, Artist and Jean Shin, Artist, the seed of a new MFA curriculum course emerged:

The Art of Shapeshifting.

This crucial skill set not found in traditional MFA programs develops:

• active mobility
• flexing through cultural zones
• focus on new mobilities vs cultural divides
• placing the arts in decision making structures
• how to build relationships with creative thought partners to do these projects

What is my opportunity as an individual artist for my city?

Finally, in his keynote presentation, Theaster Gates offers the following insights on the topic of Empowering the Voices Inside Communities Through the Arts:

• The Power of Two
• Art is a spiritual conduit for humanity
• Art can make new questions emerge in public dialogue
• You need to get little bit out, a little Bootsy, a little Sun Ra
• Can we be inside and outside our studios?
• “I’m never lonely.”
• Steve Colbert: You’re turning things into art I didn’t have to think about.
• Why? Art makes things visible, legible – like your consciousness, and puts it in front of people
• You do the life.
• Then it is on people.
• That’s what that does.
• Wear your passions proudly people.