GIA Blog

As someone who has spent nearly a decade in public health and health equity, I’m excited and somewhat chagrined to come across the work covered in this session. Why hadn’t I heard of this, or even thought of this, before?! It’s a testament to the persistent power of status quo and silos unless they are actively dismantled. I appreciate even more the importance and need for the research, frameworks, projects and ideas discussed in this session that lay the groundwork for emerging cross-sector collaboration and partnership between the arts and public health.

There was something very touching, comforting and familiar about today’s last keynote of this year’s GIA Convening. Even though it was larger-than-life Lin-Manuel Miranda and his equally impressive father, Luis A. Miranda Jr., I found myself frequently thinking during their conversation not so much about their achievements but about how to raise my son so that he would grow up caring about his community and where he came from—and one day look at me with equal parts bemusement, love and understanding the way Lin-Manuel looked at Luis.

Today’s workshop, Reimagining Narratives of Power, brought to mind a long-ago debate I remember hearing between Kim Klein and Gary Delgado. (Kim is a grassroots fundraising guru and the author of Fundraising for Social Change, and Gary is a longtime racial justice organizer and the founder of what is now Race Forward.)

After having heard many tantalizing snippets in previous sessions about transforming funder practices, this session was the perfect next step. It was a deeper dive into what it means to be community-driven and community-connected, but broken down as a real conversation among three women of color who are passionate about this topic, honest about their challenges, and so clearly innovative and important leaders in their field.

The three foundations highlighted here work in Detroit, New Orleans, and Puerto Rico—locales where communities experienced ecological and economic disasters that drew an influx of external funding—and hold especially intense lessons for funders in practicing responsible community philanthropy from afar.

Just Transition provides a framework for all sectors and all people to move toward a life-affirming future even as our planet’s life support systems come close to collapse under this current paradigm. Funders have increasingly begun to grapple with Just Transition in philanthropy, and in this session, Quita Sullivan of New England Foundation for the Arts and Tiffany Wilhelm of Opportunity Fund shepherded a conversation about what this means for arts funders—including in their practices, policies and mindsets.

The definition of Just Transition offered by Climate Justice Alliance is “a vision-led, unifying and place-based set of principles, processes, and practices that build economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy.”

“Always tell the story of indigenous justice in racial justice, and land is always connected to that.”

This, from Gaby Strong, is what I’m taking to heart from spending time with the artists/strategists/organizers of NDN Collective. I’m so grateful to GIA and to indigenous leaders themselves for centering this struggle, which is so vibrant, urgent and crucial to the grand reckoning of white supremacy that 2020 has turned out to be.

Where has Maysoon Zayid been all my life? Once she started talking, I never wanted her to stop, and judging from the lit-up zoom chat, everyone at today’s keynote felt the same. The Palestinian American comedian, actor, and disability justice activist had us all “laugh-crying and crying-crying,” in the words of one attendee, all while dropping brilliant insights without missing a beat and wearing a fabulous feathery black jacket. In the words of another chat post: “Best. Keynote. Ever. Brilliant, stylish, and joyful.”

Friday’s workshop, Creative Practice as Civic Practice: Supporting artist power in community-led transformation, reminded me of what a longtime friend and mentor of mine likes to say: “Community organizing is both an art and a science.”

Are podcasts a democratizing medium? The question at the core of this session is one that resonates with my old journalist’s heart (though it’s been many years, once a journalist, always a journalist). This session shared the story of the Barr Foundation’s pilot investment in PRX media and a podcast training initiative that helped launch podcasts such as Out of the Blocks, Afroqueer, and Bottom of the Map.

As an inveterate, old-school print reader, I was late to the podcast party. It was eye-opening to learn from Kerri Hoffman of PRX that podcasts have really only become a normalized form of media within the last five years. With the advent of technology improvements for ease of access and the maturation of more and more excellent content, podcasts are reaching a new peak of high adoption rates. As the industry grows and gains traction, another question emerges of whether community voices will be elbowed out by big media entities and market forces.

I was grateful to learn another side of the Building Healthy Communities story from this session. The footprint of BHC, the California Endowment’s 10-year, 14-site initiative that sought to blend place-based organizing and statewide policy and systems change, is impossible to miss in the public health and community organizing sectors. As someone working in the orbit of TCE and BHC for years, I’d heard much about the initiative’s state and local policy campaigns and its narrative change work to “create an inclusive democracy and close health equity gaps.” But less well-known is this story of arts and culture as a radical community practice that was incubated in the Boyle Heights BHC.