Grantmakers in the Arts

"It is too early to determine whether the waves of protests of recent years as part of the Black Lives Matter movement will actually constitute a 'racial reckoning' (as the media dubbed it) or not, but awareness of the role of systemic inequality and structural racism appears to be at or near its historical peak, especially among White Americans. This means that the aperture for meaningful policy change has opened," writes Stephen Menedian in an essay on the Othering & Belonging Institute blog.

Zakiya Harris is in the process of group of co-founding BlacSpace Cooperative, organizations led by Black women in Oakland working to create a business development ecosystem to uplift the city's Black arts community. Harris - a cultural architect who grew up in East Oakland and has worked for more than two decades on projects that explore the intersections of art, activism, and entrepreneurship - says, "We, as a collective community, recognized that we were at a critical moment, and we could leverage the opportunity of the pandemic and the uprising toward a cultural reset."

"When I think of the phrase 'You’re always a day late and a dollar short,' I also think about resilience—the ability to recover from or adjust easily to, despite hard luck or change," writes Helanius J. Wilkins in a poignant essay published in the National Performance Network (NPN) blog. "One of my earliest lessons about resilience came through observing my father."

"Conventional banking hasn't worked for businesses owned by people of color. But a new network is designed to get money flowing fairly to BIPOC economies." Common Future’s CEO, Rodney Foxworth, speaks with Yes! Magazine about their strategy to disrupt traditional lending models, which are neither racially neutral nor adequate for BIPOC communities or businesses.

"After the catalyzing uprising in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, many cultural institutions have sought to represent themselves more equitably — that is to say, more diversely — to the Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) community at large," reports Frederica Simmons in Hyperallergic. "This pursuit of equity has fallen heavily on the shoulders of BIPOC cultural workers, as institutions rush to communicate their inclusivity to majority White audiences."

Last November, Memphis Music Initiative (MMI)’s Director of Grantmaking and Partnerships, Dr. Rychetta Watkins, attended the 2021 annual Grantmakers in the Arts Conference, which took place in the virtual world for a second year due to the ongoing pandemic. Dr. Watkins, along with MMI Executive Director Amber Hamilton, developed and hosted a panel on the topic of intermediary funders in the grantmaking space, centering the unique perspective of intermediary funders. Dr. Watkins shares a reflection following their conference session including the context in which intermediary funders operate, the benefits of this model, and the lessons traditional funders can learn from intermediaries.

"I’ve witnessed how public art can draw attention to issues of community safety, awaken empathy, mobilize a community, and even generate dialogue between people holding differing opinions," writes Mallory Rukhsana Nezam, guest editor for Issue 3 of FORWARD, focused on community safety.

"For those of us who have participated in a half-century of powerful activism by people with disabilities, a familiar slogan summarizes our call to action: Nothing about us without us." Nikki Brown-Booker writes in the Winter 2022 issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review.