Introducing Oakland's Just City Cultural Fund
Belonging in Oakland: A Just City Cultural Fund is a new multi-year program that will fund Oakland cultural practitioners of color to radically reimagine a racially just city, according to the recent announcement.
The fund, details its website, is a public-private partnership between the Oakland Cultural Affairs Division, the Akonadi Foundation, and East Bay Community Foundation that drives inspiration from the cultural equity vision lifted up in the City of Oakland’s cultural plan, Belonging in Oakland.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, in its first year, the program will offer "Reflect & Reimagine" grants to support the sector as it navigates these uncertain waters and dreams of the tools, methods, and solutions not only for keeping our most vulnerable communities afloat, but visions for their ability to thrive.
The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to unprecedented challenges and has laid bare long-standing structural inequities of our society – evidenced in the repeated targeting of Black lives by state-sanctioned power, the continued invisibilizing of Indigenous peoples, and the dehumanization of undocumented workers. We acknowledge the extraordinary circumstances that the cultural sector of communities of color are facing and recognize that undermining the culture of a people is an attack on their very being. We believe that lifting up the cultural imaginations of our Black/Indigenous/people of color communities will create the visions that our society so deeply needs.
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