Saturday, February 7, 2015 – CULTURAL EQUITY

Cultural Equity: Almost 43% of California residents speak a language other than English at home, a proportion far higher than any other state. Additionally, no single racial or ethnic group forms a majority of California’s population, making the state a minority-majority state. How can arts mangers advance the conversation on cultural equity? Is it about engaging new and diverse participants, providing more support for community arts, tacking institutional or systemic marginalization or rethinking creative placemaking strategies?

Guest Speakers

Terezita (Tere) Romo, Program Officer for arts and culture, The San Francisco Foundation

An independent curator and scholar, she recently served as the arts project coordinator at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC). Previously, she was the arts director at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago and resident curator at The Mexican Museum in San Francisco, where she organized exhibitions and public programs. She was the program manager for the Organizational Support Program at the California Arts Council, where she developed a Traditional Arts Program and participated in the development of the Multi-Cultural Arts Programs. She has served as reviewer for the National Endowment for the Arts, Alpert Awards, Denver Airport, and Sacramento Public Art Programs. An art historian, she has published essays on Chicana/o art and is the author of “Malaquias Montoya” (2011), an artist monograph within the UCLA CSRC book series “A Ver: Revisioning Art History.” She was also the lead curator for “Art Along the Hyphen: the Mexican-American Generation,” one of four exhibitions organized within the CSRC’s “LA Xicano,” a collaborative project within the Getty Foundation’s regional initiative called “Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA 1945-1980.” She holds a Master’s degree in art history. More about Tere

Brian Freeman, Playwright, Theater Director, and Actor  

Brian Freeman was the director of the BlackSmyth Lab at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, CA and has served as a     resident director of the New York Shakespeare Festival/Joseph Papp Public Theater. Brian has worked in theater and  performance in the Bay Area for more than two decades, including a Wattis artist-in-residence at the Yerba Buena Center for   the Arts. Brian was one of the founding members of the highly influential Pomo Afro Homos (Post-Modern African-American   Homosexuals). Awards include the CalArts Alpert Award in Theater, and the New York Dance & Performance Bessie Award.     More on Brian Freeman and Fierce Love 

Afternoon Activity

The Heart of (In)Equity: Power & Economics

In this activity, fellows will be led through an internal, self-reflective, somatic and interactive experience of privilege. Facilitators Cristal and Tyese will lead a discussion on how our various levels of privilege affords us or blocks us from the power and access to wealth, which drive the structures and systems of inequity. In bringing awareness to our privilege, what are the possibilities of leveling the playing field? What are the barriers? Where is your place in power and how can you leverage that to advance equity in the arts and culture field of the Bay Area?

Co-Facilitator: Cristal Fiel is an arts administrator, writer and artist with a bachelor’s degree in Ethnic Studies and Sociology from UC Berkeley. She was formerly the Editor in Chief of Maganda Magazine, a literary and arts magazine and organization at UC Berkeley where she discovered her passion to work in the arts field. She has served as administrative coordinator and later board member of the Asian American Women Artists Association (AAWAA). Her mixed media artwork has been exhibited with AAWAA, including their ongoing project, A Place of Her Own. She participated in Bindlestiff Studio’s Stories High theatre production as a playwright and stage manager. Cristal also dabbles in radio-making and had the honor to work with local public radio station KALW 91.7FM as a producer on the Sights and Sounds of Bayview, a joint project with KALW and San Francisco Arts Commission. Recently, she participated in the prestigious VONA/Voices multi-genre writing workshop for emerging writers of color.

Co-Facilitator: Tyese M. Wortham recently joined the Community Arts Stabilization Trust (CAST) in serving artists and arts organizations through real estate development. She has extensive nonprofit administration experience, spanning survey research, education, family literacy, youth development, and the arts. Prior to CAST, Tyese honed her social justice lens as a grantmaker in Cultural Equity Grants at the San Francisco Arts Commission, and as a presenter and producer of culture-specific artist populations with the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival. Highly committed to advancing cultural equity in San Francisco Bay Area’s arts landscape, she aspires to increase the presence and voice of arts leaders of color; enhance the visibility of the traditional and folk arts communities; and facilitate the stabilization and prosperity of Bay Area arts institutions. A 2014 Emerging Arts Professionals MADE award recipient, Tyese has been recognized for her expertise as a panelist, consultant, facilitator, and committee member for various Bay Area arts organizations, including Silicon Valley Creates (formerly Arts Council Silicon Valley), Alliance for California Traditional Arts, Black Choreographers Festival, and the Isadora Duncan Dance Awards. As a passionate and community-based grantmaker, administrator, artist, and teacher, Tyese creates life balance by nourishing her physical, mental, and spiritual health through dance, yoga, and meditation.

Group Notes