Innovative Cultural Advocacy Fellowship
CYCLE X
Alumni Think Tank
July 25-29, 2022
About ICA
Founded in 2014, the CCCADI Innovative Cultural Advocacy (ICA) Fellowship trains mid-career professionals of historically marginalized communities of color for public leadership and management of cultural institutions and nonprofit arts organizations in New York City and across the nation. A noted pioneering initiative in arts advocacy and cultural equity, the ICA Fellowship has been an impetus for radical change in New York City. The fellowship seeks to involve and increase the number of emerging leaders of these marginalized populations in cultural arts, public policy, and advocacy arts.
Over the past 8 years, Fellows have engaged in an in-depth series of collaborative exchanges, and assignments that nurture an understanding of historical contexts for the field of cultural arts public policy, offer innovative and progressive thinking, and provide opportunities to meet notable leaders in the field who highlight and utilize language and framework models that address the existing inequity within cultural arts public policy.
For the 10th cycle of this fellowship program, CCCADI has gathered a cohort of engaged alumni from the previous 9 cycles to brainstorm both the past impact and future of this work, as we look to formally launch the CCCADI Institute for Racial and Social Justice in Arts and Culture which will house the ICA Fellowship going forward.
Over a five day intensive, this Alumni Think Tank will explore the meaning and practice of cultural equity, resistance, creative placemaking, community engagement and advocacy in a Post-BLM world where diversity and racial justice have been popularized within the media yet are fraught and debated social constructs in practice. We will focus on how we activate this work through institutions. We see arts and culture as communication devices, and more importantly, as healing devices that we may utilize to create spaces where ideas transform into action for positive change. As cultural workers, cultural bearers, and artists at the vanguard of justice and equity movements, what and how do we imagine effectively engaging in social change work that is rooted in revolutionary historical frameworks, led by communities of color and centered in anti-racism principles? As arts administrators and policymakers how do we support this work through conscious institution and movement building?
The Innovative Cultural Advocacy Fellowship is supported in part by American Express Foundation, New York State Council for the Arts, and Councilmembers…..
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About CCCADI’s Institute for Racial and Social Justice in Arts and Culture
The Institute for Racial and Social Justice in Arts and Culture addresses and advocates for racial and social justice and cultural equity. Through this Institute’s programming, CCCADI will ensure that the traditional role of arts and culture in healing, nurturing and celebrating culture is promoted through the effective utilization of a racial and social justice lens that honors and amplifies the cultural and intellectual richness of the African Diaspora. The objectives of this Institute are directly aligned with the organization’s strategic organizational goals and its mission of advancing cultural equity, racial and social justice for African descendant communities through arts and culture. Housed under the umbrella of this new Institute are all of CCCADI’s fellowship programs: Innovative Cultural Advocacy, Digital Evolution Artist Retention, and Afro-Caribbean Curatorial Fellowship. The CCCADI Institute for Racial and Social Justice in Arts and Culture will focus on three program areas: Racial and Social Justice Research and Advocacy Lab, The People’s Studio and IDEA (Incubator for Development & Entrepreneurship of Artists).
Dear ICA Alumni
I want to thank you and welcome you to this special iteration of the Innovative Cultural Advocacy (ICA) program. As you know, you have been invited to be part of this exceptional Think Tank to help guide and define direction for the ICA program into the future. ICA has served a tremendous purpose in providing historical grounding to the many challenges and strides that arts administrators and cultural producers have faced as professionals of color. Founded in 2014 with the goal of training mid-career professionals of color for public leadership and management of cultural institutions and nonprofit arts organizations, ICA was a pioneering initiative in arts advocacy that has been an impetus for radical change in New York City. Now, as we prepare for the 10th cohort, we acknowledge and celebrate having educated, prepared, supported and engaged over 200 fellows to meet the goal of increasing and involving the number of emerging leaders of color in cultural arts, public policy, and arts advocacy in this city and state.
The question is now, where do we go from here? To address this question, we have invited you to participate in this Think Tank of experts and professionals as alumni of ICA to assist us in defining the needs of the field in managing and confronting the critical challenges and opportunities of today for leaders and organizations of color to determine the role that ICA and CCCADI might play in assuring the sustainability, wellness and stability of our leaders and institutions.
We want to hear from you, our new generation of leaders and experts, to understand what the needs of today are and how we can affect and implement change with this collective that is the Innovative Cultural Advocacy fellowship.
We’ve got work to do! La lucha continua.
Cordially,
Melody Capote
Executive Director
Dear Fellow Alumni,
I am pleased to welcome you to the X Cycle of the ICA Fellowship, which is also a think tank for future iterations of the fellowship and the sinews that will connect the liberatory cultural work that CCCADI has organically engaged in for the past 46 years and the new Institute for Racial and Social Justice in Arts and Culture. As alumni of the ICA fellowship, we are all part of a powerful legacy and a new generation of cultural workers who have been privileged to drink from the waters of “the center”. It is wonderful to reconnect and reconvene with some familiar faces and colleagues, as we ask ourselves how do we address issues of racial and social justice for social change in a contemporary context and how do we address the needs of artists, culture bearers, and culture makers?
CCCADI is a privileged space of resistance from which to ask these questions, both because of its pioneering role in forging multicultural spaces for the honored recognition of African Diasporic communities and cultural traditions in New York City and beyond during the 1970’s and 80’s, and for its continued dedication to the mentorship and cultivation of a new generation of cultural leaders who will carry this mantle forward in the 21st century.
I hope you find among our guest presenters and your colleagues a supportive network of like-minded cultural workers invested in elevating and centering racial and social justice in their work. May this be the beginning of a new era where the work we have collectively begun serves to inspire and lay guiding footsteps and impressions for the future work of CCCADI’s Institute for Racial and Social Justice in Arts and Culture.
Dr. Sheriden Booker, Ph.D.
Alumna, ICA Cohort I
Facilitator, ICA Cohort X
ICA Think Tank Overview
The overall goals of the Think Tank:
Rethink and reimagine ICA moving forward
Build on the design and work of the Institute for Racial and Social Justice in Arts and Culture
Help shape the voice of the Caribe publication
Convene Alumni aka “thinkers” around the work and meaning of cultural policy/equity/placemaking
Support Alumni in connecting their professional work and personal experiences to that of the goals and work of the Institute.
The Think Tank Facilitator and guest speakers will lead workshop/focus group style virtual gatherings that will foster Alumni engagement and move the Alumni from IDEA/ideation to ACTION/activation. Through guided exploratory conversations on rethinking the future of the ICA Fellowship and ultimately building the work of the Institute we will be grounded in the expertise and experiences of all participants and the work of CCCADI.