2020 Program Topic:
Visual Arts

All periods of change require a collective leap of imagination. In recent years, the Trump administration and racist Right have enflamed culture wars to advance white supremacist rule and racist violence. But at the same time, artists, athletes, culture-bearers, cultural organizers, and narrative strategists have moved millions to embrace radical racial justice narratives and ideas. Black and Indigenous people and other people of color working in the culture expand our desire for racial justice and sense of possibility. How are people innovating and advancing racial justice narratives? How do we think about the cultural battleground now in this time of uprisings? Race Forward is proud to present this plenary of leading cultural organizers, thinkers, and influencers.

Join us for a behind-the-scenes look at the #KeepAleFree campaign, a national effort to build pathways of protection from deportation for reproductive justice organizer Alejandra Pablos. Team members Gloria, Yvette, Ale & Castro will dive through the campaign's intersectional organizing work (legal, communications & ground organizing) and how they use cultural digital organizing to creatively disrupt the mainstream portrayals around immigration, criminalization, and reproductive justice. The team engages in this work through a perspective that is dedicated to dismantling prison, detention centers, and governmental agencies.

Workshop attendees will engage in a participatory, art-making workshop that explores the reimagining of the narrative around climate change. Through amplifying conversations that center frontline communities that have been leading movements towards both environmental and racial justice, #ClimateWoke aims to change the story about climate justice by centering low-income, communities of color, and migrants most impacted by climate change. Our fight for climate justice is intersectional and centers the leadership of communities on the frontlines. #ClimateWoke means more than being woke to our current environmental and climate crises. It also means being aware of who holds the solutions and how allies can take the lead from frontline communities, often undocumented & migrant communities and communities of color. Real change can only happen when people acknowledge climate change policies and storytelling need to be enacted with social, racial, and environmental justice at the center.

The Center for Cultural Power The Center for Cultural Power inspires artists and culture makers to imagine a world where power is distributed equitably and we live in harmony with nature. The Center for Cultural Power is creating a thriving ecosystem for artists and culture makers -- who are dismantling systems of oppression and are dedicated to transformational creative practices The Center incubates, organizes, activates, and amplifies artists who want to put efforts towards the climate crisis and be catalysts of change. We also collaborate with movement-building organizations to better engage and activate with artists and artists leadership.