Brooklyn Arts Council celebrates Black culture, individuals, organizations, artists, and social justice practitioners not only this month, but every month. With a focus on capacity building, education, funding, programs, and fiscal sponsorship, we find our purpose in activating diverse and authentic conversations in our community. Aware that Black history cannot possibly be defined in just the span of a few weeks, we use our platform to highlight the role of the arts in civic engagement as well as a mechanism to amplify Black voices. The arts are an essential part of the equation for social justice, a vital tool for raising awareness and communicating vital issues in the never-ending fight to create positive change and work toward a world that is anti-racist, just, equitable, and unbiased.
While we seek to empower and promote the work and voices of Black artists year-round, to honor Black History Month, please read below and click through to learn more about just a few of the artists in our network who represent the beautiful diversity of our borough.
Please consider joining us in our efforts to ensure that artists continue to thrive in our vibrant community of Brooklyn through these trying times. We thank you for your continued support.
Warm Regards,
Charlotte A. Cohen
Executive Director
10 Black Artists & Organizations to Know
These BAC-affiliated artists are making waves in our community, using their diverse skills and artforms to champion Black heritage.
CARLITA VICTORIA | DarknessRISING
Photo courtesy of DarknessRISING.
Carlita Victoria is a committed mental health advocate and founder of DarknessRISING, a mental health awareness project which includes a mental health provider database, resources, free wellness workshops, and concerts created by Black Broadway and theatre professionals, many of whom have experienced a mental health condition. The collective sings inspirational music from pop, musical theatre, R&B, and gospel genres. DarknessRISING’s goal is to inspire conversations about mental health, address issues which directly affect the Black and LGBTQIA communities, connect attendees to resources, and erase stigma. Their performers have been in/are currently in “The Lion King,” “Beautiful,” “Motown,” “Book of Mormon,” and “Les Miserables.” You can view their Broadway performers’ songs of hope in their inspirational YouTube series, “Music & Mental Health.”
In partnership with Tony Nominee Adrienne Warren, “Broadway for Mental Health Support” is their new initiative for artists to receive financial support for therapy and mental health resources. Furthermore, the organization’s “Help Me Find a Therapist Program,” in partnership with Depressed While Black Nonprofit, provides culturally competent therapist options for those seeking a Black therapist. DarknessRISING also provides speed-dating and pandemic dating tips for your mental health, sponsored by Dating From Home, as well as free, monthly #WellnessWednesday Virtual Workshops, which are open to all. Their next workshop is Wednesday 2/10/21 at 6pm EST.
Learn more about Carlita Victoria and Darkness RISING by visiting their website, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.
AMICLAR PRIESTLY | AfroLatin@Project
Image courtesy of the AfroLatino Festival and AfroLatin@Project.
Amiclar Priestly is the co-director of AfroLatino Festival in NYC and director of the AfroLatin@Project.
The AfroLatin@Project is a resource center and cultural advocate for the documentation and preservation of the cultures, histories, and experiences of Afro-descendant people in the Americas. Their programs advance AfroLatin@ studies and grassroots cultural preservation. Through oral histories, digital learning, cultural performances, and educational conferences, The AfroLatin@Project expands the conversation about identity, culture, and justice for people of African descent from Latin America and the Caribbean in the new millennium.
Despite strides made by the 150 Million+ Afro-descendants in and from Latin America in gaining greater visibility and recognition as to their rights and societal contributions, much work remains. The AfroLatin@Project co-produces various technical and educational elements of the Afro-Latino Festival in NYC with their unique understanding of how various elements of the community seek to continue growing this visibility. By striking the proper balance of culture and politics, the Festival presents Afro-Latin American art and culture without stripping away its social context. At a time when many are beginning to now realize there is an audience for AfroLatinx culture, the organization is uniquely positioned to ensure the proper presentation thereof. This allows The AfroLatin@Project to harness their cultural platform as a way to further develop a sense of community and political voice.
Learn more about the AfroLatin@Project by visiting their website, Facebook, and Instagram.
Learn more about the AfroLatino Festival by visiting their website, Facebook, and Instagram.
KENDRA J. ROSS | STooPS
Image courtesy of STooPs.
Kendra J. Ross is the Founder and Director of STooPS, wan organization that incubates art at home by sharing resources and re-imagining ice-broken spaces for public engagement. BedStuy grown and artist-instigated, STooPS is a conduit for community building and intentional artistic experimentation. STooPS fosters meaningful interactions in (un)conventional venues that are mutually beneficial for artists and neighbors. Entering its seventh year of uniting the Bedford-Stuyvesant community, the organization is focused on different facets of the community engaging and interacting to produce the event.
STooPS seeks to unite a community. Scaling changes in demographics and economics have rapidly shifted the composition of BedStuy and gentrification is a concerning force amongst residents. A balancing act has occurred between embracing change and maintaining the energy and traditions of BedStuy. STooPS aims to build on the unmistakable BedStuy identity through performances and exhibitions by local artists that engage residents in meaningful interactions in unconventional venues.
Ross is also currently a Resident Artist of The Neighborhood Project by 651Arts. For the program, she is organizing the Sankofa Residency Project in partnership with LifeWellness Center looking at the history of BedStuy through research and oral history to imagine the neighborhood thriving in the future. Kendra will be premiering a work-in-progress dance film as a creative expression of her findings on April 2, 2021. Read more details about Ross’ residency on her personal website.
Learn more about Kendra J. Ross and StooPs by visiting their website, Facebook, and Instagram.
MARIA BAUMAN-MORALES | MBDance
Image courtesy of MBDance. Desire: A Sankofa Dream cast, creator, and dramaturg clockwise left to right: Angie Pittman, Maria Bauman-Morales (creator, choreographer, director), Courtney Cook, Wendell Gray II, Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Sharon Bridgforth (dramaturg), Ziiomi Law, Audrey Hailes.
Maria Bauman-Morales is a multi-disciplinary artist and community organizer. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of MBDance, an organization based on physical and emotional power, desire for equity, and fascination with intimacy. MBDance creates honest and bold art from a sense of physical and emotional power, an insistence on equity, and a fascination with intimacy and relationship.
Bauman-Morales' dance work centers on the non-linear and linear stories and bodies of queer people of color onstage. Most recently created and directed by Bauman-Morales, Desire: A Sankofa Dream is a performance-ritual built around Black Queer survival techniques developed long before our current pandemic but wholly relevant as we try to survive and thrive in this time of sickness, anger, isolation, and insistence on improved ways of life. Designed for Zoom, this work is a transformative digital performance that is both accessible to a wide audience and interrogates and facilitates intimacy. The site responsive work, under Bauman-Morales’s skilled and watchful direction, provides both the methods and the portals for audience members to have agency in the moment.
Desire is part scored improvisation, part choreography, part visual design, and part choose-your-own adventure. Bauman-Morales has crafted an experience wherein performers and witness-participants alike practice imagining their best-case-scenarios within a porous and fantastical world of Black Queer shape-shifting unicorns. Within a lushly innovative virtual world, Bauman-Morales makes it possible to practice the skills we need to imagine and practice the world we want—be that a world without police occupation, a world with racial equity, a world in which beauty is valued.
Learn more about Maria Bauman-Morales and MBDance by visiting their website, Facebook, and Instagram.
IMARA JONES | TransLash
Image courtesy of Imara Jones and TransLash.
Imara Jones is a journalist and intersectional-news producer as well as the founder and creator of TransLash, a trans-led project that uses the power of personal stories to dissolve the lack of knowledge at the heart of trans erasure and save lives. The work of TransLash centers on the humanity of the most marginalized of the marginalized, where their goal is to shift the cultural understanding of what it means to be transgender in order to foster social inclusion and reduce anti-trans hostility. Beginning in 2018 as a series of video shorts which focus on what it is like to be trans—especially a trans person of color at a time of social backlash—TransLash has evolved into a cross-platform media effort.
Through the lens of journalism and personal narrative, TransLash creates and curates content, events, and resources in collaboration with their partners, as well as in community with trans individuals and allies. TransLash is committed to creating an integrated and healthy society for trans, two-spirit, non-binary and gender non-conforming people. Their work seeks to create a world in which all forms of gender expression have equal rights, protections, and opportunities, as well as the ability to live freely and openly in all forms. That is why we also value self-expression through media art, music, dance, the written word, and technology. Currently, TransLash is focused on the “TransLash Podcast with Imara Jones,” where trans people and allies talk back about what matters most, and discuss how to create a fairer world for all.
Jones has won Emmy and Peabody Awards for her contributions to media and social justice, received a Soros Equality Fellowship in addition to fiscal sponsorship by the Brooklyn Arts Council.
Learn more about Imara Jones and Translash by visiting their website, Facebook, and Instagram.
MARTIN MAJESKE | ActNow Foundation
Image courtesy of ActNow Foundation and the New Voices in Black Cinema Festival.
Martin Majeske is the managing and festival director at the ActNow Foundation (ANF) which produces the New Voices in Black Cinema (NVBC) Festival. In addition to NVBC Festival, Martin and his team put on other regular film screenings, workshops, readings, educational panels, and seminars for underserved artists committed to careers in film and theater. Based in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, ANF provides a platform for ethnically and racially diverse filmmakers, producers, writers, and actors, whose productions focus on the full range of African-American and African experiences. The mission of ANF is to connect these artists to audiences in the Brooklyn community and beyond, in order to advocate appreciation of their work in the community, and to provide such artists with creative and development opportunities to ensure that they can make a career of what they love and believe in.
Through the New Voices in Black Cinema (NVBC) Festival and other events, ActNow operates in an environment of progressive artistic collaboration, accepting and welcoming of transition and change, all the while remaining true to its roots and commitment to African-American and Latino cultural development. NVBC Festival is a multi-genre film showcase that exposes new audiences to independent films by and about people of the African diaspora. Choosing excellence over spectacle, and boldness over standard fare, NVBC Festival pushes the gamut by showing how cinema explores all of society and provides exhibition to new and existing voices that represent a rich and diverse culture, proudly putting it on display. Whether contemporary or period pieces, drama or comedy, science fiction or animation, the movies included in this series receive a new source of appreciation and support from the exposure that New Voices brings. Filmmakers are able to showcase their talent on a grand scale, allowing them to build industry contacts and develop opportunities for distribution.
Learn more about Martin Majeske, the ActNow Foundation, and the New Voices in Black Cinema Festival by visiting their website, Facebook, and Instagram.
CHERYL THOMAS
Image courtesy of the artist. Photograph by Patrick Crawford.
Cheryl Thomas is a Shekere musician and performer, established business owner, musical gourdologist, educator, gourd instrument maker, and teaching artist for over four decades. Thomas relishes presenting the Shereke’s music history in schools, libraries, museums, cultural organizations. Her focus is on continuously documenting the history of the gourd, gourd instruments, performers, gourd items, and all things gourd. By giving lessons in the art and science of playing the Shekere and hands-on workshops in making various Gourd instruments, Thomas helps to expand participant knowledge of the sights, sounds, and feel of this traditional instrument. Cheryl carefully talks students through the process: washing gourds that she obtains straight from the farms, cutting them, hollowing them out, and stringing and beading them for embellishment. Cheryl emphasizes that walking participants through her entire process leads to full engagement and allows learning to be shared with family and friends. Through her classes, Thomas carries on the cultural, spiritual, and historical significance of this storied instrument and continues her dedicating service to cultural, educational, and musical traditions.
Connect with Cheryl Thomas on her LinkedIn.
JOSEPH C. PHILLIPS, JR. | Numious Music
Image courtesy of the artist.
Joseph C. Phillips, Jr. of Numious Music transmutes inspiration from contemporary classical, jazz, world, and popular music as well as cinema, literature, and science. He describes his musical philosophy as mixed music—inspired by mixed-race people whose characteristics come from each individual parent, from the melding of the two, and from their own uniqueness, mixed music is an organic fusion of various artistic and cultural influences into one distinctive and singular musical vision. The one guiding factor in all his compositions is a desire to create compelling artistic statements that resonate with beauty, mystery, and wonder in order to challenge, enlighten, and refresh.
Inspired by both the 2014 article “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates and by the 2019 New York Times series, the “1619 Project,” Joseph C Phillips Jr.’s “1619” will be an opera integrating original stories based on historical facts illuminated in both sources and will feature librettos by Phillips himself, Meshell Ndegeocello, Kelley Rourke, and Carl Hancock Rux. Each opera in the cycle will tell stories reflecting and illuminating the truths in the history of the United States that are often hidden, dismissed, or negated—plunder, “democracy,” and economic exploitation. However, the work will also highlight the very human stories of joy, love, hope, and resiliency in the face of that oppression.
His overarching non-traditional narrative, like the “1619 Project,” hopes to reframe “the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding…[and placing] the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.” The opera will highlight how “virtually every institution with some degree of history in America, be it public, be it private, has a history of extracting wealth and resources out of the African-America community…that behind all of that oppression was actually theft.”
Learn more about Joseph C. Phillips, Jr. on his website, Facebook, and Instagram.
GREGORY L. INGRAM | East New York 4 Gardens
Arts & Crafts Hat Making at Herbal Gardens. Image Courtesy of East New York 4 Gardens.
Gregory L. Ingram is the president and founder of East New York 4 Gardens. He is also a visual artist, community advocate, environmentalist, and horticulturist. For several years, East New York 4 Gardens has collaborated with the city parks and gardens to bring resources to East Brooklyn. The organization assists with the creation, maintenance and upkeep, and improvement of community gardens and parks as well as educates members of local communities about healthy life choices, ecology, and environmental issues through classes, demonstrations, and organized trips. East New York 4 Gardens also provides training, mentorship, and employment to members of local communities while also facilitating public dialogue regarding community issues and social issues through public education and advocacy.
They have cleaned, painted ground games, held puppet shows and other events with Partnership for Parks and Parks Dept. By planning an arts and crafts events in local parks, East New York 4 Gardens functions as a safe zone for children and teenagers in their city parks and gardens. Their events give youth and community members opportunities to create, provide children with water and fruits for snacks, and better connect with community members of all ages.
Learn more about Gregory L. Ingram and on East New York 4 Gardens by visiting their website.
KAREEM NEMLEY | The Rooted Theater Company
Image courtesy of the Rooted Theater Company.
Kareem Nemley is the founder and artistic director of the Rooted Theater Company, responsible for conceiving, developing, and implementing the artistic focus of the organization. The Rooted Theater Company engages, challenges, and inspires audiences through theatrical productions that range from the classics to new and emerging works. Their programming encourages social consciousness through real, open, and objective theater education. Rooted Theater Company celebrates the diversity of the community's roots, present struggles, and future successes through intentional theater.
The Company’s 2020 "Child of the Ghetto," is book of poems written by Shadenia Davis, adapted as a choreopoem for the stage. The work is an exploration of Black womanhood, identity, sisterhood, and self-love through the lens of dance, performance, and music with a flair of hip-hop. Reminiscent of "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is enough" by Ntozake Shange, Davis' work brings the black girl narrative to the present day and fully expresses the magic Black women are imbued with even throughout the adversity they have historically encountered.
As a follow-up to their inaugural production of "A Lesson Before Dying" in 2017, "For Colored Girls" in 2018 and "The Last Saint on Sugar Hill" in 2019, Rooted continues to learn lessons that help to cultivate the quality of theater they present to the community. The primary goal of this project was to present theater to a community with negligible access to local sourced and driven theater—more importantly, the Company will present theater that will cause audience members to think and ask questions of themselves, neighbors, and their community.
This upcoming Valentine’s Day weekend, Rooted Theater will be showing "A Need to Love" on all of their social media platforms. Additionally, an original work called “Linden Park,” about a community dealing with the death of a young man of the community, will debut in Summer 2021.
Learn more about Kareem Nemley and the Rooted Theater Company on their website, Facebook, and Instagram.