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00:00to a conversation so i love that y'all have this energy and we hopefully we keep this energy
00:05right so give thanks this is the afropunk blacktopia stage and part of the music and part of
00:14being and part of being live is we're also making sure that we stimulate y'all intellectually and
00:19have some conversations about tech art and right now we're going to have a conversation about
00:25community and activism all right within our community so give thanks i appreciate it i
00:30appreciate all the love shout out to all the dancers that was on the runway
00:34so my name is rossu jelani i'm from brooklyn new york shout out to anyone from new york out here
00:42i also want to give a shout out to the city that we call balbantra also new orleans want to give a
00:50shout out to the people that are from new orleans from hosting us we give thanks to the ancestors
00:54we give thanks to all the bodies and all the blood sweat and tears that it took to create
00:59this land and who still lives on this lands we honor them we also want to give thanks to the
01:04technology and the activations that we have over here so shout out to all the artists who contributed
01:10to this space so these conversation series that we've been having is about thinking about nola as
01:17a black utopia what does that look like so for the last two days we've been talking about art and
01:23technology but right now we're in a grounded conversation and creativity activism and building
01:29communities so today i have a friend with me stephanie mcgee anderson of june bug productions i'm
01:36going to bring up to the stage stephanie is a a cornerstone figure in new orleans so if y'all don't
01:43mind round of applause for stephanie mcgee how you doing sis so for the beautiful people out here tell
01:51them who you are what you're doing why you do it my name is stephanie mcgee anderson i'm executive
01:58artistic director of an organization called june bug productions june bug productions is a 40 plus year old
02:05black theater institution it was a leader of the black arts movement it is considered the organizational
02:12successor of an organization that's called the free southern theater founded in 1963 by john o'neill doris
02:19derby and gilbert moses i'm the second generation of leadership for june bug productions i do this work
02:27because i love my people i do this work because i believe that we should have beautiful things and
02:33beautiful art and i do this work because i love my people i do this work because i believe that we
02:37should have beautiful things and beautiful art and i do this work because art i believe is essential to
02:51healthy communities round of applause for stephanie how many artists do we have in the room any artists
02:58raise your hand if you're an artist any performers theater artists dancers okay so
03:07what we're talking about today is how do we bring our cultural expression to the communities that are
03:13meaningful for us how do we bring use that cultural expression as a tool the same way we do with technology
03:20but do performing arts and through the arts in order to bring solidarity activism and resources to our
03:28community stephanie you have a history a bold history of being an activist in your community using the the
03:35talents and the resources of june bug to be a supportive cornerstone for the for new orleans can you talk
03:42a little bit about some of the work you have done that's also in the background about what you have
03:46done here in nola with through june bug productions so we consider the work that we do at june bug productions
03:54at the intersection of art and activism um i think we found our place when we understood the power of what it is that we had to offer
04:04uh that being art and we aligned ourselves with people who are doing organizing work because we feel like those
04:10those things together are really powerful tools for making change in communities and so every piece that
04:17you see that we have that's represented here is work that's done in community that is reflective of
04:24community is meant for us to see um visions of ourselves reflected in that the good the bad the ugly we also
04:33feel like the work that we do examines the past helps us understand where we are in the present and is also
04:46future forward thinking and that's what this this this particular uh series is really about how do we
04:52future forward ourselves how do we imagine ourselves in the future so how many of you are avid um patrons of
05:00of cultural arts whether it be theater dance museums okay and when you when you go to these venues and
05:09when you go to see your your your own communities work oftentimes where do you go i'm going to talk
05:14to the sisters over here can they raise their hand where do you go if you don't mind coming forward
05:18because we have cameras um tell me where you go to see you the work of your people the work of the
05:24creators in your community i'm here in new orleans and here in new orleans i support june bug theater
05:32and i also support ashe cultural center
05:37sure ashe cultural center is located on oc haley boulevard it is a historic corridor here in new
05:46orleans there's a beautiful theater that you can see art you can also see performance
05:52events and beautiful clothing and crafts that are there and just for the people out there tell
05:59them your name sister i'm carmen james randolph and i'm here in new orleans ceo of the women's
06:06foundation of the south for you we give thanks thank you anyone else the seeing seeing culture cultural
06:14expressions in your community anyone want to speak to that where do you go who are often organizations
06:19that you give your time your money and your investment to anyone want to bring that up okay
06:25we're good so stephanie talk to me a little bit about some of the work that you've done in terms of
06:32creatively and what particular topics you are covering in your productions
06:39so there are a lot of topics i think i wait for the topic to reveal itself to me
06:43um off the top of my head one of the things that we're examining right now is water um it sounds
06:52really uh very large and vague but um we do it through the lens of black people and understanding that
07:00things like water we've lived with water we worship on side of water we are baptized in water and yet
07:07there's also the transatlantic slave trade so we have a very complicated relationship with water
07:15here in new orleans we're surrounded by water mississippi river mississippi river all kinds of
07:20waterways the threat of flooding is always imminent and so we wanted to see how what is the stories
07:27that we what are the stories that we have around water around this complicated relationship with water
07:34we always start with the seed and we just continue to dig and see where it leads us so speaking of
07:40what i'll be remiss not to talk about it we all know the tragedy of katrina and can you talk a little
07:47bit about the work that you had to do with your community and responding to the tragedy of katrina when
07:53the community was pretty much um disinvested in you know uh pretty much people were all over and had
08:00different circumstances how did you use your activism your organizing and creativity in order to bring
08:06communities together and offer them resources and support we have a couple of pieces of work that
08:11still stand right now one is on our website and it's a video that says come home we play that video every
08:18year um at the anniversary of hurricane katrina and part of the reason why we did that is because so many
08:25people were displaced and still remain displaced and this was our love letter to the people who lived
08:31here every year letting them know that this place will never be the same without them right and so that's
08:38one of the pieces that we um that that we've done in response to that another piece is the homecoming
08:44project which still exists today um and the homecoming project is the brainchild of john o'neill that he
08:51entrusted to me um that's our our founding artistic director but the homecoming project is designed
09:00it looks different every time because it's in different communities here in new orleans and of
09:04course we know that we are not a monolith and neither are our communities so it looks different in each
09:10community that we go in um it's an activation inside that community um it's an experience for the people
09:16that come to it we come to the people we bring the theater to the people i love that and so i understand
09:23this but for people that may not know new orleans creative sector is an ecosystem and we often use
09:29ecosystem in the sense of like going beyond the ego and going to the we go you know and understanding
09:35how we can galvanize resources within our community within our reach and have a collective lift in order to
09:42gain to a common cause can you talk a little bit about being part of this ecosystem she mentioned
09:48ashe center earlier june bug but what other ecosystems the ecosystem partners do you work with
09:55in order to activate the community but also bring some of these issues forward so it's interesting as
10:01you say ecosystem um we've been referring to ourselves for as an ecosystem for a really long time now
10:08unlike other places um atlanta um even new york you have different boroughs and places like that
10:16black communities in new orleans and black artists and cultural workers are more interconnected
10:22than in any other place that i've experienced and as such there's work that you know oftentimes
10:28artists do things that are shade they do things with june bug if we find ourselves in this sort of
10:34symbiotic relationship with one another um with ashay for instance june bug is a second generation
10:42partnership with that institution give thanks right and so we continue to build on these relationships
10:49we don't see relationships as things that are thrown away we see people and we see these relationships
10:54and we continue to build on it and ask ourselves what can we do better how can our community be made better
11:01from the work that we do we see ourselves and we see cultural workers as first responders
11:06when these things happen so this is really important for us right like we're in essence festival
11:12you have these big activations with these big corporations no shade because we need the resources
11:17in order to do what we got to do but it's also important for us to realize and recognize the local
11:23work that is done in the city as we sweep in and bring this big festival that we acknowledge the work
11:28like june bug or ashay center antenna and so on right so something that's more contemporary that i'm
11:36i'm hip to but i think it'll be great to um to inform everyone around the pandemic how did the pandemic
11:45impact the creative sector here what did you realize what are some breakthroughs with the pandemic of like
11:50what you can do around organizing and how did you respond to the pandemic post pandemic well because
11:57hurricane katrina had happened along with an oil spill hurricane ida hurricane this that the other
12:05floods unit tornadoes um we've had lots of disruptions so for us the pandemic was yet another
12:14disruption albeit one that the entire world kind of came to a stop a global disruption global disruption
12:21but what we found in that is that there are tenants and steps that happen that things that people do
12:28the government tends to be reactive and what we know is that whenever they are reactive and they put
12:36something in place then that means that is something that we will have to deal with eventually
12:42right you put something in place and it will have a long time effect for instance there are some things
12:48that are in place right now um around gathering practices right and so during the pandemic it made sense
12:56you didn't want to hold large crowds to gather but what they did was they put a permit there so you
13:01have to have a permit even to do a concert on your front porch because people were doing front porch concerts
13:08which was lovely right using the resources at hand that's what you have you have a porch you have your
13:13voice you're going to do and bring music to the community and people would go and gather on the blocks
13:19and they would listen to music and it was a beautiful way for black people to stay connected because we
13:25recognize how much we need each other like we need each other and we depend on each other on the inside of
13:34this but what they did was put things in place so now you have to have a permit to do that right so that means
13:41that's something that requires resources that thing is still in place right so the pandemic is starting to
13:48ease up but those things still remain in place and they affect our ability to turn around and gather so now if we
13:55want to do some other large gathering it means that there's that much more a level of bureaucracy to have to work through
14:02absolutely so one of the things i think about is being in brooklyn new york we have a big creative
14:07sector but we're being disrupted by gentrification and over development of a city that's over developed
14:15right making a metal metropolis but i worry about the spirit and the breath of new york city being snuffed
14:21out by this over development over investment in structures that's our issue however we talked about the
14:31ecosystem we talked about the creative active uh activism and we also talked about the ability to
14:38galvanize your community what i think about is what you have done with your partners through the creative
14:44response fund and network talk a little bit about that i'm just gonna throw that up in the air i'm gonna
14:49alley you bit you grab it and dunk it so the creative response network talk a little bit about that
14:53so the creative response network was uh me and two of my sisters um and i would be remiss if i
15:00did not name them shana griffin who at the time shout out to shana was the acting um director of
15:06the antenna gallery she's a brilliant artist and organizer and activist and then a solid divine
15:14ecclesiastes the ceo of the ashe cultural arts center the three of us just got on the phone mainly
15:20because shana was like i know that you mentioned you had money stuff because the money that we had if
15:25we were disrupted i just said let's give this money to the artist but it was a small amount of money
15:31comparatively right so we decided what if we all pulled our money together and what if we work
15:37together and let's use that as um leverage to get more resources so fast forward what started as like
15:45this egalitarian effort to like do something for the people that we love
15:50we love turned into almost a million dollars that we raised collectively to go back out into the
15:58community to cultural workers and to artists now that is no money from the city and none from um some
16:07other um other resources but a lot that we turned around and we leveraged so there's almost a million
16:12dollars and that's three black women of very small organizations for that round of applause for that
16:19and i shouted that out because for me the creative response fund was one of a few initiatives across
16:26the country that was doing this type of organizing right so a lot of us were depending on ppp loans
16:33was depending on the government or depending on our jobs to give us you know provisions to survive
16:40some some of us went out in the street and organized to get those those provisions in order to survive
16:45through a global pandemic when we didn't see the light of day we didn't really know what was going
16:49to happen right so to this day what is happening with creative response fund are you still in network
16:53are you still doing work together how is that looking so the network still exists what we were clear
16:58about was that eventually that money will run out um but what was created was strong because it's the first
17:07time um and we've had this reflected to us by the people who participated it's the first time
17:13that there was um this really diverse group of artists cultural workers and leaders coming together
17:22to self-define how it is that we care for the communities and how we support one another in it
17:27so it is now a network that's fully activated it continues to meet we continue to examine things like
17:33policies cultural policies we support one another on the inside of work and from time to time we might
17:39look at collective fundraising but that is still an activated uh group because we what we know is
17:47there may eventually be some other level of disruption and so how are we continually organizing
17:54and building relationships because we know that relationships move at the speed of trust right absolutely
18:00and relationships is a different type of currency you know sometimes we can take our eye off the ball
18:05and look at money and resources and not look at the relationships as the corridor to getting that
18:10money and resources and that's what y'all did so anyone have any questions responses for stephanie
18:15while we have her up here um just want to put that out in the audience anyone check in cool um the other
18:23thing i want to i want to land with is some of the jewels that i'm taking away from this is as we're building
18:29out a runway for a long-term imagination of what a black utopia is and i'm careful with this idea of
18:37utopia right because it gives this kind of grand gesture that everything is going to be i but we
18:43also know that utopia comes with a dystopia not too far behind so one of the things i think about is what
18:50you're offering folks is how do you organize a utopia in the face of a dystopia right in the face of a
18:56calamity in the face of chaos and what are the tools and ideas and and case studies of what we
19:03can do if things get disrupted if there's a paradigm shift and we're not being supported by the
19:09government that claims that it loves us right so thank you thank you so we're gonna wrap this up
19:15thank you so much for your time we appreciate you we have more conversations around black utopia
19:21we thank stephanie mckee anderson for her time give us shout out y'all thank y'all thank you thank you so
19:27much thank you this is great peace y'all