Giving Compass' Take:

• Diana Falchuk discusses Facing Race, a national conference sponsored by Race Forward, that examines the role of arts and culture in local government. 

• What role can you play in supporting local artists? How can you connect with artists from marginalized communities? 

• Read about how the arts can encourage youth in civic participation.

I’m writing this on the plane back to Seattle from Detroit, where I’ve just spent three days at Facing Race, Race Forward’s national racial justice conference that happens every two years. I attended Facing Race as a member of the City of Seattle Race and Social Justice Initiative (RSJI) Team that’s based at the Office for Civil Rights, where I work in a shared position with the Office of Arts & Culture (ARTS). Artists, cultural organizers, and truth-tellers of all kinds—the heartbeat and muscle of the Movement for Racial Justice.

The message at Facing Race was clear: Arts, culture, and government have crucial roles to play in the Movement.

A few years ago, the RSJI Team started looking more closely at how the individualist, perfectionist, paternalistic, and compartmentalizing culture of white supremacy within ourselves and across the institution got in the way of the progress toward racial equity that we were making with trainings, policy tools, and interdepartmental organizing structures. We began to develop a strategy to shift that culture.

At Facing Race artists, advocates, and organizers of all kinds reminded us that white supremacy and white nationalism are cultural and political narratives generating realities that we must understand; that we need to be accountable to the leadership of those who are most impacted by the injustices of white supremacy—people of color—to listen to and get behind their truths; that culture is power and that we must use art and humor to tell our own stories, ones of justice that wage love; and that local government has a role to play in our overall culture shift by transforming itself with the guidance of artists and grounding in creativity.

Read the full article about arts and racial justice by Diana Falchuk at Americans for the Arts.