JACK Presents REPARATIONS AND THE ARTS

As part of its ongoing Reparations365 series exploring the topic of distributive justice for Black Americans, JACK offers a conversation around the theme of repair and the arts, inviting participants to share ideas around shifting power and transforming relationships in the field of the arts.

Featured guests include:
Candace L. Feldman (Managing Director, Disability Dance Works)
Imani Uzuri (Vocalist, composer and cultural worker)
Moderator: former JACK Co-Director DeeArah Wright

FREE. There will be food!

LOCATION: JACK
505 ½ Waverly Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11238
C or G train to Clinton-Washington

Reparations365 is JACK's series of performances, workshops and discussions around the topic of distributive justice for Black Americans. Launched in February 2017, the series consists of public offerings featuring a convergence of scholars, artists and activists. The series includes several community conversations, panel discussions and interactive workshops curated with the participation of our neighbors and members of the artistic and activist community in New York. Through the series, participants discover multiple ways to engage with the topic, all with an intention of offering tangible take-ways for participants and a concrete movement forward. The People's Think Tank emerged out of the series in order to offer a way for participants to brainstorm together next steps for real change.

Imani Uzuri (guest speaker) is a vocalist, composer and cultural worker called "a post modernist Bessie Smith" by The Village Voice. Inspired by her rural North Carolina Roots and her world travels, Uzuri creates concerts, experimental theater, performance art, theater compositions, chamber orchestra compositions and sound installations presented in international venues/festivals. Her work has been called "stunning" by Vulture. Uzuri recently received her M.A. in African American Studies from Columbia University and was the 2017 Keynote/Performer at Harvard University's Graduate Music Forum Black Lives Matter: Music, Race and Justice. Uzuri is the founder and artistic director of Revolutionary Choir-multigenerational community-singing gatherings sharing songs of protest and peace. Uzuri's work lives at the intersection of ritual and everyday life often dealing with themes of secular and sacred, Black American vernacular culture, Black feminine divinity, sexuality and revolution.

Candace L. Feldman (guest speaker) is an arts administrator and leader with more than a decade of experience producing and presenting across the United States. She was recently appointed Managing Director of Disability Dance Works, created by Alice Sheppard and home of Kinetic Light. She has held leadership positions as Director of Programming at UA Presents in Tucson, AZ, seven years as Producing Director of 651 ARTS in Brooklyn, NY, and a Founding Leader for the Next Generation National Arts Network, as well as roles at CBS Corporation in CA and The Juilliard School in NY. Feldman earned her bachelor's degree in Theatre Studies from Kansas State University and an MBA from the University of Arizona. She is deeply immersed in the performing arts field, and has served on numerous boards, committees, and panels including New England Foundation for the Arts - National Theater Project Advisor, Theater Communications Group, National Performance Network, South Arts Performing Arts Exchange, Arizona Arts Commission, and many others.

DeeArah Wright (moderator) is an artist, educator, strategist, and mover based in Brooklyn. She has facilitated opportunities for people of all ages to self-empower and to work together for collaborative greatness. She is currently Director of Education at the Brooklyn Children's Museum. Before that, DeeArah was Co-Director of JACK, with Alec Duffy, from 2016 - 2018. In 2010, she founded Gather Brooklyn, which has powered community engagement through: marketplaces, partnerships, community-space management, youth arts programming, and strategic consultation. In 2014, she was the Community Liaison for Creative Time and Weeksville Heritage Center's funkgodjazz&medicine: Black Radical Brooklyn. She has further supported artists' development and community engagement practice through organizations such as The Laundromat Project, The Field, and Urban Bush Women. DeeArah's current adventures include cooperative initiatives, revolutionary educational framework, and writing.

This series is made possible by a Humanities New York Action Grant, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and from many individual donors.