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note-a-bear · 5 years

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THE BEARD AWARDS NEED TO RECOGNIZE BLACK ACHIEVEMENTS

How to ensure diversity wasn't a one-time thing

Nicole Taylor

September 26, 2018

Photo: Lade Ademu-John

Something was different at the 2018 James Beard Awards. More women, more people of color, and more diverse voices were recognized than ever before. But the question of whether this was evidence of more profound change taking place in our industry remained unanswered. As a leading organization of the food movement in the U.S., we wanted to do more to support equity in the industry and access to its highest honors.

For advice, we reached out to some of the most thoughtful, vocal members of our community to share their opinions about how the Beard Foundation could improve. Today we begin by publishing the first of a series of four op-eds that resulted from this outreach, and will continue to post throughout the week.

As we digest the writers’ suggestions, we intend to operationalize several changes which we believe will have a substantive impact on the Awards and the industry. We will share changes to the policies and procedures for the 2019 James Beard Awards ahead of the “Open Call for Entry” on Monday, October 15, 2018. This is the beginning of a process, not the end, and we know there is much more work we can all do to ensure everyone has an equal opportunity to thrive.

One night last May, I lay in bed re-reading Uplift the Race: the Construction of School Daze by Spike Lee and Lisa Jones, when a friend watching the Beard Awards ceremony live on Twitter texted me the names of the winning restaurants and chefs. I had been reading about how Spike Lee made the movie School Daze on a budget, how he was part of this cultural renaissance, and when I saw the year’s winners—with chefs Nina Compton, Edouardo Jordan, Rodney Scott, and Dolester Miles on the list—it felt like a whole new renaissance was bubbling up.

Days before at the Journalism Awards, wins by Michael Twitty, Osayi Endolyn, and the ghost of Princess Pamela had also given a universal “I see you” to black writers and cooks who toil in isolation. A time capsule was unburied. Generations of bakers whisking frothy buttermilk, men whacking down pecan or pimento trees for firewood, and dandy butlers polishing silver trays rose from our African diaspora graves. The 2018 James Beard Awards signified that black cooks, black writers—both dead or alive—mattered.

The wonderment of this year’s achievements shouldn’t be a once-in-a-blue-moon occasion. Why had this moment taken so long to come? There are two major reasons: the first is that the Beard Award categories—and the types of restaurants and publications nominated—don’t reflect the realities of today’s dining and media scenes.

My own infatuation with eating out started in Atlanta in the early 2000s. Swiping my orange-and-black Discover card at Canoe, Atlanta Fish Market, Two Urban Licks, and Pura Vida was a pastime. Rolling the names of those restaurants off my tongue denoted a certain level of cosmopolitan aptitude. At that time, black fine-dining chefs like Todd Richards, Duane Nutter, and the late Darryl Evans were Atlanta stars, but few people were paying attention. Back then, the only path to gain recognition as a chef was to work in a white tablecloth, fine-dining restaurant—the kind of restaurants with a high barrier to entry for young chefs. Fast forward 20 years later, and chefs Omar Tate, Greg Collier, Kia Damon, and Mike and Shyretha Sheats have gone out on their own, creating different kinds of spaces where excellence and creativity converge. In Charlotte, Brooklyn, Athens, and Tallahassee, supper clubs and pop-ups have replaced white tablecloth experiences. Not only are these sorts of eating experiences more representative of how people eat and consume food culture, but they’re a lot easier and less expensive for entrepreneurial chefs to launch. These are the sorts of spaces where the Beard Awards should look for nominees.

The media landscape has undergone a similar evolution. I’m a digital subscriber to the Charleston, South Carolina–based The Local Palate, to New York Magazine, and to the New York Times. I no longer receive mainstream glossies via snail mail. There were times when friends would gift me niche publications like Edible Hawaii; now they bring back titles like Whetstone and Crwn. I consume culinary podcasts and Instagram for savory rhubarb recipes, food books for tips on growing windowsill herbs, and articles on food apartheid. A movie night is inhaling United Shades of America’s “The Gullah” and Ugly Delicious’s “Fried Chicken” episodes. The definition of professional food writer has shifted—having a staff gig no longer denotes success. By the time magazines like Bon Appétit have published a piece on a restaurant trend, we’ve already heard about it on our favorite food podcast. Indie media makers are the new voices. Times have changed. The Beard Awards should reflect these changes.

There’s another reason that moments like this past year’s are so scarce, and one look at the people who are choosing the nominees and winners gives us a major clue: out of the 54 Beard Award committee members, fewer than six are black. If power is measured by who occupies a seat at the table, a person who looks like me has little influence.

To ensure the ongoing recognition of black achievements by the Beard Awards, we must take a closer look at the term limits and selection process of the individuals who make up each of the committees that select the nominees and winners of the award categories: broadcast media, books, journalism, design, and restaurant and chef awards.

As it stands, the committees or recognition programs are often brimming with individuals serving multiple three-year terms. The current bylaws state that “members serve staggered terms of one to three years” but doesn’t address what happens if members move from committee to committee. According to the James Beard Foundation governance structure, an additional group (bringing the total to eight) oversees the Awards program as a whole; this committee consists of the chairperson of each Awards category, members of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees, and members at large. A bylaw change to address the makeup of these groups will help to foster a permanent shift in voters and nominees.

In recent years, organizations like the Grammys and Academy Awards have addressed similar issues, after receiving criticism for the lack of diversity on their ballots (thanks in part to the #oscarssowhite campaign). In 2016, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences modified membership to mix up the pool of voters. This past May, the Recording Academy created a diversity and inclusion task force to “examine barriers affecting women and underrepresented voices”; the group includes former chairman and CEO of BET Networks Debra Lee and hip-hop artist Common.

I’m a believer that institutional knowledge anchors the ship. Our professional community needs infinite wisdom, plus a new leadership overhaul. Equality means making the system fair, and equity means transferring power. All of our collective culinary past and our future should see themselves reflected in the backbone of the James Beard Foundation Awards’s governing body: entrepreneurs from small rural towns; Caribbean souls planted in port cities; mature Southern black women; an East Coast–born man living in the Pacific Northwest; catering chefs running grassroots organizations: a food scientist turned stay-at-home mom.

The clock starts now.

Do you have thoughts about how the culinary industry and/or the James Beard Foundation can be more inclusive? Please share your feedback with us [email protected].

Editor’s Note: Nicole Taylor has previously served as a judge for the James Beard Foundation Book Awards.

Nicole A. Taylor is a food writer based in Brooklyn, New York. She has written for Food & Wine, Esquire, and the New York Times. Nicole serves on the advisory board of EATT (Equity At The Table), a database for food-industry professionals featuring only women/gender non-conforming individuals and focusing primarily on POC and the LGBTQ community. Find her on Twitter

#a thing #reposted from the internet #james beard foundation #james beard award #nicole taylor #equity at the table #long post

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reomanet · 6 years

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Remembering the Howard University Librarian Who Decolonized the Way Books Were Catalogued

Remembering the Howard University Librarian Who Decolonized the Way Books Were Catalogued Dorothy Porter challenged the racial bias in the Dewey Decimal System, putting black scholars alongside white colleagues Dorothy Porter in 1939, at her desk in the Carnegie Library at Howard University. (Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Manuscript Division, Howard University) smithsonian.com November 26, 2018 In a 1995 interview with Linton Weeks of the Washington Post , the Howard University librarian, collector and self-described “bibliomaniac” Dorothy Porter reflected on the focus of her 43-year career: “The only rewarding thing for me is to bring to light information that no one knows. What’s the point of rehashing the same old thing?” For Porter, this mission involved not only collecting and preserving a wide range of materials related to the global black experience, but also addressing how these works demanded new and specific qualitative and quantitative approaches in order to collect, assess, and catalog them. As some librarians today contemplate ways to decolonize libraries—for example, to make them less reflective of Eurocentric ways of organizing knowledge—it is instructive to look to Porter as a progenitor of the movement. Starting with little, she used her tenacious curiosity to build one of the world’s leading repositories for black history and culture: Howard’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center . But she also brought critical acumen to bear on the way the center’s materials were cataloged, rejecting commonly taught methods as too reflective of the way whites thought of the world. Working without a large budget, Porter used unconventional means to build the research center. She developed relationships with other book lovers and remained alert to any opportunity to acquire material. As Porter told Avril Johnson Madison in an oral history interview, “I think one of the best things I could have done was to become friends with book dealers… . I had no money, but I became friendly with them. I got their catalogs, and I remember many of them giving me books, you see. I appealed to publishers, ‘We have no money, but will you give us this book?’” Porter’s network extended to Brazil, England, France, Mexico—anywhere that she or one of her friends, including Alain Locke, Rayford Logan, Dorothy Peterson, Langston Hughes and Amy Spingarn, would travel. She also introduced to Howard leading figures like the historian Edison Carneiro of Brazil and pan-Africanist philosophers and statesmen Kwame Nkrumah and Eric Williams. As early as 1930, when she was appointed, Porter insisted that bringing Africana scholars and their works to campus was crucial not only to counter Eurocentric notions about blacks but also because, as she told Madison, “at that time . . . students weren’t interested in their African heritage. They weren’t interested in Africa or the Caribbean. They were really more interested in being like the white person.” Howard’s initial collections, which focused mainly on slavery and abolitionism, were substantially expanded through the 1915 gift of over 3,000 items from the personal library of the Reverend Jesse E. Moorland, a Howard alumnus and secretary of the Washington, DC, branch of the YMCA. In 1946, the university acquired the private library of Arthur B. Spingarn, a lawyer and longtime chair of the NAACP’s legal committee, as well as a confirmed bibliophile. He was particularly interested in the global black experience, and his collection included works by and about Black people in the Caribbean and South and Central America; rare materials in Latin from the early modern period; and works in Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, and many African languages, including Swahili, Kikuyu, Zulu, Yoruba, Vai, Ewe, Luganda, Ga, Sotho, Amharic, Hausa, Xhosa, and Luo. These two acquisitions formed the backbone of the Moorland-Spingarn collections. Porter was concerned about assigning value to the materials she collected—their intellectual and political value, certainly, but also their monetary value, since at the time other libraries had no expertise in pricing works by black authors. When Spingarn agreed to sell his collection to Howard, the university’s treasurer insisted that it be appraised externally. Since he did not want to rely on her assessment, Porter explained in her oral history, she turned to the Library of Congress’s appraiser. The appraiser took one look and said, “I cannot evaluate the collection. I do not know anything about black books. Will you write the report? . . . I’ll send it back to the treasurer.” The treasurer, thinking it the work of a white colleague, accepted it. This was not the only time that Porter had to create a workaround for a collection so as not to re-impose stereotyped ideas of black culture and Black scholarship. As Thomas C. Battle writes in a 1988 essay on the history of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, the breadth of the two collections showed the Howard librarians that “no American library had a suitable classification scheme for Black materials.” An “initial development of a satisfactory classification scheme,” writes Battle, was first undertaken by four women on the staff of the Howard University Library: Lula V. Allen, Edith Brown, Lula E. Conner and Rosa C. Hershaw. The idea was to prioritize the scholarly and intellectual significance and coherence of materials that had been marginalized by Eurocentric conceptions of knowledge and knowledge production. These women paved the way for Dorothy Porter’s new system, which departed from the prevailing catalog classifications in important ways. All of the libraries that Porter consulted for guidance relied on the Dewey Decimal Classification. “Now in [that] system, they had one number—326—that meant slavery, and they had one other number—325, as I recall it—that meant colonization,” she explained in her oral history. In many “white libraries,” she continued, “every book, whether it was a book of poems by James Weldon Johnson, who everyone knew was a black poet, went under 325. And that was stupid to me.” Consequently, instead of using the Dewey system, Porter classified works by genre and author to highlight the foundational role of black people in all subject areas, which she identified as art, anthropology, communications, demography, economics, education, geography, history, health, international relations, linguistics, literature, medicine, music, political science, sociology, sports, and religion. This Africana approach to cataloging was very much in line with the priorities of the Harlem Renaissance, as described by Howard University professor Alain Locke in his period-defining essay of 1925, “ Enter the New Negro .” Heralding the death of the “Old Negro” as an object of study and a problem for whites to manage, Locke proclaimed, “It is time to scrap the fictions, garret the bogeys and settle down to a realistic facing of facts.” Scholarship from a black perspective, Locke argued, would combat racist stereotypes and false narratives while celebrating the advent of black self-representation in art and politics. Porter’s classification system challenged racism where it was produced by centering work by and about black people within scholarly conversations around the world. The multi-lingual Porter, furthermore, anticipated an important current direction in African-American and African Diaspora studies: analyzing global circuits and historical entanglements and seeking to recover understudied archives throughout the world. In Porter’s spirit, this current work combats the effects of segmenting research on Black people along lines of nation and language, and it fights the gatekeeping function of many colonial archives. The results of Porter’s ambitions include rare and unusual items. The Howard music collections contain compositions by the likes of Antônio Carlos Gomes and José Mauricio Nunes Garcia of Brazil; Justin Elie of Haiti; Amadeo Roldán of Cuba; and Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges of Guadeloupe. The linguistics subject area includes a character chart created by Thomas Narven Lewis, a Liberian medical doctor, who adapted the basic script of the Bassa language into one that could be accommodated by a printing machine. (This project threatened British authorities in Liberia, who had authorized only the English language to be taught in an attempt to quell anti-colonial activism.) Among the works available in African languages is the rare Otieno Jarieko , an illustrated book on sustainable agriculture by Barack H. Obama, father of the former U.S. president. Porter must be acknowledged for her efforts to address the marginalization of writing by and about black people through her revision of the Dewey system as well as for her promotion of those writings though a collection at an institution dedicated to highlighting its value by showing the centrality of that knowledge to all fields. Porter’s groundbreaking work provides a crucial backdrop for the work of contemporary scholars who explore the aftereffects of the segregation of knowledge through projects that decolonize, repatriate and redefine historical archives.

The post Remembering the Howard University Librarian Who Decolonized the Way Books Were Catalogued appeared first on TBNT Have The Solution.

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trendyloaded · 2 years

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African Renaissance and Diaspora Network appoints Nomcebo and Akeju as ambassadors

African Renaissance and Diaspora Network appoints Nomcebo and Akeju as ambassadors On the occasion of the sixty-sixth session of the United Nations commisson on the status of women which is being held in New York, the African Renaissance And Diaspora Network (ARDN) has appointed South African music star Nomcebo Zikode and media executive Timothy Kublenu Akeju as goodwill ambassadors for the…

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erackom50 · 3 years

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Rev. Achim Gyimah appointed as ARDN Ghana representative

Reverend Clement Achim Gyimah has been appointed as the African Renaissance and Diaspora Network (ARDN) Ghana Country Representative. In this role, he will lead the development, implementation, and promotion of ARDN programs under the direction of Dr. Djibril Diallo, ARDN President, and CEO. His appointment began on Thursday, September 30, 2021. Rev. Achim Gyimah has more than 20 years of…

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erackom · 3 years

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Rev. Achim Gyimah appointed as ARDN Ghana representative

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onitshagra · 3 years

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ADC candidate Akachukwu Nwankpo assures accountability if elected

A group, ADC Renaissance Group in Diaspora, has urged the people of Anambra State to vote for the African Democratic Congress (ADC) governorship candidate, Nze Akachukwu Sullivan Nwankpo KSJI. Speaking during the town hall meeting, Yesterday, the ADC Diaspora Network Deputy Director, Mr. Kenneth Gbandi, said that Anambrarians needed a man who understands the needs of the people. He said…

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#ADC #Akachukwu Nwankpo #Anambra #Elections #featured #Politics

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things2mustdo · 4 years

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Mike Laws, Columbia Journalism Review, June 16, 2020

At the Columbia Journalism Review, we capitalize Black, and not white, when referring to racial groups. Black is an ethnic designation; white merely describes the skin color of people who can, usually without much difficulty, trace their ethnic origins back to a handful of European countries.

In deciding on a styling, fusspot grammarians and addled copy editors generally fall back on a pair of considerations. The first is broad adherence to a general rule—like, say, the Chicago Manual of Style’s (§8.38) edict that “Names of ethnic and national groups are capitalized.” (Though Chicago still generally mandates lowercasing both black and white, it does include the proviso that the rule can be suspended if “a particular author or publisher prefers otherwise.”) The second thing we look for is attestation. In this case, it’s instructive to turn not to the largely lilywhite mainstream press (nor to the style guides that govern their renderings), but to writers of color and to alternative stylebooks. The Diversity Style Guide (2019), produced by Rachele Kanigel in consultation with some fifty journalists and experts, takes it as a given that Black ought to be capitalized. Sarah Glover, a past president of the National Association of Black Journalists, wrote in a recent piece for the New York Amsterdam News, a historically Black weekly, that “capitalizing the ‘B’ in Black should become standard use to describe people, culture, art and communities.” After all, she pointed out, “We already capitalize Asian, Hispanic, African American and Native American.”

And, as my CJR colleague Alexandria Neason told me recently, “I view the term Black as both a recognition of an ethnic identity in the States that doesn’t rely on hyphenated Americanness (and is more accurate than African American, which suggests recent ties to the continent) and is also transnational and inclusive of our Caribbean [and] Central/South American siblings.” To capitalize Black, in her view, is to acknowledge that slavery “deliberately stripped” people forcibly shipped overseas “of all other ethnic/national ties.” She added, “African American is not wrong, and some prefer it, but if we are going to capitalize Asian and South Asian and Indigenous, for example, groups that include myriad ethnic identities united by shared race and geography and, to some degree, culture, then we also have to capitalize Black.”

If capping the B strikes you as in part a project of reclamation, well, it is. {snip}

Per this understanding, it is a kind of orthographic injustice to lowercase the B: to do so is to perpetuate the iniquity of an institution that uprooted people from the most ethnically diverse place on the planet, systematically obliterating any and all distinctions regarding ethnicity and culture. When people identify with specific terms of the African diaspora, we defer to those; in the absence of the identifiable ethnicities slavery stole from those it subjugated, Black can be a preferred ethnic designation for some descendants. (For a pop-culture consideration of this question, see the “Juneteenth” episode of Atlanta, in which a woke white husband asks Donald Glover’s character what part of “the motherland” he’s from, hazarding a guess that the answer might be “southeastern Bantu.” Glover responds, dryly, “I don’t know. See, this spooky thing called slavery happened and my entire ethnic identity was erased.”)

If capping the B strikes you as in part a project of reclamation, well, it is. As The Diversity Style Guide notes,

There are various historical, social and political reasons why one might prefer to identify as Black. The term has historically connected people of African descent around the world and was revived during the Black Power Movement.… Black and then African American replaced older terms such as Colored and Negro imposed by others. Self-identification might reflect feelings about origin, affiliation, colonialism, enslavement and cultural dispossession.

That argument persuaded CJR to change its style (in defiance of a piece published on our site a few years earlier). Glover, in her article, called on the Associated Press stylebook (“the bible for working journalists”) to update its entry. Given the timing, after the killing of George Floyd and in light of a global reckoning with race relations, I’d be surprised if the AP didn’t take heed, and soon. In the meantime—and in what is surely a sign of evolving American attitudes on the topic—USA Today has announced that it will be adopting the cap-B Black across its network, which includes the flagship paper and “more than 260 local news organizations.” (The man responsible for issuing the editorial fiat, Michael McCarter, was named managing editor of standards, ethics, and inclusion exactly one day before making the call.)

This all makes for a good start, but it will mean nothing if white Americans don’t make an effort to understand the whys and wherefores—which is to say, the history that delivered us to this precise point in time. That, of course, will be a taller order than simply asking them to capitalize one little letter.

Editors Note: This piece has been updated for clarity. An earlier version included an explanation that was off-base. We appreciate the feedback, have revised the language, and will continue to discuss this subject internally.

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mtairyartgarage-blog · 4 years

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International Women’s Day: Celebrating Women & The Arts

We’re celebrating International Women’s Day at the Mt. Airy Art Garage – and some amazing local and citywide women artists have stepped up to make this happen. Choirs, poets, spoken word artists, musicians, filmmakers, dancers, actors, painters, media gurus, and more. Join us in celebration and conversation!

So, feel free to read on, check out the artists’ bios, and spread the word about this event. Tell your friends, family, and even that passerby on the street! Everyone is welcome. Buy your tickets now or at the door. $10 donation per event or $25 for the entire weekend.

Outloud! A Celebration of Female Voices Friday, March 8th, 7-10 pm

An opening kick-off celebration that will focus on some of Philadelphia’s finest music and poetry.

Featured Performers: Anna Crusis Women’s Choir, TS Hawkins, Tamara Oakman, Victoria Peurifoy, Sister Cities Girlchoir, Yolanda Wisher, DJ Teriyaki, and Hannah Zaic!

Cocktail Reception Saturday, March 9th, 7-9 pm

Stop by, have a drink, chat, and see what we’re all about, here, at the Mt. Airy Art Garage.

Women In Media And The Arts—A Conversation Sunday, March 10th, 1-3 pm

An interactive conversation revolving around the past, present, and future of women in the arts. All are encouraged to attend, share, and question.

Featured Speakers: Michele Freeman, Sharon Katz, Nathea Lee, Janet Mason, Arleen Olshan, Nadine Patterson, and Jeanette Woods.

Learn more about our guest artists below!

Anna Crusis Women’s Choir

Anna Crusis Women’s Choir is committed to musical excellence and social change, singing to celebrate the diversity of women’s lives and culture. Anna Crusis is the country’s longest running feminist choir. In her thirty-seven year history, Anna has sought to act as an agent of social change by empowering, challenging and uplifting audiences with music that inspires and transforms. Anna has grown from a choir founded to promote women’s music, giving gay and straight women a strong community where they could find their voice and live their feminist principles, to a premier performing arts group and an important advocate for change in the greater Philadelphia region. Anna Crusis is committed to reaching diverse audiences and supports the work of fellow community organizations by singing at benefits and fundraisers.

Anna Crusis continues to promote these ideals with an emphasis on music by, for and about women and their lives. The choir values diversity and inclusion in its membership, its audiences and its repertoire. While honoring their common ground, choir members work to respect and learn from each other, from their differences in sexual orientation, racial and cultural heritage, age, class and spiritual expression.

Anna Crusis is a charter member of the international organization GALA Choruses (Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses), which fosters the continued artistic and organizational growth of its member choruses through festivals, workshops and ongoing networking and administrative support services.

Anna is currently under the direction of Miriam Davidson, Artistic Director.

Michelle Freeman

With an ongoing love for her native Philadelphia region, Michelle has been working in marketing and events since she was in high school. Promoting concerts and handling flyer distribution projects as a teen, she eventually headed to Drexel University and received a degree in Corporate Communications while simultaneously working to establish and grow non-profit organization, Campus Philly. She worked in various positions at Campus Philly where she produced Campus Philly College Day and served as Senior Manager for Events and Media Programs. More recently, Michelle has been operating her own agency, Witty Gritty Marketing & Events. Amongst other things, she has implemented marketing programs and hosted events for the City Reps Office, City Food Tours, Campus Philly, and Philly Swap. She serves as publisher for the online magazine, Flying Kite. Michelle is also committed to volunteering and serves as a board member at Girls Rock Philly, and Spiral Q Puppet Theater. Occasionally you can see her around town DJing under the name DJ Teriyaki.

Sharon Katz

South African musician and humanitarian, Sharon Katz founded The Peace Train—a tour of 150 musicians by train across South Africa—in 1992 to help Nelson Mandela end Apartheid and has continued spreading a message of peace and reconciliation through performances and workshops in festivals, colleges and concert halls around the world.

Her recordings include “Imbizo” on Billboard’s Highly Recommended list and Grammy nomination list for Best World Music Album; “Crystal Journey” featuring the original 500 voice choir; “Lerato” with the legendary Afro-jazz diva Dolly Rathebe; “Live in NYC with Special Guest Pete Seeger;” “Double Take” with South African divas Abigail Kubeka and Dolly Rathebe; and “Carnival!” with Sting, Elton John, Tina Turner and Madonna. “When Voices Meet”, a full length documentary about The Peace Train, will be released in 2013. Sharon Katz & The Peace Train use proceeds from their appearances for their humanitarian work in under-developed areas of South Africa and around the world including music therapy with orphans and communities affected by HIV/AIDS; feeding programs in impoverished areas; conflict resolution work in violence-torn regions; and building schools and community arts centers. Sharon Katz & The Peace Train, the heartbeat of world music, www.SharonKatz.com

TS Hawkins

TS Hawkins is an actor, internationally recognized author, performance poet, wedding Officiant & producer/host for her radio station. Hawkins is fresh off her mini tour titled Silent No More in which she wrote the text “Cartons of Ultrasounds” and infused various directors, mask makers and puppeteers on each leg of the tour. She is soon to release her 7th publication, The Hotel Haikus, during the second installment of the Authors Under 30 Book Tour. More information on her, visit www.tspoetics.com

Nathea Lee

Mt. Airy-based photographer, Nathea Lee launched her freelance photography business in the summer of 2009. Although her business focus is live performances and special events, with a special emphasis on jazz, she delights in capturing images that reflect the heart of her subject, from performers, families and streetscapes to nature and architecture. In 2011, she was invited to be part of the multimedia team for the 3HO organization’s 10-day Winter Solstice Celebration (Kundalini Yoga retreat). 2012 was a breakout year for the enterprising and artful photographer. To honor Jazz Appreciation Month, in April, Nathea set out on a LiveJazz Journey. She is seeing and shooting a different jazz show each week for a year. In addition, her work has been published in a growing list of cultural media, including Black Renaissance Noire, thINKing dance, Philly 360°, and Acoustic Levitation; and has been featured in the exhibitions, A Day in West Orange, This Music We Call Jazz: Giant Steps, and the Philly Street Sounds Collective’s Philadelphia Open Studio Tour (POST) exhibit at The Arts Garage in North Philadelphia. She has also photographed for SmartCEO magazine, The Mann Center for the Performing Arts, and others. Nathea has been managing director of Kùlú Mèlé African Dance and Drum Ensemble since October 2009. Founded in 1969 by Robert Crowder, Kùlú Mèlé is one of Philadelphia’s oldest and most well-regarded dance companies. The company’s mission is to preserve, present and build upon the dance and music of Africa and the African Diaspora.

Janet Mason

Janet Mason is an award winning writer of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, whose literary commentary is regularly featured on “This Way Out,” an international LGBT radio syndicate based in Los Angeles and aired on more than 400 radio stations in the U.S. and abroad. Her chapbooks of poetry include When I Was Straight (Insight To Riot Press) and a woman alone (Cycladic Press). Her book, Tea Leaves: a memoir of mothers and daughters was published by Bella Books in 2012 was chosen by the American Library Association to be on its 2013 Over the Rainbow List of notable LGBT books. She is currently at work on a novel. You can visit her at www.amusejanetmason.com

Tamara Oakman

Tamara Oakman’s poetry and fiction has appeared online and in print in such magazines as Painted Bride Quarterly, Philadelphia Stories and Best of Anthology, Mad Poets Review, Fox Chase Review, Certain Circuits Magazine, Many Mountains Moving, et al., with upcoming fiction in The Feminist Wire. She has awards in poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and drama, recently winning the Philadelphia Writer’s Conference memoir contest (2012). She has an MA in English and is completing her MA in Humanities from Arcadia University. She studied poet Anne Sexton at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center in Boston, lived in the poet’s space, and interviewed friends and colleagues—including Maxine Kumin—culminating in a 40-page research article blended with an explicative analysis of Sexton’s poetry. She has lectured on Sexton’s work. She judged the Hidden River Arts fiction and drama contest; the Montgomery County Poet Laureate contest (2012), and is currently judging a fiction and poetry contest for Ursinis College’s Dolman Prize (2013). She is cofounder and executive editor of APIARY Magazine. Come see what the buZZZ is all about!! Find ALL 5 Apiary’s in FULL and MORE at www.apiarymagazine.com.

Arleen Olshan

Arleen Olshan, visual artist and handcrafter of custom leather goods, is Cofounder of the Mt. Airy Art Garage. Arleen looks forward to the celebration of International Women’s Day every year. “It means a great deal to me that on March 8, all over the world, women are being recognized for their accomplishments and the struggles they face to self actualize.”

For over 40 years, Arleen has been an activist in the LGBTQ and Feminist communities. She has held numerous positions such as Co-Coordinator of the first Gay & Lesbian Community Center of Philadelphia, Co-Owner of Giovanni’s Room, Officer on the Steering Committee of Philadelphia Focuses on Women in the Visual Arts, and Art Director at the YWCA of Germantown. She has worked in the HIV/AIDS community and with women in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction.

For the past three years Arleen has worked at building her dream of the Mt. Airy Art Garage through outreach to practicing artists in the Northwest, community residents, and organizations in the area. Now that 90% of the buildout is complete, Arleen is working in her studio on her leather goods and has returned to drawing and painting. You can find her work at www.arleenolshan.com.

Nadine Patterson

Ms. Patterson is an award winning independent producer/director. Her training in theatre, immersion in documentary film, and intense study of world cinema enable her to create works grounded in historical contexts, with a unique visual palette. Over the past 20 years, she has taught video production at West Chester University, Temple University, Arcadia University, Drexel University, University of Western Sydney (Australia) and Scribe Video Center. She was the only filmmaker selected for The Biennial 2000 at the African American Museum in Philadelphia. Some of her films include: “I Used to Teach English,” Winner Gold Apple Award 1994 National Educational Film/Video Festival, Oakland, CA; “Anna Russell Jones: Praisesong for a Pioneering Spirit,” Best Documentary 1993 African American Women in the Arts Film/Video Competition, Chicago, IL; “Moving with the Dreaming,” Prized Pieces award from the National Black Programming Consortium in 1997; “Todo El Mundo Dance!” selected for the 2001-2002 Council on Foundations Film and Video Festival. Other notable works include: “Shizue,” screened at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1991; and “Release” shown at the Constellation Change Dance Film Festival of London in 2006. She completed her second masters at the London Film School.

She received funding for her film work from The Philadelphia Foundation, The National Black Programming Consortium, The Bartol Foundation, and The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. In 2010 she received a visual arts fellowship from the Independence Foundation. In 2011 along with Ain Gordon and the Painted Bride Art Center she received a grant from the Pew Philadelphia Theater Initiative for the creation of a new work about forgotten historical places in Philadelphia. For the third year Ms. Patterson curated the Trenton International Film Festival in November 2012. She completed two milestones in 2011 by publishing her first book Always Emerging and by completing principal photography on Tango Macbeth, her first feature film as director. Tango Macbeth was featured in three film festivals in 2012 and will be on tour to New York, Chicago, Washington D.C. and Paris with the African Diaspora International Film Festival in 2013.

Victoria Huggins Peurifoy

Victoria Huggins Puerifoy is an author, Poet, Spoken word artist, Storyteller, writer, biographer, photographer, consultant, facilitator, voice talent, Narrator, and Public Speaker. She is a member of White Rock Baptist Church.

She is a self published author with seven books, three chapbooks, and two CDs to her credit. Her latest book Let the Axiom Speak and God’s Calling were recently released. She has a Liberal Arts Degree from Community College and has attended creative writing courses and workshops around the city. She is the facilitator for the Poetry and Discussion group at the Center in the Park Senior Citizen Center. Victoria also writes autobiographies for senior citizens. Her latest book is about a 92 year-old woman who commissioned her as a ghost writer. That book is called I have not lived in vain. She is currently working on an Anthology with the poets from this group. Victoria has gained popularity around Philadelphia, North and South Jersey, Baltimore, and in Delaware; for what she brings to the table provokes thought. Victoria has performed at the October Galley’s Poetry Night, The Art of Conversation, the Black Writer’s Museum’s Poetry Marathon and Story Telling Saturdays, The Ethical Society, Germantown Poetry Festival in Vernon Park, and Freedom Theatre – just to name a few. Her poetry and photography have been exhibited at the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital’s Kimmel Cancer Center. She is a regular at the First Presbyterian Church of Germantown’s – Bread and Cup Café, Poetify–Poetry to Edify, Coffee After Dark, and Panoramic Poetry – Uptown, which is hosted by October Gallery. Recently, she was featured in WHYY’s online newspaper and subsequently was Interviewed and Featured on ExposureNation.Com which is an Online radio show. “Mother’s In Charge” had Victoria to speak at a Writing Workshop for young women in crisis. The Baptist Congress for Christian Education commissioned her to conduct workshops for children who were competing for a poetry contest.

As mentioned earlier, photography is another one of her passions and she is frequently commissioned to provide photography services. As a biographer, she is commissioned to help senior citizens write their life story.

As a member of the White Rock Baptist Church she is an active member. She sings on the Church Chapel choir, is an Announcement Clerk, and a Member of the Good Shepherd Circle. Recently, she has taken on the role of secretary to The Malawi Missions, which is a new effort at her church, who is partnering with two other churches. She is a widow and has three adult children and three grandchildren with one on the way.

Sister Cities Girlchoir

Sister Cities Girlchoir is the choral training academy that invests in the unique potential of at-risk girls to transform Philadelphia and Camden. In their pilot year, the Girlchoir operates weekly during after-school hours to build resilience and connection through musical study. SCG is modeled after El Sistema, Venezuela’s monumental music and social change program. For more information on these amazing kids visit www.sistercitiesgirlchoir.org.

Yolanda Wisher

Yolanda Wisher, a poet and educator, serves as Director of Art Education for the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. Wisher received a B.A. in English and Black Studies from Lafayette College and M.A. in Creative Writing/Poetry from Temple University. At the age of 23, she was named the first Montgomery County Poet Laureate. A former English teacher and radio host, Wisher is a Cave Canem Fellow and Leeway Foundation Art and Change Award recipient. Her poems have been published in Fence, Ploughshares, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and in the anthologies Gathering Ground, The Ringing Ear, and Lavanderia. From 2006-2010, Wisher was the chief architect of the Germantown Poetry Festival, a neighborhood event in Philadelphia which showcased the talents of youth and locally and nationally known poets.

Jeanette Woods

Jeanette Woods is the Community Media Editor for NewsWorks. She trains community groups and individuals in multimedia news gathering. She also develops partnerships with community-based content creators in order to feature their work on NewsWorks.org and NewsWorks Tonight. Woods joined the NewsWorks project in 2011.

Jeanette’s career has encompassed writing, reporting, field production, archival research, database design, online interface design and photo editing. Her production credits include WGBH-TV, Blackside, Inc. and National Geographic Channel. Here audio work has been featured on WAMU, Marketplace and WHYY.

Hannah Zaic

Hannah Zaic is a multi-talented, one of a kind pop artist based out of Philadelphia, PA. The daughter of a blues guitarist and poet, she was literally born to write and perform. Growing up in such an artistic atmosphere exposed her to many genres and artists which would later help her to develop the difficult-to-define style she is known for. At a young age her ambitions became apparent when she started an all female singing group at 10 and then fronted her first rock group at 15.

In 2009 Ms. Zaic left New Jersey seeking to join the thriving music scene in Philadelphia. It was there that she would form her backing band, The Damaged Goods. Within the year she was playing some of the area’s most prestigious stages and getting noticed by various media outlets in the tri-state area. But it wasn’t long before she would establish herself as a fixture on the singer-songwriter circuit throughout the Northeast. Her music, which can be described as pop with elements of the blues and rock, tells stories through carefully crafted lyrics and rich melody lines. On stage, she consistently delivers dynamic stage shows, drawing her audiences in and involving them in each performance. As a vocalist, Hannah manages to combine her soulful vocal skills, which have been likened to Sara Bareilles and angelic tone with a playful indie edge reminiscent of a young Aimee Mann.

Her debut album, [something clever] is due out in early 2013. For more information on Hannah Zaic and The Damaged Goods go to, www.HannahZaic.com, find her on Facebook through Hannah Zaic and the Damaged Goods or follow her on Twitter @ www.Twitter.com/HannahZaic.

#2013

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general-du-vallon · 7 years

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Okie dokie, a long post about Commodities. This is not rigorous scholarship, history is not my field, I knew nothing about this subject before, really. It’s just a quick google. So, without further ado.

“Well, there was this one time I dropped anchor near a small island called Gorée…”

Gorée Island is a small island off the coast of Senegal which played a part in the transatlantic slave trade. The House of Slaves and the Door of No Return, now a museum and UNESCO World Heritage Site, was built in the 18th century. There are so many different estimations of how many people passed through Gorée and different analyses on how important it was to the trade. However, it is important now, and now is when the series was made. It’s a name that carries connotations of not only the lives directly affected by the slave trade then but the continuing repercussions that we’re still seeing and still understanding. There’s an annual festival, “a way to use art and culture to remember [the sad page in history] and to unite the island's diaspora… it is not enough to remember the past, but that it must be used to build a better future in which communities can grow closer to eliminate all forms of discrimination”, (Augustin Senghor, the mayor of Gorée Island, speaking in 2010 about the festival). The Facebook page for the festival says

“Le Gorée Diaspora Festival est un ciment fédérateur entre la Communauté Sénégalaise à travers Gorée et l’ensemble des visages et voix de la diaspora Africaine s’engageant à « rectifier voire inverser les conséquences négatives de l’esclavage et du lourd tribu payé par le continent noir et ses enfants sous le vocable de Renaissance Africaine qui englobe la notion de Développement que l’Afrique n’a pu connaître du fait, justement, de l’esclavage”

I don’t speak French but I can translate a little… the Gorée Diaspora festival is… something about unifying the Senegalese communities through different voices…. Something about reversing and counteracting the consequences of the slave trade, something about a heavy tribute (price?) paid by the ‘children’ of the continent and the diaspora, and includes ideas about the development that Africa could not know because of the slave trade. My dudes, je ne parle pas Francais, so do correct me or translate better.

The Gorée Institute promotes culture and arts in Africa and in 2015 (I think) they ran a poetry residency on the island that aimed “to reignite a literary tradition that has begun to fade, and to help promote arts, culture, and freedom of expression as intrinsically effective methods of fostering open societies in the region”

How to Fall in Love with an African City

by Gbenga Adesina, a 24-year-old poet from Nigeria

In time, you too will come to learn dear friend, the soft rustle,

Soft whoosh of affection for a city like a lover like a love song: Nairobi, Abuja, Dakar

throbbing in your ribs: Accra, Harare, Port Novo, carving a place for themselves, to nestle

In spite of yourself in the jar

of things you call loved.

I know eyes have their own memories and fears

and you come here seeking only the darkness you’ve been

promised. But come again to Abidjan friend, come to Yamoussoukro, come

to Kigali, to Luanda, to Lagos, where the city vowels sing to you, sing to you.

Sidewalks that are nations on their own. Yellow buses that write you into a story

Wi-Fi spots and shopping malls and smiles that warm your arms and strangers that become

friends in an instant. Grilled meats that introduce your tongue to you.

In time, you too will come to learn dear friend, the soft rustle, soft

Whoosh of affection for a city like a lover like a love song: Nairobi, Abuja, Kigali,

Dakar throbbing in your ribs. What it means for a city to hold you by the hands

and love you and lead you to places you’ve never been inside yourself

again and again at the junction of laughter.

Ok. So, these are a few facts I’ve come up with after a quick Google around, and a few things that are coming out of Gorée today. Back to the series, Bonnaire name drops an island that would have already been involved in the slave trade in the 17th century. The thing about the transatlantic trade was that even when not trading people, trade was deeply involved in slaving. The transatlantic triangle meant that cargo was being shipped to pay for slaves and nurture ties in Africa and supply the colonial settlements, a cargo of people was then shipped to the Americas, then the produce of the Americas was shipped to Europe. Paul Munier, as a trader, was as implicated in the trade as Bonnaire, just a different side of the triangle. His cargo might not have been people, but it would have been from the Americas and in all probability produced by the people taken on Bonnaire’s slave ships. The name-drop, then, is suggestive of the slave trade and brings up a whole host of connotations and connections.

I suppose it was probably put in to suggest to an audience that Bonnaire is a slaver, as a ‘clue’. I think it works beyond that, though. It is also, because of what the island is now, suggestive of a diaspora, and the series brings in Samara, and Porthos, people who are perhaps part of a diaspora (I am not naming Sylvie because her story never brushes on her… what is it Bonnaire calls it? Ah. Here we go: “ancestry”). I don’t know what else is within that allusion, probably many things, but I just wanted to pick up the casual reference and think about it.

http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/goree-island-home-door-no-return (basic info about the island from an American site. I looked at a lot of sources but this seems the most straightforward)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/world/africa/19ndiaye.html (an article about Boubacar Joseph Ndiaye, curator of the House of Slaves, from 2009 after he died)

https://www.voanews.com/a/goree-island-festival-celebrates-african-diversity-107230813/130315.html (quote from Augustin Senghor)

https://www.facebook.com/pg/GoreeDiasporaFestival/about/?ref=page_internal (facebook ‘about’ page)

www.goreeinstitut.org (Gorée Institure’s page, in French)

https://afrolegends.com/2016/07/27/reclaiming-african-history-goree-and-the-slave-trade-in-senegal/ (another page about Gorée and reclamation)

“A calabash. Grows all over West Africa.”

I just want to quickly pick up on this allusion, mostly because it is used to make musical instruments and you know, I like music. So. I’m just gonna share a couple of things I found. The first is a page from RCIP-CHIN [a Canadian… it’s in French again, CHIN stands for Canadian Heritage Information Network, it’s a heritage site basically I think], a teaching page aimed at children about traditional calabash objects from Senegal, so stuff made from calabash, from a region that we know Bonnaire visited.

http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/edu/ViewLoitLo.do?method=preview&lang=EN&id=10659

The Kora is an instrument made from the calabash, so here are two videos of kora music,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEoMz79NT60 I don’t know this one I got it by googling, it’s called ‘KORA TRIO SENEGAL Konzert Rote Fabrik Zürich’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig91Z0-rBfo this one is Sona Jobarteh and band, it says it’s music from West Africa.

Also just a thing from a quick google, A Drunken Ode on an Ashanti Calabash, based on Keats’ Ode to a Grecian Urn, because, you know, how awesome is that?

You bald head crackpot of an unworshipped gourd

Owner of sweet whine, lined with alternate this chord

What incense wafts incessant on your inside

What merry joys accompany your company.

What brave brow, what bold curve

Hairless rim-head, competitor of shaved eggshells

Afraid to touch the earth but on your belly.

Glass wine is sweet, but gourd wine is sweeter

Funeral wine, party wine, you hold them better

What a roll you make on your underbelly

When rocking here this way and that

What browned fare, what fair brow

What endless, gaping gap on your inside

Forever open to wine and air.

Pour me a drink, pour me two

Which are sipped ‘pon suppers supped

Momentous joy for a dugout unleaked

What thin wall, what thick skin

What strong ethers of spirits reek

Shanty half body of insipid taste.

Sleeping is truth, and truth sleeping

Let me now lie and tomorrow waste

https://afrilingual.wordpress.com/2013/11/28/drunken-ode-on-an-ashanti-calabash/

“A bottle of rumbullion. The colonists make it out of sugar molasses, so potent they call it kill devil”

Last allusion I’m picking up, I swear, and again I’ll be quick about it. John J. McCusker says that “rum and molasses early became strategic items in the vital trade with the West Indies, being readily available and readily acceptable returns for colonial goods shipped there. The distilling of rum from molasses created a substantial colonial industry, employing local capital, management skills, and labor[sic]”. Bonnaire’s rum is again just an indication of both his trade and the deeper implications. Rum is a ‘commodity’ (a word McCusker uses over and over that I can’t hear without wincing anymore) that was used substantially in the transantlantic trade. Again, the commodities and luxuries that Bonnaire is shipping, his cargo, is all implicated in the slave trade and, again, I want to point out Paul Munier as a trader who might not actively be a slaver but is still part of the slave trade.

The Rum Trade and the Balance of Payments of the Thirteen Continental Colonies, 1650-1775

Author(s): John J. McCusker

Source: The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 30, No. 1, The Tasks of Economic History(Mar., 1970), pp. 244-247

Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2116737

Accessed: 26-10-2017 20:35 UTC

[sorry, I’m sure there are other more accessible sources on the rum trade and its parallels/uses in the slave trade, but I have google fatigue. The article is focussed on economy and is numbers and ledgers and is only really relevant to show how rum was used by the colonists in the slave trade]

https://www.thoughtco.com/triangle-trade-104592 [oh, here’s another source, and this one talks about the triangle as well]

FINALLY I want to just mention how confused I am by Louis and Richelieu and their conversation about the navy. I always read that as the French didn’t have a navy, and had a trade agreement with Spain about exploration/colonisation. I can’t find any evidence for this, however, and in fact Richelieu pretty much is the source of the modern French navy; he built the damn thing. And in terms of colonization, while it seems to be true that the French in 1630 were only just starting really, they WERE starting. Richelieu [historical type not Capaldi] went on to colonize the Antilles, and the French navy took Gorée from the Dutch in… 1677. David Gegus says that “for the little-studied seventeenth century, some data recently uncovered by Clarence Munford and others are combined with material from older works by Elizabeth Donnan, Abdoulaye Ly, and John Barbot. The compilers note, however, ‘much of the seventeenth century French traffic is missing.’ A large part of France's slave trading was then clandestine, conducted by interlopers challenging royal monopoly companies”. Which seems to fit in with Bonnaire’s position with the court. Richelieu actually set up a Company of San-Christophe with an explorer called Pierre Belain d'Esnambuc in approx. 1626 (“I found myself my own little utopia, a little piece of heaven called San Christophe”). [‘San-Christophe’ is ‘Saint Kitts’]. The company failed, d’Esnambuc died, Richelieu set up the Company of One Hundred Associates instead and they colonised Canada, the Antilles, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Belain_d%27Esnambuc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_of_One_Hundred_Associates

And for those who like academical journalies and JSTOR:

Hausa Calabash Decoration

Author(s): Judith Perani

Source: African Arts, Vol. 19, No. 3 (May, 1986), pp. 45-47+82-83

Published by: UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3336411

In the Shadow of the Castle: (Trans)Nationalism, African American Tourism, and GoréeIsland

Author(s): Salamishah Tillet

Source: Research in African Literatures, Vol. 40, No. 4, Writing Slavery in(to) the AfricanDiaspora (Winter, 2009), pp. 122-141

Published by: Indiana University Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40468165

Accessed: 26-10-2017 18:30 UTC

The French Slave Trade: An Overview

Author(s): David Geggus

Source: The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 1, New Perspectives on theTransatlantic Slave Trade (Jan., 2001), pp. 119-138

Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2674421

Mercantilism as a Factor in Richelieu's Policy of National Interests

Author(s): Franklin Charles Palm

Source: Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Dec., 1924), pp. 650-664

Published by: The Academy of Political Science

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2142344

The French Slave Trade: An Overview

Author(s): David Geggus

Source: The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 1, New Perspectives on theTransatlantic Slave Trade (Jan., 2001), pp. 119-138

Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2674421

Scientific travel in the Atlantic world: the French expedition to Gorée and the Antilles,1681-1683

Author(s): NICHOLAS DEW

Source: The British Journal for the History of Science, Vol. 43, No. 1 (March 2010), pp. 1-17

Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The British Society for theHistory of Science

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40731001

#MuskiesReWatch

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halsteadproperty · 4 years

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Black History Month in New York City

Celebrate black culture and the many achievements and contributions of African Americans during Black History Month, an annual commemoration that takes place in February. Given that New York City is such a center for African American culture, there are countless ways to celebrate the month in the city. Here are just a few options:

12th Annual Black History Month Celebration with the Harlem Chamber Players

February 13 at 6:30 PM

The Harlem Chamber Players along with virtuoso pianist Joseph Joubert and soprano Renay Joubert will perform a special concert to celebrate Black History Month. The music of Florence Price and George Walker will be featured, as well as the poetry of Langston Hughes.

African Diaspora Feast

February 19 at 7 PM

Char-grilled guinea fowl with tiger nut milk curry sauce, slow-roasted lamb with irio, and vanilla-ginger plantain ice cream with kelewele will be on the menu at this James Beard Foundation dinner celebrating the African diaspora.

AfropolitanNYC Black Heritage Experience

February 22 at 6 PM

This unique event will feature top Afrobeats DJs, cocktails, retail and food vendors, and the opportunity to mingle and network with over 600 black professionals.

Focus on African Arts Tour at The Met

Various Dates

Explore the rich artistic achievements of sub-Saharan Africa with a tour of The Met’s African art collection, which covers a millennium’s worth of work.

Namesakes: African Americans in NYC Parks

Throughout February 27

Many parks, gardens, and monuments honor the contributions of African Americans who have shaped New York City through the years. Learn about these namesakes through the photographs in this exhibition inside Central Park.

Black History Month at Brooklyn Historical Society

Throughout February

Brooklyn Historical Society commemorates Black History Month through a series of programs, including a screening of Always In Season, a discussion on race-based discrimination in the workplace, a conversation about murder cases during the Civil Rights Era, and more.

Black in Time: A Black Renaissance

Throughout February

This interactive Fashion Institute of Technology exhibition illustrates the evolution of black art and culture from Ancient Egypt to the present day.

#Black History Month #New York City #NYC #Manhattan

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sayflexxyblog · 2 years

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Akeju, Nomcebo appointed African Renaissance and Diaspora ambassadors

Akeju, Nomcebo appointed African Renaissance and Diaspora ambassadors On the occasion of the sixty-sixth session of the United Nations commisson on the status of women which is being held in New York, the African Renaissance And Diaspora Network (ARDN) has appointed South African music star Nomcebo Zikode and media executive Timothy Kublenu Akeju as goodwill ambassadors for the campaign to give…

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#Akeju #Nomcebo

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nyslovesfilm · 5 years

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Save the Date: Film Festivals and Events

Film Festivals take place in New York State throughout the year. The following is a list of upcoming festivals and industry events: Manhattan Film Festival – Through May 5 The 13th annual Manhattan Film Festival is hosted at the famed Cinema Village and takes place when the entire industry ascends upon New York City. Manhattan Film Festival is covered by local, national, and international media outlets. This includes The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Good Morning America, The New York Times, as well as international outlets such as The Sun, BBC, and The Guardian. The festival has been named both “25 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee” and “The Coolest Film Festivals in the World” by MovieMaker Magazine.

Tribeca International Film Festival – Through May 5 The 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, presented by AT&T, continues its tradition of elevating exceptional storytelling rooted in today’s global film communities. The 18th annual Festival will showcase debut works from emerging talent and new works from notable filmmakers. The program includes discoveries, comedies, music-centered, politically-minded and social films. NYC Independent Film Festival – May 5-12 The NYC Independent Film Festival is a non-profit providing a showcase for the best independent cinema, from NYC and around the world, to the public and entertainment industry. The weeklong celebration screens the best indie films, offers educational panels and presentations helmed by industry professionals, and holds live performances. The Festival gives filmmakers the opportunity for potential distribution and funding, as well as awarding the top films across numerous categories, all while giving them the opportunity to mingle and network with press, supporters and fans. New York Indian Film Festival – May 7-12 The New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) is the oldest, most prestigious film festival screening premieres of feature, documentary and short films made from, of, and about the Indian subcontinent in the independent, arthouse, alternate and diaspora genres. Seven days of screenings, post-screening discussions, industry panels, award ceremony, special events, nightly networking parties, red carpet galas, media attention and packed audiences build an awareness of Indian cinema, entertain and educate attendees about India, and add to the amazing cultural diversity of New York City. Harlem International Film Festival – May 16-19 Celebrating the art of cinema in the home of the Harlem Renaissance, The Harlem International Film Festival (Hi) inspires and entertains by honoring dynamic films by anyone about anything under the sun. Conceived from the belief that we all have unique experiences and perspectives to share, the Festival actively seeks and exhibits fresh work. Hi is committed to exemplifying the eminence that Harlem represents and is dedicated to bringing attention to the finest filmmakers from Harlem and across the globe. Columbia University Film Festival – May 16-19 Columbia University School of the Arts Film Program presents the 31st Annual Columbia University Film Festival (CUFF), a weeklong program of screenings, screenplay, and teleplay readings in New York.

New York Polish Film Festival – May 21-25 & June 1-2 The annual New York Polish Film Festival presents its 13th annual showcase of Poland’s most riveting cinematic feats. From its beginning, the festival has offered an opportunity to discover various trends and developments in Polish cinema. The Festival is presented with the support of the Polish Consulate General in New York, the Polish Embassy in Washington, DC, the Polish Cultural Institute in New York, the Governor of New York, and the Association of Polish Filmmakers, as well as our Sponsors. New York African Film Festival – May 23 – June 9 African Film Festival, Inc. (AFF) is dedicated to advancing an enhanced understanding of African culture through the moving image. It offers diverse platforms for the wide distribution of African media through its flagship annual film festival and complementary year-round programming. AFF is committed to increasing visibility and recognition for African media artists by introducing African film and culture to a broad range of audiences in the United States and abroad, bypassing economic, class and racial barriers.

New York Indie Doc Fest—May 26 New York Indie Doc Fest (NYIDF), the sister festival to Toronto IDF and Berlin IDF, is now in its third year of screenings. The first NYIDF was held in Brooklyn,��New York in November 2016, and continues to deliver a curated selection of short and mid-length documentary films from all over the world to an American audience. The third installment of the festival will take place in May 2019 at the Spectacle Theatre.

New York Metropolitan Screenwriting Competition - May 31 The mission of the New York Metropolitan Screenwriting Competition (NYMSC) is to celebrate everything about New York! The NYMSC accomplishes this by inviting emerging screenwriters to submit their work so that New York talent, both transplants and locals, will have an opportunity to further their careers by connecting with agents and managers who could represent them to production executives. NYMSC’s hope is that talented screenwriters will share their perspectives on New York so that audiences everywhere can experience the magic!

Brooklyn Film Festival – May 31-June 9 Brooklyn Film Festival (BFF), a non-profit organization, is an International, competitive festival. BFF’s mission is to provide a public forum in Brooklyn in order to advance public interest in films and the independent production of films, to draw worldwide attention to Brooklyn as a center for cinema, to encourage the rights of all Brooklyn residents to access and experience the power of independent filmmaking, and to promote artistic excellence and the creative freedom of artists without censure.

New York Shorts International Film Festival – May 31- June 6 New York Shorts International Film Festival provides a showcase for emerging and established independent filmmakers from around the world. The festival’s events include receptions, as well as workshops with industry experts and top filmmaking professionals sharing their practical advice to attending filmmakers. The heart of the festival is the quality and scope of extraordinary film programming to enthusiastic audiences in the vibrant filmmaking enclave of New York City.

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akamaotto · 6 years

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Fatma Samoura, secrétaire générale de la FIFA, lauréate du premier Prix du Sport de l'ARDN

Fatma Samoura, secrétaire générale de la FIFA, lauréate du premier Prix du Sport de l’ARDN

Original article in African Shapers [ad_1]

Le prix a été décerné à la Secrétaire générale de la fédération internationale de football association (FIFA), le 27 septembre dernier au siège des Nations Unies à New York , par le Réseau de la renaissance et de la diaspora africaine (African Renaissance & Diaspora Network – ARDN), en marge de la 73 ème session de l’assemblée générale de l’ONU.

Proud…

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touristguidebuzz · 7 years

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Airline Stopover Programs Can Be a Huge Tourism Catalyst

Tourists have taken advantage of Icelandair's stopover program. Pictured a tourist drinks fresh water near a waterfall in 2014. Skift

Skift Take: Icelandair's stopover policies helped put Iceland tourism on the map but some copycats such as Finnair, Qantas, Copa and Emirates have failed to leverage the gains or made the stopovers too difficult for flyers to take advantage of.

— Dennis Schaal

When IcelandAir launched its stopover program in 1948, the year the airline made its debut, it was out of necessity—not savvy marketing. Without a license to travel directly from North America to Europe, the only way for the carrier to fly was to offer a layover in Reykjavik. “Back then, the airline operated flights on two separate licenses,” explained Michael Raucheisen, a spokesperson for IcelandAir. “One from North America to Iceland, and another from Iceland to Europe.”

By 1955, said Raucheisen, “the thought stuck that we should let these travelers see Iceland,” and the free stopover was officially born. Being able to pit stop in Iceland for a few daysbetween connecting flights was like getting a free vacation within a vacation—it became an instant hit with hippie backpackers through the ’60s, and though it has been offered continuously since then, a concerted marketing effort a few years ago brought it back into the spotlight.

Since 2012, Iceland’s stopover program has seen year-on-year increases of 30 percent to 39 percent, with 50 percent of IcelandAir’s passengers flying via Iceland and 31 percent of that subset taking advantage of the free extended layovers, which can range from one to 13 nights. Ask any tour operator in Iceland what effect the stopovers have had on local tourism, and they’ll unanimously agree: IcelandAir’s promotion has been the single largest catalyst for the exploding Iceland tourism industry.

At least a dozen other airlines since 2012 have followed suit with similar programs. Last year, the Portuguese airline TAP added a robust stopover program with one- to three-day layovers in Lisbon, which is the second-closest European capital to North America, after Dublin.

“In our 75-year history, we had essentially been selling ice to Eskimos,” said Gareth Edmondson-Jones, a TAP spokesperson, about the airline’s tendency to sell Portugal to the Portuguese diaspora. Focusing on a core group of visitors to Portugal meant planes were full in the summer and empty in the winter, and the airline was struggling to stay afloat.

“A stopover program became the key to our expansion strategy—it lets us sell all of Europe to all of North America,” he added. Approximately 40,000 travelers have taken advantage of the program since its launch, and the airline is in the midst of a renaissance moment.

Since not all stopover programs are created equal, we’ve put them to the test. Here are the ones worth trying and the ones to skip—plus a few extra hacks that’ll get you two vacations for the price of one.

The Best Airline Stopover Programs

IcelandAir

Stopping in Reykjavik is convenient for many itineraries from the U.S. to Europe—particularly if you’re heading to Scandinavia. And a user-friendly tab on the airline’s homepage makes it easy to find and book stopover flights from 18 destinations in North America to 26 destinations in Europe. Not all city pairs will yield solid results, though: Route availability was limited when we plugged in a trip from New York to Barcelona, for instance, forcing us into an inconvenient (and expensive) itinerary for the sake of a weekend in Iceland.

TAP

This is one of the best deals, and not just because Portugal makes a natural stopping point en route to most European (or even African) capitals. First, the stopovers are easy to book and superflexible: They’re available in either Lisbon or Porto, for intervals of 24, 48, or 72 hours. Then there’s the companion app, which helps you get around or book partner hotels at special rates (or get a free bottle of wine at select restaurants). But the best part? Adding a stopover decreased the total cost of our flights by as much as $40.

Qatar

Book a multi-city fare with a few days in Qatar,and your total cost shouldn’t go up by more than $15—making a stopover essentially free. What you will find, however, are exclusive deals: $20 tours of the new I.M. Pei Museum of Islamic Art, dirt-cheap desert safaris, and preferential rates from five-star hotels. Plus, the airline will waive the costs of a transit visa for stays up to 96 hours.

AirCanada

Compared to some other programs, AirCanada’s stopover scheme is a limited one: It subsidizes only the cost of a hotel room in Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver if your flight has a layover of six hours or more. (The hotel rooms are free if you fly in a premium cabin.) It’s worth it, however, to break up a long flight between, say, Houston and London—where you could pit stop in Montreal for a meal at Joe Beef and a few hours of sleep in a bed, rather than a cramped steerage seat.

Singapore

Adding a long layover in Singapore won’t come free on this airline, but your costs on the ground might as well be. Packages that start at $43 per night include everything from hotels to airport transfers—more than justifying an otherwise inconvenient promotional itinerary that nets you a cheap flight to Asia.

Etihad

It’ll cost you around $25 to add an Abu Dhabi stopover to your flight, but you’ll save what you’ve spent when you let Etihad coordinate an experience that suits the length of your layover—a steeply discounted set of holes, say, at the top-tier Yas Links Golf Club if you have only six hours to spare. Staying a little longer? They’ll set up free overnights at five-star hotels if you’re flying business or first class.

Turkish

Though you can’t stay overnight with Turkish Air’s TourIstanbul program, passengers with 6- to 24-hour layovers can join scheduled walking tours to see such sights as the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, and the Grand Bazaar free of charge. Everything from the guides, to museum admissions, to airport transfers is included—and you can leave your luggage with the service desk at the airport for a minimal charge.

Stopovers to Skip

Although most stopovers are promoted as “free,” some are anything but. Finnair made a push for its new Helsinki stopover program last year, but we found that the stops were hardly free; on some routes, they added as much as $320 to a fare and took us out of our way. Ditto stopovers in Sydney with Qantas—which cost about $200 and would be helpful only for onward journeys within Australia. The worst offender was Japan. A route we tested from San Francisco to Bangkok was $2,732 without an extended layover in Tokyo; with the layover, the price jumped to $4,169.

Other stopover programs are overly cumbersome to book. To book a Panama City stopover through Copa, for instance, you have to put your airfare on hold and get on the phone with a reservations agent in the hope that your route is eligible. And Emirates makes you jump on a call with a travel agent or a local Emirates office to add stopovers to existing tickets.

Other Booking Hacks Worth Trying

Stopovers aren’t the only way to book a free (or ultra-affordable) side trip. The website Clever Layover lets you put in your origin and destination points along with a preference for length of layover—it then suggests airfares that save you money by adding an extended stopover. (Think two days in Copenhagen or Berlin on your way from New York to Vienna.)

And even when airlines don’t promote stopovers, they’re worth plugging into a multi-city airfare search. Stopping in Lima for a few days on your way to Cuzco often reduces fares on LAN, for example. (And who doesn’t want to pit stop for a couple of excellent meals in this skyrocketing culinary capital?)

For loyal fliers, United and Alaska Airlines’ reward programs actually allow for free stopovers no matter where you’re heading—as long as you’re using miles.

And if all you’re after is leisure, leisure, leisure, think about booking a cruise with Regent Seven Seas: the luxury liner actually includes pre- and post-cruise hotel stays at all its disembarkation points.

This article was written by Nikki Ekstein from Bloomberg and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to [email protected].

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