We Stand with Atlanta's Black Arts Community

The Center for Civic Innovations is proud to stand in strong alliance with Atlanta's Black arts community. We cannot talk about art in Atlanta without organizations like TILA Studios, Soul Food Cypher, Fahamu Pecou, and ADAMA. They are #dointhework. Organizations like ours wouldn't exist without partners like them. Investing in Black artists in Atlanta must be a priority for our city.

On June 4th, a group of Black artist leaders sent a letter to the Community Foundation in response to the omission of black arts groups from $580,000 in Arts fund grantmaking. The letter was signed by 30+ community organizations. Thanks to some targeted advocacy, the Foundation is reevaluating its application process for the remaining funds in the 2020 cycle according to their post dated May 29th.

An excerpt from the letter:

We can fundamentally agree that systemic racism and discrimination is the fabric of America. At times it is subtle and at other times it’s glaring, but the pain rooted in this anti-Blackness is a constant. As evident by the protests in our cities this past weekend, Black people as a community and the Americans who love and support them are tired of this pain. We are tired of the racism, the oppression, the exploitation, the violence against Black bodies and the omission of Black voices. Furthermore, the global pandemic has intensified this fatigue when as a nation we witness that of the more than 100,000 lives lost to the devastating coronavirus, a disproportionate number of those deaths are of Black lives - lives that have been lost specifically because of the vulnerability that social and economic disenfranchisement has created in Black communities.

It is in this exhaustion and anger and the spirit of restoration and justice that we, the members of Metro Atlanta’s Black arts community, have brought to your attention the grave omission of Black organizations from your first round of $580,000 of emergency funding from the Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta.

Read the letter in full, here.

The Foundation is also being invited to a closed meeting with Metro Atlanta’s Black arts community for the week of June 8th. They are also asking that you complete this survey on the state of Black arts in Atlanta. If you would like your organization added to this letter or if you’d like to participate in the Zoom conversation, please email Heather Infantry at heather@generatorcity.org.