A communication from Councillor Mallon, transmitting notes of the meeting of the Mayor's Arts Task Force

SUBJECT: Submission - Arts Task Force Meeting Notes

Please place the attached notes from the second meeting of the Mayor’s Arts Task Force on the City Council Agenda as “Communications and Reports from Other City Officials” for the November 19th meeting. I am also attaching supporting documents from the November 8th meeting, which were given as supplemental materials to both members of the Task Force and members of the public who attended and ask that they be included in the communication as well.

Thank you,

Councillor Alanna Mallon

Mayor’s Arts Task Force - Meeting Notes

Second Meeting of the Mayor’s Arts Task Force

Date: November 8th, 2018

Location: Spaceus Harvard Square, 20 Brattle St.

Meeting Start: 5:39PM

Meeting Adjourned: 7:34PM

In attendance as members of the Mayor’s Task Force were: Alanna Mallon, Chair; Liana

Ascolese, Aide to Councillor Mallon and Executive Assistant to the Task Force; Jero Nesson, Founder of Artspace; Ellen Shakespear, co-founder of Spaceus; Peter DiMuro, Executive

Director of the Dance Complex; Ben Simon, EMF musician; Lisa Peterson, Deputy City

Manager; Christopher Hope, co-founder of The Loop Lab; Eryn Johnson, Executive Director of the Community Art Center; Geeta Pradhan, President and CEO of the Cambridge Community Foundation; David De Celis, Public Arts Commission; Jason Weeks, Executive Director of the Cambridge Arts Council; Olivia D’Ambrosio, Bridge Repertory Theater; Kelly Sherman, visual artist; Martha McKenna, Director of the Creative Commons at Lesley University; and James Pierre, artist.

Invited as a guest speaker was Malia Lazu from the Urban Labs to facilitate an equity, inclusion, and anti-bias training.

Members of the public in attendance were: Catherine Siller, Robert Goss, Alex Lemski, Joe

Stohlman, Jesse Moore, Liz Walker, Pat Magruder, Hannah Smith, Jannie Kitchen, Laura

Jasinski, Michelle Douglas, Deidre Tao, Matt Coogan, Beryl Lipton, Jon Glancy, and Nili Ohayon.

To respect the importance of having an open, honest, and productive conversation about equity, diversity, inclusion, and bias, these notes focus on concepts and general discussion only and quotes are not attributed directly to any individual other than Councillor Mallon during her opening and closing remarks and the facilitator, Malia Lazu.

Materials related to this meeting are attached.

Councillor Mallon called the meeting to order at 5:39 and made an opening statement. She thanked Task Force member Ellen Shakespear and her co-founder, Stephanie Lee, for the use of this space, which is an amazing space for artists to create and sell their work. Spaceus in Harvard Square is a pop up open until the middle of January. She stated the importance of having a shared common language while working on arts issues and policy.

Councillor Mallon referenced a New York Times article that was handed out to all members of the Task Force, citing it as a good example of why we are having this conversation tonight, and how ballet dancers and their ballet slippers are illustrative of bias in the arts. Ballet dancers have had pink slippers because they match the skin color of a “typical” ballet dancer. She cited quotes from the article about the struggles of being a dancer of color.

Many of them have been dying their slippers for their whole careers because ‘they didn’t know any different.’ The largest manufacturer of ballet slippers is now going to start selling two more colors. It highlights the important question of who belongs in

the ballet world? Who owns this space and who can walk the stage? We need to think about the simply things that we often take for granted if we have privilege. What are the places where people just don’t know any different and have not thought about these things?

Councillor Mallon read a short bio introducing Ms. Lazu, tonight’s facilitator: With over two decades of experience building diverse culture in the political and civic space, Ms. Lazu felt the diversity and inclusion industry was in need of disruption in the private sector. While at MIT, Ms.

Lazu launched a space for diversity research and development called The Urban Labs, which has emerged as a boutique multi-cultural agency helping corporations and institutions be more effective in their diversity and inclusion efforts. Over the last few years, Ms. Lazu has experimented in attacking ongoing diversity problems, including working with the City of Boston in the startup space, creating Accelerate Boston, an accelerator for creatives.

In its first five years, Accelerate Boston helped launch 20+ minority businesses and continues to support minority entrepreneurs in their search for investment capital.

Ms. Lazu opened by stating that it was great to see that Cambridge is taking on an arts task force and that race and equity are being considered upfront instead of as an after the fact. She asked everyone to introduce themselves and use one word to describe their goals for the task force. Words used included: Afrofuturism, community, inspiration, creativity, affordability, vulnerability, access, learning, curating life, making a difference, peace, and diversity.

Ms. Lazu stated the big question is “what does diversity mean for the arts task force? What traditions are we upholding, especially in art, which is so subjective?” We need to start a conversation about bias, so we can talk with each other in a comfortable way if bias is creeping up.

Ms. Lazu went over ground rules to keep the discussion productive and open.

Ms. Lazu used the metaphor of the elephant and the giraffe to illustrate the ways in which unintentional bias can present itself.

Ms. Lazu outlined different types of biases and asked Task Force members to present situations in which each type of bias occurs in the art world. The first type is institutional bias: policies and practices of institutions that, intentionally or not, produce outcomes that chronically favor, or put racial or other minority groups at a disadvantage.

The task force members gave examples of institutional bias in the art world, such as: -Whose art gets chosen to be showcased -Applications that rely on technological skills and English language proficiency -What different venues allow to be performed and displayed -Certain types of art like graffiti being branded as “not art” -Opportunities available through only social networks -Who and what can get a permit from the City

Ms. Lazu asked the group what it takes to be an artist. Many don’t make a lot of money, so this pushes people out before they can ever even break into the field. She brought up the discussion

of “outsider art” on an episode of Jim and Marjorie on NPR, and why certain people or types of art were considered “outsiders” and not just “art.” She stated it’s important to ask questions like what does community art mean? Who is in power? Does this truly represent the community? We need to consider the importance of terminology and the words we use to discuss certain types of art.