Culture/Shift 2018
Sebastian Ruth reports on his recent trip to the Southwest for the Culture/Shift conference: Last week, over 400 Citizen Artists from across the country gathered for a weekend of “cultural healing, resilience, and resistance” at the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture convening, Culture/Shift, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Despite the name, the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture is not a government agency, but rather an act of collective imagination by a group of artists, cultural workers, and activists (i.e., Citizen Artists) from across the country who are committed to creating a culture of empathy, equity, and belonging.
Ashley Frith, CMW’s MusicWorks Network Fellow, and I traveled to Albuquerque to attend Culture/Shift and shared CMW’s deep history of prioritizing education for liberation in a presentation titled Freedom, Equity, and Music: Music Learning as Emancipatory Pedagogy. We began by giving an overview of the ways we bring Brazilian educator Paolo Freire’s philosophies into our practice in order to have students feel a stronger sense of agency over their own learning and a voice in what they learn, highlighting this quote from Freire:
Ashley and I discussed ways that music education can promote freedom and equity through clear intention, thinking about repertoire and methods, and ensuring that students bring themselves fully into the experience for maximum reciprocity. Ashley presented on the project she’ll be sharing as she travels to the MusicWorks Network cohort organizations this year, centered on developing antiracist practice through self-love exercises. It was a rich, exciting convening: full of hope, deep reflection, action, and purpose. As Adam Horowitz, Chief Instigator (all USDAC people get to invent their own titles, and mine on the national cabinet is the Secretary of Music and Society!) called out at the final ceremony: “The USDAC is not about a government agency coming in, it is about our agency coming out!” –Sebastian Ruth
Want to get involved? Join an outpost, become a citizen artist, and download the many awesome resources at USDAC.us
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