Call & Response Connects Bilingual Communities through Art on Sept. 21st
We invite you to join us for our third Call & Response event on Saturday, September 21st from 3-7pm at Sacred Heart Center (SHC) located at 1420 McDonough Street. Call & Response is a conversation series that rotates to different neighborhoods in Richmond, VA and allows different communities to come together, learn and connect by sharing individual and communal pathways towards healing, equity and justice. This event is a followup to our first Call & Response in March at Spacebomb Studios where participants discussed their perspectives on the history of racism and blackface in the U.S. in relation to #1619to2019 and the 400th year observance of the first enslaved Africans arriving in Jamestown. The second Call & Response took place in June at Canvas as part of I AM HERE, a multimedia expressive space exploring the affects of gun violence on communities in Richmond, Virginia and the U.S.
In September, we are happy to continue a partnership with Sacred Heart Center that began in earnest with a collaboration during “Something’s in the Water,” our January 2019 creative event for National Day of Racial Healing. SHC is the leading organization in Central Virginia providing multifaceted programs, services and support systems for intergenerational Latinx communities. Alfonso Perez Acosta, Art Program Director at Sacred Heart, will lead this Call & Response that explores how we build and sustain a “third space” between Spanish and English speaking communities using visual art as a form of expressive facilitation and dialogue. Alfonso will be joined by Silly Genius, a Weaver in our Narrative Change Collaborative, who is also founder of All City Art Club, a visual art collective working to create historic murals that narrate the experiences of Richmond’s Southside communities.
This is an inclusive space that is open to the public and particularly to youth and families. Through participatory exercises, we will create drawings, murals, and other kinds of visual art within indoor and outdoor spaces at SHC that interrogate how we identify ourselves, define notions of history and community, and chart pathways towards individual and collective healing. The artwork created will be displayed at Sacred Heart Center and can also be taken home as tangible mementos of how we can develop trust across social divides that threaten to separate us and diminish our common humanity.
We will also have food, music as well as loads of great conversation. Join us and bring your community folk to take part in this exciting event!
