Shannon Jackson at Oakland Book Festival
Shannon Jackson, professor at BCNM, moderated "Envisioning Equity in the Arts" a discussion at the Oakland Book Festival. She was joined by Anyka Barber, Dena Beard and Patricia Maloney to discuss the implications of the dual objectives of equity.
From the Oakland Book Festival's website:
For some cultural platforms, equity means fair wages for artists, and for others it means amplifying marginalized voices—but rarely are institutions able to achieve both. What does a holistic approach to equity in the art world look like?
ANKYA BARBER is the founder of Betti Ono, a creative social enterprise and arts space committed to serving marginalized communities. In 2015, she initiated the Oakland Creative Neighborhoods Coalition, a grassroots arts action and advocacy body.
DENA BEARD is the Executive Director of arts venue The Lab, where she inaugurated a new program that aims to give artists a living wage.
PATRICIA MALONEY is the executive director of long-running San Francisco arts organization Southern Exposure. She is also the publisher emeritus of Daily Serving | Art Practical (DSAP).
The Oakland Book Festival was Sunday May 21st at Oakland City Hall. The 2017 theme was "Equality/Inequality." They posed the question of how do people—writers, artists, mothers, day laborers, teachers, intellectuals—create a lifeworld under the inescapable and often debilitating fact of inequality? How do they transcend or at least come to terms with inequality? We’d like to examine the phenomenon of inequality in all its forms and deal with it as an existential, objective reality that impacts race, gender, health, aesthetics, class, and all human relations.
Read more about the event here.