Please join us in celebrating the launch of our first ever ARTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE FELLOWSHIP! We have welcomed 4 artist fellows: Elena House-Hay, Saleem Hue Penny, Taria Person, and Miguel Lopez. The fellowship is coordinated by Joe Tolbert Jr., Coordinator of Arts, Culture, and Movement Resiliency at PeoplesHub.
We believe that strong movements are made of practices of resistance, restoration, resilience and re-imagination — and that art and culture play an important role in nurturing each of these.
Our Arts & Social Justice Fellowship serves to:
- Fund marginalized artists who have limited access to mainstream art circles and/or traditional means of funding their projects;
- Spread the methodology of Cultural Organizing to artists who work at the intersections of arts, culture and social justice;
- Connect artists with each other to spark new collaborations and ideas for cultural organizing in their communities;
- Support the integration of cultural work into our model of Popular Education; and
- Bring more visual art, poetry, music, dance and other art forms into PeoplesHub’s offerings & online presence.
The artist fellows will be joining us for two cohorts, in Spring (March-June) and in the Fall (August-November). Keep an eye out for a public offering on Cultural Organizing with our artist fellows in late April. And be sure to check out our social media as we begin to introduce each of our artist fellows next week!
artwork by danya zituni @qamarprints
[Image Description: An illustration featuring a brown fist-shaped tree in the center that is growing out of a green hilly field grasping two art-making tools, a pencil and paintbrush. Two small cop cartoons in black & white on either side of the tree cower in fear. Above is an orange to yellow sunset with many thin golden beams swirling across the image. Atop title says “Peopleshub Arts & Social Justice Fellowship” and below “Artists, Elena House-Hay, Saleem Hue Penny, Taria Person, Miguel Lopez”.]
Sign Up for Offerings:
- Save our upcoming Spring dates for: Community Care Clinics for Disabled & Chronically Ill Movement Folks! There is a particular reality around what it means to be disabled and engaged in movement and social justice work — please join us in creating this community care peer support space. Sign up here!
artwork featured by Jonathan Soren Davidson for Disabled And Here
[Image Description: Light purple background with white text that reads “Save the Date for Community Care Clinics for Chronically Ill & Disabled Movement Folks”. Dates below are Tuesday March 8th, 7-9PM ET / Monday March 21st, 3-5PM ET / Tuesday April 5th, 7-9PM ET / Monday April 18th, 3-5PM ET. An illustration in the bottom half features a group of disabled queer Black folks talking and laughing at a sleepover, across two large beds. On the left, two friends sit on one bed and paint each other’s nails. On the right, four people lounge on a bed: one person braids another’s hair while the third friend wearing a C-PAP mask laughs, and the fourth person looks up from their book.]
- Register for Highlander Center’s March workshops on Community Organizing & From Racial Capitalism to Solidarity Economy! As part of Highlander’s “Threads” monthly workshop series that PeoplesHub is supporting, which focuses on grassroots community organizing for transformation, combining popular education methodologies with campaigns to demand a better world and to build real community-based alternatives. Sign up here for March 5th & here for March 31st!
[Image Description: A gold textured background with large swirls of purple, pink and blue in the middle, and a photo of the Highlander Center on top. The title in Black and white says: “Upcoming Sessions” with event information underneath “March 5th, 10a-12p ET, Community Organizing bit.ly/threadswkshp2” and “March 31st, 7p-9p ET, From Racial Capitalism to Solidarity Economy, bit.ly/threadswkshp3”. Also visible on top right is “The struggle for liberation implicates everyone”. A small golden circle in the top left with white text says “Threads: Weaving 90 Years of Resistance”].
Welcoming New Staff:
- Please join us in welcoming Rachel Plattus to PeoplesHub as our new Solidarity Economy Program Coordinator!
Rachel (she/her) lives on Massachusett land in Cambridge, MA. She uses facilitation, popular education, ritual, and art to hold open the space for healing and transformation in our communities. She has been organizing for solidarity economies for a decade, and has been a trainer at PeoplesHub since we started. She's so excited to move into this role supporting PeoplesHub's solidarity economy strategy!
[Image description: A photo of Rachel smiling while wearing black sunglasses and rocking a short buzz cut, in an open field with mountains visible underneath the clouds.]
- Please join us in welcoming Ngozi Alston to PeoplesHub as our new Disability Justice Fellow!
Ngozi (she/her) is a Black anarchist, disabled community organizer, crip and death doula. Guided by theorizing within Blackness and disability justice, Ngozi is committed to building capacity and care for Black disabled folks in her community. Presently focused on organizing collectives with survivors and abolitionists, she was a core organizer of the No New Jails NYC campaign and continues to actively fight against jail expansion in NYC.
[Image description: A light yellow background with a folded paper texture, and quote by Ngozi Alston in the center that reads “In becoming a PeoplesHub Disability Justice Fellow, I am looking forward to building capacity with and for Black disabled folks in the margins of movement spaces. I hope that, in part, this role will continue to encourage non-profits and their employees to leverage their access to resources in order to support the growth and well-being of Black disabled queer and trans survivors”. PeoplesHub logo is visible on the top right.]
In Care, Danya | Director of Communications
