Podcast Part 1: Applying Anti-Racist Frameworks in Government Agencies
with Daniel Singh, Lydia Yousief, and Sangreetha Ekambaram
In mid-March, a legal debrief publicized by Daniel Singh, the Executive Director of Metro Arts Nashville was brought to the attention of GIA. The document outlined the ongoing battle between the arts council and the city’s government. When the Metro Council did not pass Metro Arts’ FY 2024 budget, they met to reassess their funding, during which the majority of the council supported their anticipated surplus of $2 million to be dedicated to Thrive artists. The Thrive program seeks to “connect artists and organizations with the community to create investments, cultural connections, and transformations,” and supports many artists of color. Five days following the Supreme Court’s decision barring affirmative action practices or considerations in university admissions, Metro Arts was challenged by Metro Legal that, “their actions violated the Equal Protection Clause, and, therefore, were unconstitutional,” as a result of the race-conscious data and discussion. This led to a revote which resulted in a decision to cut the already promised funding to Thrive program recipients.
In this podcast, GIA program manager Jaime Sharp spoke with Metro Arts Nashville Executive Director Daniel Singh, and two grantees, Lydia Yousief, Elmahaba Center, Director, and Sangeetha Ekambaram, Multidisciplinary artist and Western classical singer. We explore how public funding can continue to center artists of color following the barring of affirmative action practices or considerations in university admissions, the importance of speaking up for your community and acknowledging artist labor, and how funders can hold themselves accountable and maintain awareness of their complicity.
Recorded on March 27, 2024
To listen to the full episode, click here.
Jaime Sharp: Hello everyone and welcome to a podcast by Grantmakers in the Arts, a national member association of private and public arts and culture funders. My name is Jaime Sharp and I'm the program manager here at GIA. I use she/they pronouns and I am located on the unseated territories of the Three Fire Peoples, also known as Chicago, Illinois.
While this is an audio medium, I do want to take a moment and provide a visual description of myself. I am a light-skinned black femme with shoulder-length, dark, curly, natural hair.
Thank you so much for listening in, today. Part one of applying anti-racist frameworks in government agencies features a conversation with myself, Metro Arts Nashville Executive Director, Daniel Singh, and two grantees, Lydia Yousief, and Sangeetha Ekambaram. We explore how public funding can continue to center artists of color following the overturn of affirmative action, the importance of speaking up for your community and acknowledging artists' labor, and how funders can hold themselves accountable and maintain awareness of their own complicity. I hope you enjoy.
Well, hello everyone. I'm so excited for our conversation today. I'd just love to begin with some short introductions. Lydia, do you want to start us off?
Lydia Yousief: Sure. Hello, Jaime. Good morning. My name is Lydia Yousief. I'm the director of Elmahaba Center here in Nashville. We have 12 direct programs and two coalition-based campaigns that we're working on, here.
Jaime Sharp: Awesome. Sangeetha?
Sangeetha Ekambaram: Yes. My name is Sangeetha Ekambaram. I'm an interdisciplinary artist and primarily a singer, based here in Nashville. And bios are interesting because I think it's part of my evolution at the moment, to describe myself, but I'm really interested in the context in which music and art are created, first and foremost, and I'm trying to forge a path that's new and different, along those lines.
Jaime Sharp: Awesome. And then Daniel?
Daniel Singh: Yes, I'm Daniel Singh. I'm the director at Metro Arts in Nashville, lapsed dancer, hoping to get back in the studio soon.
Jaime Sharp: Awesome, awesome. So my first question is for you, actually. So thank you so much for bringing this whole story to the attention of the wider funding community. Listeners can learn more about the specifics of what happened when Metro Arts sought to explicitly center BIPOC artists, in a PDF of the legal brief that we'll have available on our reader website for our audience, with a more detailed article to come. But for our listeners now, can you take us through what happened briefly, essentially between December, 2022 and today?
Daniel Singh: Sure, thank you. So a lot of work happened before December, too. We did a literature review of our previous grant reports. We had a data review of our historical funding for the past 35 years, and then we met with the community through a couple of different Zoom sessions. From there, we looked at research that Grantmakers in the Arts itself had done towards anti-racist work. We looked at other peer government funders in the arts. And then we worked with local artists, 27 artists and arts organizations came in and worked through our current application process. Both Lydia and Sangeetha were on different years of that. And then we got their feedback on how we can simplify the process, how we can make it more equitable. And so I want to be clear that we were still very much in the milk toast, DEIA space. We hadn't quite moved into anti-racism yet, but I knew that that's where I was, and I wanted to try to do what we could in that space.
And so we were really focused on reframing the language, redistributing both resources and power. And the last thing was, how do you work democracy into the processes? Rather than just having a few people with lots of power and connections making decisions, how do we get more folks into the decision-making chain? So that was kind of something we wanted to test out as a hypothesis. If we do this and if we succeed, then we can start moving in the anti-racist space. So we did all that, we presented to the grants committee and then the full commission in December, 2022. And all the changes were accepted except for one or two commissioners not wanting to vote for it.
Following that, we got the funding. We didn't get enough funding, actually, from the outgoing mayor for the amount of grants we had in hand. Not only did we not get enough funding, there was a $2 million ear mark that was set aside for large organizations only to be used for capital spending, meaning that you had to own your property or have a long-term lease. And those kinds of grants typically cut out the BIPOC artists and arts organization. So organizations like Lydia and Sangeetha came together and worked with the council to get that 2 million redirected to Metro Arts, so it wasn't going as ear marks, but was going through a democratic process of funding. So with all of that, we presented scenarios in July to the commission on what they should vote on, and what we thought, what staff thought was the most equitable approach. And that was vetted by our committee on anti-racism and equity, our grants committee, and in the full commission voted on it in July. As soon as that vote happened, there were some commissioners who were unhappy with it because they wanted the status quo to stay in place.
They had alliances to the legacy organizations, which were largely white-led, white-serving patron class organizations. Individual wealthy families had started these organizations and endowed them to get started, but then suddenly these private hobbies became public tax responsibilities, so that's where they wanted to move it back. And so one commissioner raised the question of, was this legal, based on the Harvard higher education affirmative action ruling? And so then legal got on that bandwagon, because most people in power... The commissioner who raised that question was in community with the legal department and in community with the larger organizations and they all mobilized as a cohort and undid everything we'd worked on, in the August vote. And prior to this, we had also done a disparity study, and we didn't do a full disparity study because it didn't have a legal analysis. But other than the legal analysis, everything that a disparity study needs, was in the disparity study.
And the disparity study said that the disparity was so huge in Nashville that it couldn't even be measured. It's not even at the zero to 10 mark. It's like minus this mark. So that's how bad the disparity was between organizations run by or led by artists from the global majority versus artists or arts organizations that are led by white community members and serve white community members. So with all that data, it was really shocking that legal would take that stance, that this was not equitable. The other thing that's really important to note is that even our recommendations in July talked about how the impact might have a benefit for about 40% of BIPOC artists or arts organizations, or the decision in July, which meant 60% were still white artists and arts organizations. So it was not a race-specific decision. Even in this July vote, the majority of the benefit was going or accruing to the white artists and whites organizations, and that was not enough.
So until I got there, we looked at the historic funding and 88% of our budget had been going to organizations with budgets over 500 K, which tend to be white-led, white-serving, typically. And so to move it from 88 to... Well, 12%... 12% was what was going to organizations below 500 K. To move it from 12 to 40, there was so much pushback. And so this is why I want to be clear that we're in the DEIA space and not really in the anti-racist space, because the anti-racist space would be acknowledging the harm of the 35 years and saying, we need to put a stop to this, we need to undo the harm, we need to make reparations for the harm. And we were not doing any of those needed reform. We were doing very, very minute, incremental work.
So then after the August vote happened, artists, again, led by Lydia and Sangeetha and a few others, filed a grievance with Metro Human Relations Commission. It's the commission that is given jurisdiction to oversee financial or other forms of harm that happens in the community. They were trying to get their investigation started, and again, legal intervened and said, "You can't start the investigation. We challenge your jurisdiction. We don't think you can talk to the executive director or the artist." So they put a pause on that, and for three months, nothing happened, no guidance from legal, or any of that. So you see this pattern of legal intervening in places. And so then MHRC was told finally, three months after legal told them to pause, that yes, they can begin this work. And by that time, MHRC had already decided they were going to begin the work anyway, so they did their in-depth analysis and they had an actual legal opinion written, which is what I shared out on LinkedIn, and which you're going to be sharing out with the listeners, too, that defended the July vote and said that anything but the July vote actually opens us up for more lawsuits. So there's a legal opinion supporting us, as opposed to a seven line memo dashed off with no case analysis or previous history attached to it.
And so MHRC gives that report, and again, legal intervenes. They hire a legal team to defend themselves, the legal office. They hire a legal team to defend Metro Arts, without checking in with Metro Arts Commission. And they hire a third legal team to fight me from coming out of FMLA. I was on intermittent FMLA or trying to get on intermittent FMLA. So they've hired three legal teams at this point, to try to stall the process. And then the pressure grew from the artist community and council members thankfully took the lead in this. There was a vacuum of leadership and there was no leadership coming from the administration. And thankfully, the Minority Caucus, the Committee on Public Facilities, Arts, and Culture, and few other committees in the council, took leadership, which I'm really grateful for, and wrote a memo, saying that this really has to be addressed and the funds have to get the artists.
And finally, just last Monday, it was just seven days ago... It's all running together in my mind. Seven days ago, we got a memo from finance, that they were going to give us enough money to make us hold to do the July vote and also keep the status quo in place. So it's not quite a victory for DEIA or even anti-racism. And we're definitely not an anti-racism, but it's not even a victory for DEIA, because we're still maintaining the status quo. We're just letting the artists get what they should have been getting all along. So that's where we are. But they've also put a pause on FY25 funding because of phantom audits and phantom allegations that no one has proved in over five months. But they're pausing future grant distributions that are equitable or anti-racist, for no evident reason that any of us can see, so far. So the battle continues, or the fight continues.
Jaime Sharp: Yeah, for sure. Thank you so much-
Daniel Singh: Sorry, that was so long-winded.
Jaime Sharp: No, no worries. It's important for us to get very specific context, especially because we anticipate as we'll get into a little bit later in our conversation, but this decision around affirmative action, a lot of our funders are going to be up against similar battles. So don't apologize at all. This is your time. So Lydia and Sangeetha, when we're looking now at August, 2023, when you received the news that your funding had been cut as a result of the re-vote, what was your initial reaction and what prompted you to take action? And then also if you want to take a moment and talk about the projects that were slated to be funded, and maybe a little bit more information about the application process in the program that was initially supposed to move forward and then we got back to.
Lydia Yousief: I'll go. So I've had a very contentious time with Metro Arts for multiple years before Daniel came in, where it was just an uphill battle of, there was clearly a disconnect between our two definitions of what equity was and what equitable funding looked like. And I come from a community, Arabic is the third most spoken language in Tennessee, we have tens of thousands of Arabic-speaking community members in Davidson County in Nashville, and as far as I know, not even one person funded. Whether directly or indirectly. And to me, that was a really horrific statistic. And when I would say that to Metro Arts staff, they would kind of say... Well... It would be a hot potato game of like, oh, well, it's the commission's fault. And then commissioners would say, well, it's the staff's fault, or it's council's fault, because they're not giving enough money for arts funding, and it would just be a full hot potato mess.
And by the time Daniel came around, I was really, really over it. And I was very much like, I don't want anything to do with this racist institution. We have always funded ourselves, we have always found alternatives, I am done. And I gave it one last chance because of a staff member at Metro Arts that I really appreciate. He was like, "We have a new director. Just give it one more chance. I know you're tired. One more chance." And from there, when I saw there was actually an emphasis on equity, and when I opened up the grants application... We had never applied for any of our arts projects or our arts programming or any of our artists to be funded through Metro Arts ever. So 2023 was the first year I opened up that application and I said, oh, okay, things are changing and I want to support this change.
And so that was the first time we applied to Thrive in 2023. And from there, it was just another uphill battle. It was very much, how dare you think that you all have access to these funds? No matter how much we worked and advocated, no matter how much there was political will within Metro Council to give arts funding, it was definitely, the vibe was, you all don't deserve this fund. This is not for you. Even, I remember Commissioner Mary Ann Bird, who pulled out the scripts on August, 2023, she called Thrive an award, and community members in the crowd were saying, "Award? Our taxes are now awards to us?" How condescending it was to tell us, y'all don't deserve this award money. It should go to these museums and these concert halls.
So, August, 2023 was a huge moment. I still run through all the little steps because it's such a... And I watched the video multiple times. It's ingrained in my mind, of what happened, because it was definitely the white commissioners versus the commissioners of color, almost on racial lines, who voted to defund and who voted to keep the July vote. It was fascinating. And the white commissioners, there was a break between the two hours of public comments and the vote, and the white commissioners, many of them came up to me after my public comment and were saying things like, "Oh my God, we would've loved..." Well, they didn't say would've. They said, "We should be funding organizations like yours." And I said, "You have that opportunity right now. I applied for Thrive. Fully fund me." And they said, "You're doing such great work. I'd love to stay connected. Add me to your newsletter. I'd love to see your work." All this flowery language about our arts programming. And then not even one hour later, they defunded us.
And one commissioner in particular, I had to get up, because I physically could not be in that room. The commission chair, Matia Powell at the time, she resigned after this vote, was telling them, "Now is the time for discussion, now you can discuss," because there was something in the waters between the commissioners at that time. And she also made it very clear that voting to defund was inequitable. Daniel also mentioned multiple times that this is inequitable, just so that it's clear and on the record. And then Commissioner Leah Love also said, "Can y'all name on the record, why we are resending this vote?" So everything was very clear. There was no confusion about what was going on and who was voting what.
And so I physically had to get up after the vote, because you can imagine two hours of mostly people of color coming in and saying, "This is what this funding means to me," and, "This is the first time I've ever gotten Metro Arts funding," and, "This is monumental," and, "This is transformative." And then white people saying, "Oh, well, I feel bad," and then defunding us. So I got up and I went outside and there was a white commissioner who approached me and she said, "I'm so sorry." And then paused and waited.
And that whole interaction, this was from 9:00 AM, I probably left around 3:00 PM, of them, especially the white commissioners, not understanding the harm, and thinking that they can finagle their way out of this and say, well, Metro Legal. And then we got the whole hot potato mess again. And then Metro Legal saying commission, and then commission saying, well, the staff, and then... Everybody not wanting to take accountability for what happened. And that's what really led us and for me to connect with other artists and say, we need to organize against this, because this is going to continually be like, we're going, every single year we're going to be harmed and we're going to be told there's no way to be accountable for that harm. Enough is enough. And we made sure that in the complaint, that we were very direct, that this wasn't just about this round of funding, but this was about systemic issues in Metro Arts. Yeah, so I'll pass it to Sangeetha.
Sangeetha Ekambaram: Yeah, August last year, it was interesting, I had applied for Thrive. This was my second time. And so my first experience was with the previous year, and I was able to do a project or two, but for my organization, I was really looking for something that could be sustainable, long-term, so I can actually start building something. And myself, like other independent artists, very much in the same situation, because we do these one-off projects, but we really want to start building community within artists so that we can be self-sustainable, moving forward, and also be able to direct our own projects and really be connected to community through our art. And so, really, I kind of stumbled into this, simply because I had applied, and that summer, I was also part of the grant editing process. So I got to understand a little bit of the internal motivations and what Metro Arts was trying to do, moving forward.
But during that time, in the middle of the summer, by July, we got the email that we were going to be fully funded, and we were supposed to actually hear about that a little bit before, so I could already get a sense that there were things happening behind the scenes to make this happen. We get that email we're being fully funded. It was phenomenal. I was like, wow, Daniel and his staff did this thing, which is incredible. And then we heard... Then it was just silence. Then we'd get some information. And so I started thinking, wow, I think there has to be something going on, behind the scenes. You just sense it, right? Because we get information that maybe the decision... They're going to have to talk about it internally to come to the best solution, and all this language, you're like, okay, there's some tension.
So I was chatting with Lydia, too, during this time, and I was like, okay, we got to show up to this August meeting. Because I was like, I want to see and hear what's going on. I want to get a perspective. So for me, that was the first time, and it was... Just sitting through those public comments, there was such a clear distinction between all white men getting up, leading these organizations, talking against this move towards equity, while at the same time trying to argue that their organizations hire BIPOC and they do all this work. So it's like, okay, so you pick and choose when DEI is going to work for you. And then all these artists of color got up to talk about how impactful... Using storytelling, talking about their personal experiences, and just exactly what Lydia said, how impactful this funding is, for them. And I was sitting there and I was like, no one can sit through this, period, and then vote against fully funding Thrive, unless you've already made up your mind to do so or you have been convinced otherwise or you just are against equity, period.
So when I sat through that meeting, I think my blood was boiling, because I was like, this is just an injustice and I want to find out what's going on. And I have to say, Lydia and Christine Hall really spearheaded writing this Title VI complaint to Metro Human Relations. And when Lydia told me about it, I was like, I'm there to support whatever, because something has to be done. I'm not going to sit through that and just not be involved somehow. So I just find that what Lydia and Christina did, just is so incredible. I think it's the first time in history that something like that has been done. I'm not sure. So that's how I got involved in this.
Lydia Yousief: I want to give Sangeetha credit, though, because she was editing and she was supporting... Yeah, this was a full team effort of really, really good writers and people who are very committed and on the ground, and the hours of labor that it took to explain to artists what's going on. Because this was also... Artists assume that government is going to operate as government operates. So a lot of that labor, Sangeetha also carried.
Jaime Sharp: Yeah, that's incredible. Thank you both. So, Daniel, kind of going back to you now, Lydia and Sangeetha both mentioned that especially in this re-vote, it was a lot of white commissioners that were against Thrive. And simultaneously, this was, I believe in early 2024, I found a quote online, that you said the racist behavior of the metro government has affected your mental health and you had taken a leave of absence for this. If you're comfortable sharing the challenges that you face additionally as a philanthropist involved in DEI and anti-racist work, but also as just a person of color leading in a very white field. And what type of support are you not seeing or would you like to see from your white colleagues?
Daniel Singh:
Yeah, thank you for that question. I want to mention something tactical about what the commissioners used as a wedge to get their vote in August, so that others who are listening to it, policymakers, don't make the mistake I made. We made a commitment that we would keep FY 24's grant level for all organizations so there's no harm. So this was a learning moment for me, and this was in the first [inaudible 00:25:07] cycle, and I remember Lydia and Christine Hall turning to me and saying, "What about the harm that's been happening for 35 years? You're still..." So even for me, I'm internalizing these oppressive dialogues. And so I had made that commitment by mistake. I shouldn't have made any commitments, because the commitment is to anti-racism and not to uphold status quo. And I made that commitment. But since then, we had the disparity study that came out.
So I can give the example of Covid, the pandemic. People made a commitment and there was new information, you change your decision, right? At first, they said, "You don't need masks. Only doctors need to wear masks." Then they said, "Everyone needs to wear a mask. Everyone needs to wear a mask and be at least six feet away." And then they were like, even that's not good enough, just stay at home. So there was changing decision-making as we got new information. So I think I made a mistake in committing to keeping the funding levels the same for current applicants, which I shouldn't have committed to. And I also should have really stood on the fact that there's new information now. And yes, we're making new decisions based on the new information. So that's a tag to what mistake I made in July and August.
But for me, what support could look like, I still have nightmares of what happened between July and August, and since then on. I literally wake up as if I'm in the commission meeting and I've forgotten my notes or I didn't bring the person I needed to have there for whatever reason. I still have nightmares about it over and over because ultimately I still feel like I failed the artist. It's my job, I'm getting a big salary to be here to move this anti-racist work, and I failed them. And so it sits very heavily on me that I failed them.
And I should credit Justin Lang, in this moment. He's been also kind of our guardian angel in the background, helping us think through this, because his framework, his work in anti-racism in the arts, showing how the arts have been bedfellows with racism, colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, has been really eye-opening for me. And when you asked for the bio today, I had to say, well, I don't have an updated bio. I have changed as a person through this process, and I don't have a bio that reflects that, yet. So I still have the bio from two years ago, so I need to take some time and think through that. And then Dana Parsons was helping us as a facilitator, because there's so much happening, a lot of historical data review, a lot of stakeholders we have to convince, the grant editing panel, the commission, the grants committee, council members, mayor. So I needed all the support I could get. And so I was bringing those folks in to help.
And I also want to say that it was not just the white community members that need to stand up and support me. I need to have the POC in the room stand up and support me too, because there's so much internalized racism. There's so many people saying to me on my staff, even now, "Well, if I can get six inches and keep it, I'd rather take that than ask for six feet." And I'm like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. The six feet is not guaranteed to anyone. This is taxpayer funding and everyone has a democratic pass to it. And the ones who are aligned with the values of anti-racism and equity, we have a committee on anti-racism and equity, they are the ones who get it." So even staff currently have internalized racism, internalized capitalism, internalized colonialism.
And so I'm trying to move through all of that. So it's not just white people in the community, or white staff, it's people of color as well. And so for me, I don't know where to start. So it's this intermix of capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, racism, all showing itself. And for me, we are working within the imperatives of the state, and money is what drives everything. And there's money in elections. So even though we have progressive candidates, they have to have donors to help them get elected, then they become beholden to the donors, then they don't show up for us. Because we don't have the $10,000 checks to write for them. So there's a vacuum in the elected officials that will say that we need to figure out how we can address, while working on a capitalist framework. I don't know how we do that. And this is why we need people like Justin Lang, who's helping us think through some of that approaches.
And then the systemic failures for me is that the DEIA office, right now is under the finance office. The finance director helped restructure the symphony from bankruptcy in 2013, and then he was also the one who called for an audit while sitting on the audit committee and not declaring his conflict of interest that he has helped restore an organization that was going through bankruptcy and therefore would have potentially a conflict of interest. His wife is still on the board of another organization that would be adversely affected if he took an anti-racist approach. So, clear and direct conflicts of interest. And then the DEIA office is under him. So how is that person in the DEIA office going to willingly come out and support me?
When I put out the July recommendations, staff in the DEIA office told me this is what anti-racism looks like in practice. And I said, "Thank you. Will you come and say that in a public comment or as part of the meeting?" And they said, "No, we don't feel comfortable saying that." So there's so much fear among the staff in the DEIA office, who look at numbers and look at how we can move in the right direction, that even though they were willing to say this to me in private, they were not willing to come out and say that in a public government meeting, and this was not even when the current director was there, but now that the current director is there, there's even more a climate of fear. The procurement director had agreed to let me use the procurement office's disparity study in November of 2023. In February of 2024, she withdrew that offer and said I have to do my own, which is going to cost me $150,000 to $200,000.
So again, the procurement officer sits under the finance officer, and these are people of color. The finance officer is a white man, but the procurement director is a person of color. The DEIA officer is a person of color. But they're hamstrung or sabotaged from doing their anti-racist work because they report to a white director. So then, in a way, they get co-opted into this framework. And so all of those things are hard to figure out. What can I ask for support? And I was also trying to ask myself, why are they so worried about a piddly $5 million office? Why do they care? They can just give us the money and be out of this with no hassles. Then I had to think a little deeper, and I had to think about what Reverend Davie Tucker said about this investigation, too. He said, if this memo that came to Metro Arts was really valid, it should have been sent to all 55 agencies. It was not. So if it's a legal opinion, and if this is how we should do business as metro government, it should have been sent to all agencies. They didn't.
And so then I was like, well, what does that mean? Why are they fighting us? If they admit harm in Metro Arts, then it means they've been doing this harmful practice in the 55 other agencies. That is why Metro Legal is arming up and fighting so hard against admitting any wrongdoing, even though there's a legal opinion that says there is harm-doing. So I've had to hire my own lawyer to help me. If you look at the search engine optimization, somehow all the negative articles are floating up much further than the good work we've done, the work that Lydia, Sangeetha, and others in arts equity are doing, don't show up in search engines if you search for it.
So this is the way that the system is kind of coming together, colluding together and isolating us, and they're preventing the changes that we might implement so that other departments don't go down this road. And so, what does support look like, in this moment? I don't know. Another job? Or survival? I'm a single parent to twins, and I have to figure out how to make the paychecks and keep them in school, put the food on the table, and I don't know what support looks like, and I don't know what to ask from white or BIPOC colleagues, other than to really understand where you are complicit. I am complicit. I'm saying this of myself. I'm complicit in this framework, and that's why I said I feel like I've failed the artist over and over again, and sometimes it brings tears to my eyes to even, just to sit with that, that I've been earning this big salary and I haven't moved the needle at all.
I was trying to make incremental changes, and even that got shot down, and now we get [inaudible 00:33:45] victory where we got the money we asked for, but they're pausing next year's grants. So there's never really a true victory. So I don't know what support looks like. I hope someone in the field can tell me what that might look like, so that it's not just something that becomes my burden again. I want to put it back on the white and BIPOC colleagues who are working in this field, and say, "Tell me how you can support me, so I'm not doing this work alone."
Jaime Sharp: Thank you again to Daniel Singh, Lydia Yousief, and Sangeetha Ekambaram. I highly encourage you to check out part two of this conversation, now available on the GIA reader site. Thank you for listening to the Grantmakers in the Arts podcast. If you have any feedback about today's episode or the podcast in general, please contact me at jaime@giarts.org. That's Jaime, J-A-I-M-E at G-I-A-R-T-S.org. Or visit our website www.giarts.org. Be sure to check out the other episodes of our podcast on reader.giarts.org and find us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, at Grantmakers in the Arts. Thank you again for listening.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Lydia Yousief is the founder and director of Elmahaba Center since June 2019. After graduating with her master’s from the Center of Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago, Lydia returned to her hometown, Nashville, to support Arabic-speaking families in their pursuits of economic stability and cultural revival. By training, she’s an ethnographer and storyteller.
For Sangeetha, music and art are most meaningful within the context of community, rituals, and the parties that contain and celebrate it. In her work, she is most interested in creating and participating in communal spaces where these activities occur on regular basis. She considers herself fortunate to have an interdisciplinary and multicultural background that has led her to a variety of rich projects and collaborative relationships. Recent performances in Nashville include: producing and performing as both singer and dancer in an original adaptation of Ravel’s “Shéhérazade”, “Imagining Scheherazade in Exile” in collaboration with Reza Filsoofi, Jennifer McGuire, Sally Bebawy, Geeti Shrazi Mahajan, and Becca Hoback, in Daniel Arite’s “Fabric of Sound” with multi-cultural musicians, and “Peripheral Convergence” with Joi Ware and other celebrated local artists for OZ Arts Brave New Works Lab, and “Fuego Flamenco Cante” with renown San Antonio-based singer, Chayito Champion. In more traditional western classical repertoire, Sangeetha has performed several solo and collaborative concerts with such artists as Jennifer McGuire and Alessandra Volpi. Outside of Nashville, Sangeetha recently performed with the New York Chamber Music Festival and Metropolitan Opera Guild, and collaborated with such artists as Craig Ketter and Anthony Gian diTommasso. In her spare time, she loves to keep singing, dancing, moving, spending time with people and staring into the abyss of possibility.
