Black Arts Funding In 2023
with Rasu Jilani and Anthony Simmons
Recorded December 5, 2023
Grantmakers in the Arts hosted the first GIA Black Arts Funding Summit in December 2022. This virtual gathering of 113 artists, arts administrators, and funders allowed attendees to acknowledge and understand the long histories of exclusion, disenfranchisement, and disendowing in the philanthropic sector. The event featured Black artists and funders who spoke to personal and professional experiences and shared strategies and tips for reconciling harm.
One year later, we are continuing the conversation with two funders and elevating new considerations–Rasu Jilani, executive director of Brooklyn Arts Council, and Anthony Simmons, senior director of Institutional Partnerships, Resilia, who join us to share their thoughts on what’s next for Black arts funding and what that means for equity and self-determination.
To listen to the full episode, click here.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Welcome to a podcast by Grantmakers in the Arts, a national membership association of public and private arts and culture funders. I'm Sherylynn Sealy, GIA's senior program manager. In December 2022, here at Grantmakers in the Arts, we hosted our very first Black Arts Funding Summit. This virtual gathering of 113 artists, arts administrators, and funders was an opportunity to acknowledge and understand the long histories of exclusion, disenfranchisement, and disendowing in the philanthropic sector.
The event featured Black artists and funders who spoke to both personal and professional experiences and also shared strategies and tips for reconciling harm. One year later, while we see the efforts of organizations like Borealis' Black-Led Movement Fund, Pittsburgh Foundation's Advancing Black Arts Fund, and so many more like it, we are still grappling with some questions that we want to keep investigating. To continue this dialogue and to add more perspective from some of the most brilliant in the field, we are glad to have Rasu Jilani, Executive Director of the Brooklyn Arts Council, and Anthony Simmons, Senior Director of Institutional Partnerships at Resilia. Thank you both so much for joining us.
Rasu Jilani:
Hello, hello, hello.
Anthony Simmons:
Thank you for asking.
Rasu Jilani:
Yeah, thank you for the invitation.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Of course. Before we dive into the conversation, I want us to take some time to learn about who you are. Let's kick off with you, Tony.
Anthony Simmons:
Yeah. Sherylynn, thank you so much. Tony Simmons, as you said, the Senior Director of Institutional Partnerships at Resilia, but I'd be remiss if I did not say Board Chair of Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy, just because of that role that we play. Thank you for the invitation.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Of course.
Anthony Simmons:
I think as both someone who has been in the philanthropic sector for almost two decades, as well as a baby born on Cedric Avenue, 1600 to be exact, let me just point that out, I've certainly come to the philanthropic sector with not just the bumps and bruises of being a Black child in New York City and having to navigate the nonprofit space just for education, but also as someone who has been DJ-ing since 1989-
Sherylynn Sealy:
That's right.
Anthony Simmons:
... and has had the opportunity to work in both college radio, the music industry. The list of folks I have worked with is pretty significant, from the Fugees to Wordsworth to [inaudible 00:02:35] Show. I have been the tour DJ eating terrible food out on the road, but I've also experienced the under-resourcing of Black arts in particular, and whether that is on the for-profit side when it comes to the music industry and how it is extracted from our communities for decades, and then certainly on the philanthropic side where, of course, particularly Black arts has historically been under-resourced for it. Thank you for inviting me into the conversation.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Of course. Thank you so much for that. I'll kick it over to you, Rasu. Let us know who you are.
Rasu Jilani:
Who I are and what I be. I am Rasu Jilani. I am a kid born in the Caribbean, raised in South Jamaica, Queens, yes, and then migrated over to Brooklyn after college and never turned back. I developed this really deep affinity for Brooklyn, specifically Bed-Stuy, and I am now privileged to serve as the Executive Director of the Brooklyn Arts Council, serving as the first Black male leadership council of 57 years, which is weird and strange to say out loud. I look at it as a seat of service, and always thinking about the younger version of myself and my peers who did not have access to art being in the edges of New York City, whether that be as far out as South Jamaica, Queens or Canarsie in Brooklyn, Flatlands, Brownsville, Coney Island, Sunset Park, which are areas that often goes beyond the reach of the institutions.
I call it the cultural institutional blind spots because there is this notion of the institutions create arts, they do not create artists. These same places that I named are the creators of art and culture. They may not have the institutions to preserve them. My background is in community organizing, cultural production, curating, which has always been quite a controversial term to use because curation usually have this kind of monolithic or even binary definition in the arts as someone who's usually curating in museums or have attended a certain level of education and has co-opted the Latin root word of caring, caring for or to take care of, and who takes care of communities more so than cultural stewards, than community organizers, than artists and journalists? Who take care of the culture more than them? So one of the things I look at is how we can be curators beyond objects and things, how we can be curators of people, communities, and culture. That's who I am.
Sherylynn Sealy:
That's great. Thank you so much for that, both of you. Like I said, some of the most brilliant we have here on our podcast today. So it's a delight to have both of you. So in our past 2022 summit, we talked about so many different, I guess, entry points into the conversation about funding Black art, what it means and what it can mean, speaking from the perspective of the funder, if the funder is Black and has that lens and is thinking about what does that mean as I fund Black art and also the artist. What does that mean? Does it mean that I am Black and I'm an artist? Does it mean that I am Black and I'm an artist and I am practicing art that historically has ties to the motherland? What does that actually mean? There's a lot to talk about in that conversation, so I'm going to keep it very broad for this first question. What does it mean to fund Black art and/or a Black artist and also go into Black arts organization?
Rasu Jilani:
Yeah, I think this is a really good question, but it's also a controversial one because I think the art and cultural sector is still not comfortable with the immersion of blackness. We're willing to fund moments of blackness, we're willing to fund an initiative, but to deeply go into the phenomenon of culture and to look at the disparities and fund from that perspective, meaning that if you get a new leader of an institution, how are we making sure they're secured with funding for years to come and not having them jump through hoops? How we have value around the culture, the person, as much as we do the product. I think there is a sentiment that we value the outputs more than we value the people and practice and culture, and that is the extractive practice is that we can take the culture, use the vernacular, use the aesthetics, dress up Black, but not value the people.
I think that is a problem. There is a inherent lack of value around the culture by way of looking at the investment of the culture. So I've been changing my language from funding or donations or even charity language to investment because investment in one capacity means the return. There's a returns attached to it, that's a more capitalistic standpoint, but investment in an outcome, investment in the thrivability and longevity of a people, culture or practice. I think about that changing the language, calls for a different type of energy. So as I think about the funding of Black art specifically, I just came back from Basel. Black art was everywhere, and there's this interesting phenomenon of the Black art, but I always have to question is this tokenism? Is this a moment of it's going to come and then it's going to go and then we're back to devaluating it.
I also think about Black Lives matter, how all of these smaller Black institutions got all this money dumped into them, and then after that moment passed, it's like we ran out of money and we know these foundations, we know America does not run out of money. We're the richest nation in the history of nations. How do we run out of money? How do we not have enough? I think about that just as a more contextual reflection on the investment of Black art or Black artists or Black leadership or Black institutions specifically. I think there is this inherent uncomfortability with blackness. There still is, and until we really address that, I think the behavior won't change.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Sure. Thanks for that, Rasu.
Anthony Simmons:
Over here, I'm trying to, okay, so how many dots can be connected with what brother Rasu just said? I want to go back to something Sherylynn that you had actually mentioned at the top, and that was an aspect of last year's gathering around reconciling harm. So when I think of funding blackness, we often don't take into account the level of extraction that has happened in the past, that level of harm that's been developed for so many decades and generations. So when I think of how you fund any community that has been denied opportunity structurally, legally, that that funding has to take into consideration the history of it. So one, when we think about funding, oftentimes our folks in community get funded for the project and not for the cause.
Typically, the funding goes to individuals and not the community nor the practice itself, and far too often we will see Black leadership, whether it's nonprofit arts or even for-profit arts, once they leave that institution, so does that capital because far too often we, again, place the value in Black individuals and not the Black community itself. So when I think about funding Black arts funding Black artists, it should, and again, want to lift up what Rasu said, that these are businesses, right? There is a misconception or misperception that somehow the arts is just for the love of it, but how much money does hip hop bring in on an annual globally? Yet we still don't see stability even within certainly that space.
So when I think about what it means to fund Black art, Black artists, one, a focus on the Black community itself and frankly supporting Black artists who are themselves entrepreneurs, that this whole sense of starving artists can go kick rocks with that because our people take a lot of time, personal time, personal energy and put it into that, and they do expect a return on their own sweat equity and that investment. Thank you, Rasu, too, for referencing, I call it the funderilla roller coaster of sort of Black support that there needs to be this moment in time, a flash point of, okay, let's pump a whole bunch of dollars in, and that's when the roller coaster goes up.
Then a year or two afterwards, folks get kind of settled back into the normal practice, then it goes back down, and then we have these conversations again around how come there's no support? Where's the funding at? So again, when I think about the funding itself, it's got to be consistent and it's got to be intergenerational. It can't just be-
Rasu Jilani:
Absolutely.
Anthony Simmons:
...Overnight and then, okay, cool, we got this and now let's be cool to the next young Black man gets shot by the cops, or some other sort of flash point that happens that all of a sudden folks get galvanized for a moment in time.
Rasu Jilani:
Yeah, I'd like to respond to two things Tony said. One, I think this moment of we have to address this idea of the savior complex that's inherently built into philanthropy, if we think about funding communities, artists, projects and practices, and by way of initiatives like DEAI or even land acknowledgement somehow absolves people of the harm that was done before that, it kind of lends itself to the savior complex. Once you acknowledge, once you say the name out loud, or once you do the thing, then you're absolved of the harm. That is a fundamentally problematic positioning. To have initiatives like DEAI to undo malpractice or having land acknowledgement, empty land acknowledgement without acknowledging deep harm, and some of the wealth that was generated from both of those platforms of stealing land and going back to chattel slavery. So acknowledging those two things, it's not enough, and the amount of investment would never catch up to the harm. So it's just acknowledging that.
I think the other part is this idea around funding. I love this idea of funding individuals versus the community, and it's something that we are actually doing at Brooklyn Arts Council is we've identified some impact areas. We look at the historical lack of funding and lack of cultural value historically from the institutions in Sunset Park and Crown, Heights, East New York, Brownsville, even Bed-Stuy to a degree, and how we are highlighting and making these priorities in our grant making. These are areas that we want to see a difference, we want to see a higher impact in. Not impact to go sport around and do somewhat of a self-grandizing showcase of what we're doing, but more so looking at how it impacts what are the projects and what are the institutions or what are the companies that have almost what we call in the business practice a triple bottom line, purpose, profit, and community. So how are they actually impacting the community at large beyond just themselves? So how do we invest in that?
So we are looking at upping our re-granting pipeline in those areas because we want to reward, identify and reward projects, practices, and I'm saying this is explicitly companies, small businesses that usually sits in the nexus, in the shadow area between not receiving traditional funding nor getting bank loans who have a creative practice but serves the community at large. I'm seeing my peers deciding to become LLCs and S-Corps instead of nonprofits, one, because I inherently believe there's enough nonprofits in America, we don't need anymore. Two, it's easier to raise money and generate money... Sorry, it's easier to generate money or raise investors rather than going through the traditional funding pipelines.
Artists are also going to corporations directly to fund projects with less bureaucratic hurdles to get money as well. I just saw that in Basel, how many artists were sponsored by corporations rather than funders. So there is a phenomenon happening that we want to tune into and say, okay, being that we're a re-granting institution, how can we invest in the emerging practice that's happening where artists are kind of hearing left from the nonprofit industrial complex to being more self-sustaining, self-reliant and self-investing.
Sherylynn Sealy:
That's great. Thank you for that both of you. I actually want to lean into two major points that you made and just make some space for a little bit of, I don't want to call it celebration, but acknowledgement of growth in the right direction. So Rasu, actually, both of you, Rasu and Tony, you mentioned a momentary focus for various reasons on Black art, Black artists, Black leadership, funding to individuals and not the community, and there should be a specific and greater emphasis on the practice itself. While we were preparing for this podcast, Rasu, you brought up a shift in leadership in Brooklyn where there are lots of arts organizations that are led by Black leaders, and I think that's something to acknowledge and highlight here, just to show that things are changing and things are moving in the right direction, and that's what we want to see. Do you want to speak to that a little bit more?
Rasu Jilani:
Yeah. I mean, it's something that's interesting to see it not celebrated or going underneath the radar. Why is there not a collective pool funding the collective shift in the Brooklyn cultural corridor in Downtown Brooklyn and Central Brooklyn? So my peers such as Makata to 651, to BAM, to BRIC, BAC, myself to the Prospect Park Alliance to Billie Holiday theater, and I'm missing so much, Recess Art, all of these institutions of Black led. Brooklyn Children's Museum, which is taken over by Atiba. So you have all of a big shift, and again, growing up in New York City, I don't think I've ever seen this. It's totally underneath the radar, and we're all struggling to raise money to meet our GOS where I see some peers who are good, who are good for years. There's no argument for GOS. There's no argument because of the leadership that they inherit.
I think there is a phenomenon of one part of being a Black led organization. There's a complexity of one part being a historically Black led institution. Then there's another piece where it's a Black leader taking over a PWI, predominantly white institution. When that white leadership leaves, oftentimes you'll see funders will leave with them because historically Black leadership may not come from the country club or the golf club or the same private institutions that was raised with money in certain level of financial and wealth privilege where they trust what you're going to do as a leader. So now who's this new face? Who's this new person? I don't trust you. I'm going to take my bank elsewhere.
So there is damage in not acknowledging that when Black leadership takes over PWI, that there's a lack of trust by funders that I don't know who this person is. So the old country club, the old gatekeepers are uncomfortable with the new leadership, the younger leadership, the complexion change, and it's something that needs to be addressed. The gatekeeping and funding is problematic. The changing of the guard needs to be acknowledged because we've been asking for it. We've been asking for emergence. How are you funding emergence? How are you leaning into it? How are you funding shifts? We know that investment is not only by way of values, investment and funding is also confidence. It's a gesture of confidence. So when you don't fund these new leaders, you're saying, I don't have any confidence that you're going to be around much-
Sherylynn Sealy:
Yeah, I don't trust you.
Rasu Jilani:
... longer. I don't trust you.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Yeah, totally.
Rasu Jilani:
That's a problem. So these are the things that needs to be acknowledged, but also that when anything else happens in the cultural sector, it's written about crazy, but again, going back to the inherent devaluation of blackness, this happens, no one talks about it because there's no value. What story do we need to talk about? Black Lives Matter is over.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Yeah. Yeah. That's a great point, Rasu. Tony, did you want to add on?
Anthony Simmons:
Brother Rasu was over here preaching. I sit on four boards of nonprofits that span from public education to Black historical sites, Penn Center down in the Gullah Islands, and what I constantly see is this aspect that Rasu was talking about, that one of the organizations, I won't name it, but one of the organizations has a Black woman now at the helm, and I have watched some funders, not all, but some funders get a little, "Oh, well, I don't know her. I don't know, is she taking the organization in a new direction?" It is like, well, the board makes that decision. So are you suggesting that the board doesn't know what it's doing for that? Another thing too, just as Rasu was talking about, is I don't know if folks don't recognize this, don't understand it or may even disregard it, but the arts are an asset to any community, right?
Sherylynn Sealy:
Yeah.
Anthony Simmons:
Any community. It's an asset.
Sherylynn Sealy:
There's a ton of studies that prove people need [inaudible 00:24:04].
Anthony Simmons:
That is just an aspect of human existence. Doesn't matter what race you are. Arts really is a foundational understanding of what society is and even the aspect of social capital. When we do not fund Black arts in a long-term, sustainable, structural way, then we are stripping an asset. When I watch arts organizations, even some of the ones I participated in as a child all of a sudden close up, there's an internalized aspect for folks who may not understand. It's like, oh, well, were we just not good enough? Was that leader just not good enough? The reality is that that arts organization, that small arts organization just becomes the victim of a funding decision. It's not really based on much. So many of our small arts organizations and Rasu, you know this, they got a budget of like half a million dollars. Probably got a staff of two or three.
I think we all know Black arts leaders that have mortgaged their homes to keep the work sustained because-
Rasu Jilani:
That's right.
Anthony Simmons:
... we know what's significant and long-term damage the loss of arts in our community has. Case in point, as I'm kind of reminded about the New York State Arts Council and their Ghetto Arts Program back in the early 70s. Well, outside of the incredibly stereotypical aspects of that work, I know some folks, some elders that came up in that space, and now they are like the noted elders of arts, but they have struggled. They have literally struggled to keep these going. Again, I'm not going to mention any of the institutions, but we're talking about hallmark institutions across the city. So when the funding dries up either from government funding or from the philanthropic space, we lose something. I think about how hip hop came up. Brothers and sisters had to make it themselves, I mean, literally connecting to a light or lamppost on the street to run electricity through. Yes, I'm talking about Beach Street, y'all, the opening scene. I mean, that's Black survival. That's Black resilience. Where hip hop today in 2023 as opposed to 1975 or '76?
You know what blows my mind? I went home back to 1600 Cedric Avenue for the 50th anniversary celebration block party. It was a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful moment in my life because not only did I see the brothers and sisters that I came up with, I learned how to DJ in that park between 1520 and 1600, but what really struck me was the fact that the city of New York shut down Cedric Avenue in between River Park Powers and the Washington Bridge, which by the way is a service road for the Major Deegan. Shut it down for an entire full day, exhibitions, exhibits. It was crazy, and it was dope. That also sits in one of the poorest congressional districts in this country.
Rasu Jilani:
That's right.
Anthony Simmons:
So for a moment, we had a spotlight. I mean, hell, we had drones flying pictures of [inaudible 00:27:42] and his sister. I mean, it was amazing, but what happened the day after? Everything left.
Rasu Jilani:
Back to usual.
Anthony Simmons:
Everything left. So this is what we contend with. When I think about my time within the music industry of how awful some of the Black artists that we revere, mind you, and again, I won't say names, but some of the Black artists that we revere, I mean, legends have never actually gotten their due. So this notion of Black arts, Black artists has to be seen as an asset. Again, if we're living in an asset framing world, as many folks want to say they are, well then you fund the assets. I mean, can anyone imagine funding all of a sudden stopping for the Kennedy Center? BAM?
Rasu Jilani:
Lincoln Center?
Anthony Simmons:
Can anyone imagine that all of a sudden funding just stops for BAM? No.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Yeah, it's not going to happen.
Anthony Simmons:
No, that's not going to happen, but yet the most trusted arts institutions and artists within our communities just don't get the sustainability that they deserve.
Rasu Jilani:
That's right. I think to add on top of that is you talked earlier about funding communities, and a lot of times funding the art has been correlated to a de-investment of communities. So let's look at Lincoln Center, for example. It sits in a neighborhood that was once a Black and Latino community, or Central Park being in Seneca Village. These are historically Black and latino communities that were disinvested from or invested into an institution to bulldoze them out. So when we look at the communities that, are you serving these impact areas, are you serving these communities, what I often find is the vampiristic institutions will take on a community as a project to get funding, drop a couple of programs and initiatives, get the money, and then move on.
When a "smaller" Black or brown institution is doing work, they want to see it. How are you not doing one-offs? They don't have the funding. It's like a chicken and egg. So you got to keep doing it to get the funding, but we don't ask the same of the bigger institution that's dropping in, parachuting into those same communities and extracting the community's blight and pain and harm in order to swoop in. I'm at the point where there's a few unnamed institutions where they were asked to walk through with some of the organizations I sit on the board of, and I would be, "No, don't do it because they're going to come in, ask how you did it, and then apply it to their own educational community engagement strategy and eat up your funding," and I don't believe in competing for funding, to be honest. I think that's a very scarcity non-state, but when you are scraping to get GOS and have a big institution come and just literally take your business model, that's not okay.
So the disinvestment of communities, by way of investing in larger institutions, which we call cornerstone, and I'm not shitting on them because I go to most of these big institutions as well because they have great programming, but we should also give the same credence to a Weeksville, same credence to a LaunchMap project, the same credence to Caribbean Cultural Center who for some reason can't keep sustainable funding because, what's up with that? That's a legendary historical institution that for some reason can't gain the trust long enough for people to keep funding them. Whereas I know of a lot of institutional heads who are not Black or brown, who have done tremendous harm and keep getting funding. So these are things that I think about a lot. In terms of the art itself, the thing that I think about is how are we investing in our communities and the products and expressions that come out of our communities differently and with a little more urgency.
Anthony Simmons:
I want to be mindful, is that there has been so much, whether it's, as Rasu's talking about, divestment extraction and the like, they're also bright spots, very bright spots.
Rasu Jilani:
It's not all doom and gloom.
Anthony Simmons:
Just as a funder, or, look, I'm still calling myself a recovery program officer, but as a funder, one of the things that I have actually appreciated about the arts funding space is that it has been one of the more forgiving when it comes to your past that we can see opportunities. Even when I think about some of the programs that Citi runs and some of the probation programs and stuff from the past, that they have actually seen the arts as a good way of engaging justice-involved youth as not just a means of giving them something to do, but also giving them a place for expression, that nine times out of 10 we discard particularly male Black youth and female Black youth because they might not comply with some social norms.
The beauty of hip hop, the beauty of jazz is that it takes all. It brings in all. It provides a voice for all that I have seen brothers and sisters that are returning citizens who are brilliant poets, MCs, graphic artists, you name it, find an opportunity. It's not enough. We need to provide more. We need to provide a hell of a lot more for it, but when I think about those sectors that tend to be a little bit more forgiving, tech is certainly one of those to a degree, then I do see that the arts is a great means of escape for our folks, a way to articulate. I mean, again, the reality is the message from Grandmaster Flash, Melle Mel and folks, I don't know if you all know, but was actually despised by most of us at the time that it was released because it talked about a whole bunch of stuff that we didn't want to present music.
We wanted to talk about going to the club and partying and all that other stuff, and so I remember when that song came out, yes, I'm old enough to remember when that song came out, that a lot of it was like, nah, I ain't having it, but you know what was amazing about that song? White people loved it. For years it sat really uncomfortably with me because I'm like so y'all like this, what is it, like Black pain noir piece that comes out? I think in the long run, what that song did for many of us was that it gave us permission to actually talk about the realness. I think we need to see more of that. In particular, when I think about the funding that goes into Black arts, it is incredibly uncomfortable for folks to see these images.
Rasu Jilani:
This is it.
Anthony Simmons:
But it is the truth. If we are to do anything that is sustained, we've got to tell the truth, and therefore, again, Black arts allows that to happen. Whether it is Daughters of the Dust, movie from the nineties that actually talked about the Gullah Islands to, that's right, I'll put it in there, Juice, I don't care, that these telling an aspect of a life. Not the whole entire thing, or even when I think about it more recently, like Fresh.
Rasu Jilani:
Oh, that's a good one. That's a good one.
Anthony Simmons:
I dug the movie because it actually presented... So blackness is a spectrum.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Of course.
Anthony Simmons:
Brother Rasu and his folks come from the Caribbean. We know that reggae music, particularly Raucous, is the foundation of hip hop, right?
Rasu Jilani:
Also a really good movie.
Anthony Simmons:
Black arts has always been an actual gumbo because you think about how we came to this country, throwing a whole bunch of Black folk who spoke different languages, had varying cultures, but we all were able to bring it together. So that's another aspect, the asset of Black arts is that it really does present an actual full spectrum of blackness, whether it is West African in nature, whether it is southern in nature, whether it is Bay Area in nature, and of course BX 'Til I Die, whether it tells that story of both life, I think about Biggie songs or Jay-Z songs, life in Bed-Stuy or KRS-One or Fat Joe about life in the Bronx. It's not a monolith and it is something that actually is also quintessentially American too.
Sherylynn Sealy:
That's great. If I can chime in here, you both just shared a lot of very rich information, and I'm thinking about, from all of what you just said, I'm thinking about the funder who is listening to this podcast and they came in wondering, okay, what do people mean when they say fund Black art? Then they start to think about, okay, it's 2023, everybody's talking about affirmative action. I know that I want to fund Black art, but now I feel like I can't or I'm going to get in trouble or something, but still, you both shared a lot of really great information, and I don't want to say making the case, because that's not where I want folks to go, but more so what is behind funding Black art? You went into that. You talked about GOS support, right? The importance of that. You talked about communities that are dealing with divestment.
You talked about the individual artists specifically. You gave a lot of different examples for how that particular funder and this example can fund Black art without having to worry like, oh, affirmative action, and am I going to get in trouble? No, because if you're looking at it from these perspectives, all of these different things that you can do, you don't have to worry about that. You can still support Black art. So as we kind of tee all of this up together, if you both had to give three recommendations for that funder, you're both funders, you both have a lot of experience, and from varying perspectives, the funder perspectives, the creative perspective, you both have that, what would your top three recommendations be for that funder to get started?
Rasu Jilani:
That's great. Yeah, I'll chime in here. I think obviously more than anything else, GOS. So Black organizations, institutions, and I want to say Black or Afro-Latino, because oftentimes what we do in our language is separate the Latin experience from blackness, and it's inherently problematic again, because as we look at the Caribbean or the coastal Americas, blackness is woven into the tapestry of that culture. So I want to invite both into this conversation. As you and I have an affinity for Cuban music and dance and culture, that is Black, that is African.
So all of that said is first GOS, it allows capacity. It allows the ED president or director to hire the people that is going to carry the work and collaborate and create capacity for imagining, for the institution. If you have to scrape and scramble to pay your staff, you're not going to grow, and that's number one. So GOS. I think I have an affinity for innovation, and the reason why I have an affinity for innovation is I do come from tech. That's my background, but also I grew up with hip-hop, and we need to stop calling organizations small. They're innovative, the resilient. They have endured so much resistance from the capitalistic machine that they have to be innovative in order to survive. So fund innovation, fund new ideas, fund new practice, fund new organizations. So I think that's in this innovation.
Sherylynn Sealy:
I didn't hear you say projects in there, which I want to call out. I want to call that out.
Rasu Jilani:
No, there's enough projects. There's enough.
Sherylynn Sealy:
I appreciate that.
Rasu Jilani:
Yeah, no, absolutely not. The GOS, if they are well-funded, they'll create the projects that they need to create or want to create, not projects because they need to meet a restriction or funding lens or whatever. Just let them be. They know what they're doing. So funding the innovations/funding dreams is really important. I've had a few funders talk to me as like, "What is your dream? What is your vision for the arts council?" and when they do, they see me light up and they're like, "We're sold," because I'm not getting bogged down by all the minutiae of a project that I just have to follow through because I got funding, what, three years ago, and it's like no longer working. What's the dream?
The last piece is I think there is a opportunity to fund experimentation. I think that's really important. A mentor of mine, two mentors of mine have always talked about you can only experiment yourself into the future when you're in a crisis. So when we're in a crisis, you experiment until you find something that is worth investing more into, but you have to experiment, you have to be curious, you have to have a hypothesis, and hypothesis follows an experimentation. So GOS, innovation or the dream, experimentation.
Anthony Simmons:
So when I think about the three recommendations, one, I want to post on what Rasu just said about general operating support and then let me add infrastructure and organizational capacity to that. Some funds have a tendency of separating the two from it, and it is like, nope, operating support should also include the pipes and the plumbing that are necessary-
Rasu Jilani:
That's right.
Anthony Simmons:
... for that organization to thrive. Thrive. Our folks spend so much time surviving, and again, I'm sorry, but none of us could live in our abodes that we all pay a lot of money for without plumbing, right?
Sherylynn Sealy:
Yeah, of course.
Anthony Simmons:
So definitely right on what Rasu said about that. Number two, for those funders that have yet to really engage Black communities, therefore the Black artists who sit within there and those institutions, whether they be lean in particular, I say get out of the office, travel, go sit down with folks, listen and learn, and then respond with some resources and respond from their perspective. Not your perspective, but from their perspective.
Sherylynn Sealy:
I want to call something out that you just said too because I heard, especially during the 2020 and Black Lives Matter, and George Floyd, everything, when everyone was like, "I'm listening," and it's like, it doesn't stop there. I so appreciate that you're like listen and then respond with what they are bringing to the table, right?
Anthony Simmons:
Yeah.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Thank you for that. That was great.
Anthony Simmons:
I worked in government for a little while and I was always amazed about the lack of intentionality behind our community convenings. We'd listen and then go back and like, "Oh, but here's what we're going to do anyway." Folks can go kick rocks with that. The last thing that I'll say is folks really need to sit with the history of Black arts globally, but certainly within this country, and I mean the full history. The good for as long as the good has existed, the bad for as long as that has actually existed, as far as how that has been extracted and the like. By the way, pause moment. Props to Byron Allen for crushing it these days.
Anyway, it is really important that folks understand the historical aspects of this as a means of the repair work that has to be done. So I would also say in that vein, as you are learning the history and figuring out how to reconcile the history, particularly the harm in that history, prepare for the discomfort. Lean into the discomfort, because for many folks, they're going to walk into this with notions and ideas of what they believe is true about Black art, but they really need to wrap their heads around the foulness, the historical foulness. Yes, is it going to make folks feel uncomfortable? Yeah. You know what? Discomfort is a part of building any trusted relationship.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Yeah, that's true, and growth. Yep.
Anthony Simmons:
I am happily married to an incredibly dynamic Black woman, and if I don't lean into the discomfort of my screw-ups, then we don't advance together forward. Then that leads to the trust building. So for all the funders who might be listening to this, who want to talk about their trust-based philanthropic practices and principles, do this. Do this here, it's going to go a long way for you being actually a funder that actually has some trust-based practices and principles.
Sherylynn Sealy:
That's great. Thank you both. So the podcast is coming to a close, but this is your opportunity, as if you didn't drop a million mics throughout this podcast, but this is your final mic drop moment. So that said, how would you like to leave the podcast? What's your last, final word that you want to put into this space? You can take some time to think about it.
Rasu Jilani:
I was preparing for this, so I wrote down some things.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Perfect.
Rasu Jilani:
Because some of them are response to what I heard from Tony. I think one is within the phenomena of capitalism, there's not one economy, there's multiple economies functioning as the tentacles of the beast we call capitalism. One of the things I want to be very mindful is the Black pain economy, which I mark as the Black pain economy. That Black art is pigeon-held to Black pain. I am over it. I do not want to see any more slave references. I get it. Maybe it needs to go to certain townships, maybe it needs to go to Texas and Florida because actually they act like they don't know, but in New York and Chicago and Massachusetts and L.A. and certain parts of the country, North Carolina, we've seen enough. I've seen enough. I get it.
There's other art. There's other art. There's thrivability, there's magic, there's spirituality. Let's lift up some of the spiritual practices from our people. Let's lift up art that has come out of and celebrating love within those times. So I think that's really important to look at the spectrum, as Tony said, the spectrum, the multitudeness of blackness is really important.
Sherylynn Sealy:
The gumbo.
Rasu Jilani:
The gumbo.
Sherylynn Sealy:
The Callaloo, if you will.
Rasu Jilani:
The Callaloo.
Anthony Simmons:
The Callaloo.
Rasu Jilani:
Exactly.
Anthony Simmons:
Y'all making me [inaudible 00:49:41].
Rasu Jilani:
So that's one. The other point I like to make is it's okay to be uncomfortable because comfort equals growth. It's called growing pains. If you are comfortable all goddam the time, then there's something you're doing wrong. There should be moments of discomfort. There should be moments of contradictions. There should be moments when you're just wrong, and that's okay. It's okay to say sorry. I will say this on this podcast, I am sorry for anyone that I may have harmed unconsciously. So it's okay to do that.
Then the last piece is back to what Tony was talking about with listening, the phenomenon of listening but not responding, the phenomenon of listening and feeling like... So there's this what I call the silent white privilege where they're in the room and all the Black people are talking and they're like, "I have nothing to say. I'm just learning so much." That's problematic because actually this is a dialogue. Let's talk. It don't need to be an [inaudible 00:50:51]. Then the other piece is within that, the yin and the yang of that is the privilege of contemplation. So right now in philanthropy, we're seeing people contemplating the next funding lens and contemplating who we're going to fund next and where we're going to contemplate it. Every moment you're contemplating there is an organization or person starving. Contemplation is a privilege, and it doesn't mean that you should not contemplate, but be mindful of how much. You can contemplate and give money simultaneously.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Right. Trust, have some confidence.
Anthony Simmons:
Privilege of contemplation. I'm going to put that right up there with analysis paralysis that funding folks [inaudible 00:51:37].
Sherylynn Sealy:
Yeah, totally. Spot on.
Anthony Simmons:
I just got one request. Start putting significant resources and dollars into Afrofuturism because there is something that Rasu said that we have spent so much time funding the expression of Black pain that frankly it looks like folks have gotten addicted to that. So with Afrofuturism, we talk about this place where we can and should be based off of where we already have been and where we currently are. So when Rasu was talking about that innovative aspect and stuff like that, Afrofuturism is that space.
I definitely want to see more investment in that because that's where Black joy also sits. So we do need far more expression of Black joy, but don't get it twisted, as long as we still continue to roll in this society that has been developed over time, we also need to express the pain and the harm. So if any of my dear funder partners happen to be listening to this conversation, please pay attention to Afrofuturism. Don't be scared. It's okay. We can actually envision a world where we are all leaders, but first things first, folks need to see it. They need to experience it. They need to smell it, taste it, see it in real life.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Yeah. That's great. Thank you so much, Tony. Thank you so much Rasu, for this incredible conversation. The folks listening definitely will have a lot to chew on, and I think this is exactly the conversation that we wanted to have in follow-up to our first program last year. So thank you for being a part of this series. For those of you who are listening, if you have any questions about this podcast or upcoming programming, you can feel free to reach out to me, Sherylynn Sealy at Sherylynn@giarts.org, or visit our website Giarts.org. Be sure to follow Grantmakers in the Arts on X or on Facebook at GIArts, as well as Instagram at Grantmakers in the Arts for any exciting new updates, and thank you so much for listening, everyone.
