“Cultural Equity” Pledge Targets Who Tells Whose Story

To the vibrant sound of bomba from Movimiento Cultural, officials, press, and community members gathered in front of the Q House on Dixwell Avenue to celebrate the launch of what city Director of Cultural Affairs Adriane Jefferson called Connecticut’s first initiative targeting cultural equity.

Cultural equity, according to the city’s official document accompanying the new initiative, involves ​“creating the conditions under which all people can express their culture fully; changing existing cultures, especially within institutions, that do not recognize and lift up the humanity of all people; redistributing resources and power to people systematically underresourced by our society, and supporting vibrant cultural expression in every community.” 

The document goes on to say that ​“equity is not the same as equality. Because historically unsupported groups have experienced cultural exploitation and systematic cultural oppression in this city, these are the folks we’re focusing on serving through a cultural equity plan.” New Haven residents are now 72 percent Black, Latino, or Asian.

The official document isn’t so much an outline of what City Hall plans to do to support the arts and culture as it is a call to action for New Haveners, to instill greater support within the city for the city’s vibrant cultural scene, from its flagship museums, theaters, clubs, art galleries and other institutions to the culture practiced by people in community spaces, street corners, and their own homes. ​“This plan was designed to help you, the reader, take the next step toward cultivating equity in your life and your community,” the document reads. ​“That might look like creating change within the City of New Haven, within your organization, or within yourself. It is vital that we practice equity at each of these levels as we work toward a future where all cultures thrive. 

“To that end, this plan is not meant to sit on a shelf in City Hall. It is meant to help you identify your unique role in a citywide movement for cultural equity, to jump start your imagination about what an equitable future might look like, and to take action in the places where you hold power.”

At the Q House celebration Thursday, Jefferson was aware of the central role the city government could play in facilitating the shift in thinking about culture the plan discusses. ​“I feel a great deal of accountability in moving this forward,” she said. ​“A document is just that, until you insert action. … We are going to continue to be in conversation about what’s missing, how we can evolve the plan.” 

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe in the power of the arts in advancing social justice and advancing our economy,” she said.

Already folded into the cultural equity plan are the Creative Sector Relief Fund, administered by the Arts Council of Greater New Haven; the one-day virtual event Unapologetically Radical, which happened last February; an anti-racist pledge aimed at arts organizations; and Entrepreneurship Decoded, a six-week program with Collab New Haven last spring for people who wanted to start creative businesses in New Haven and got $1,000 in seed money to do it. An upcoming event on Jan. 19 is designed for leaders of arts organizations ​“to explore tools and methods for evaluating progress in incorporating cultural equity practices into their organizations.”

“The plan is going to allow us to do even more,” Jefferson said.

Mayor Justin Elicker (pictured) offered a broader context for his motivation to support the plan. ​“I’m really concerned about our nation and our city, and the lack of dialogue we have right now,” he said, ​“the lack of any connection to humanity in the way we communicate with each other. … We tear each other down instead of building each other up.” The arts, to Elicker, are a way ​“to connect with our humanity,” and a meaningful cultural equity plan could ​“uplift all of our cultures, all of our backgrounds,” enabling us to ​“start to see each other again as people.”

The plan was formed through an assembled group of artists and community leaders and members — the Cultural Equity Plan Co-Creation Team — several of whom were in attendance. Among them was Patrick Dunn, chair of the city’s Cultural Affairs Commission. ​“This plan belongs to all of us the city of New Haven,” he said, from the International Festival of Ideas to ​“the knitter, the sewer, the artist that is creating in their own space.” He also had more specific request: ​“invest in culture.”

Daniel Fitzmaurice (pictured), the Arts Council’s executive director, pointed out that the city has already begun putting cultural equity ideas into practice, but ​“today is a shift because this is now policy.… I know that New Haven is the cultural capital of Connecticut,” but now it’s the ​“cultural equity capital as well.

Salwa Abdussabur (pictured), a member of the Cultural Equity Plan Co-Creation Team, expressed joy at seeing the plan’s publication. ​“I do this work because I am artist and I’ve always wanted to be an artist on my own terms,” they said. They expressed their hope that the plan leads to artists being able to ​“thrive, not survive.… During the pandemic we understood the power of art. It keeps us sane. It enlightens our hearts.” Referring to the plan’s call to action, they said ​“it’s time for institutions to start looking at themselves, and looking deep. It’s time to uproot.” In the direction the plan seeks to move the city, ​“we can see a more colorful New Haven, a more joyous New Haven.”

Luis Chavez-Brumell (pictured), deputy director of the New Haven Free Public Library and a member of the co-creation team, touched on the importance of libraries both in disseminating the plan and forwarding the plan’s agenda. He announced that copies of the plan would be available throughout the library system. ​“It’s just the beginning,” he said.

Invoking Cornel West’s statement that ​“justice is what love looks like in public,” team member Tagan Engel (pictured) discussed how viewing problems through the lens of cultural equity facilitated asking questions about current policies and practices in the city. ​“Why are resources in one place and not another?” she asked. ​“Why are they with institutions and not with individuals? Why are they downtown and not in the neighborhoods?”

Michael Piscitelli (pi tured), the city’s economic development administrator, picked up on that point. ​“A plan like this can be uncomfortable,” he said, because of the tough questions it can raise about who gets access to resources and who doesn’t. But he welcomed the chance for the cultural equity plan to help shape economic development to ​“bounce back better” after the pandemic by creating economic opportunities to more people hoping to start small businesses outside of downtown.

Artist Puma Simone’s spoken-word piece spoke to the heart of the matter. ​“I’ve been a starving artist, not so much by happenstance, but for remaining in New Haven when I had the chance to leave,” they began. As they unspooled their piece, they gave voice to the real struggle and frustration underneath the optimism projected. Among much else, they tapped into the irony that millions of dollars of economic development have poured into New Haven based in part on the city’s vibrant culture, while many of the city’s artists, the keepers of that culture, still live paycheck to paycheck, if that; and the way that new money is concentrated downtown, while the places where most of the people in the city live make do with what they already have.

“This morning is a space to express my condolences,” they said. ​“Dixwell, I’m sorry it took so long to rebuild the Q House. I can only imagine what could have been. I pray my imagination can fill in the gaps of brilliance.… our neighborhoods collected the scattered remains of a party’s dismemberment.… If my words form a black cloud in the sky, yes, that’s what I came to be, like a flock of crows who set up shop, drop paint on the streets, then wait for the rain to leave. My heart is still waiting for space to weep. Still waiting for the Freddy Fixer to return to the Green. Still longing to heard and seen and not cropped out or in the frame. To be witness without an object in between. Still searching for a landscape without two rocks, a hard place to be, somewhere in the distance. So please, no pictures. It would mean so much more if you listen.”