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Babz Rawls Ivy.
Babz Rawls Ivy, member of the board of directors of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, looked out over the crowd seated in the ballroom of the New Haven Lawn Club Friday afternoon for the Arts Council’s 39th Annual Arts Awards. “We are all connected,” she said. In New Haven, it is “just a few steps” from Newhallville to East Rock to downtown, and in those steps you found affluence and poverty, creativity and despair.
“Whatever happens in this city, it is all our responsibility, all our care.”
Rawls Ivy was expounding on the theme of this year’s ceremony, “Neighbor to Neighbor.” It was an occasion for both lightheartedness — including the staff of the Arts Council donning Mr. Rogers’s trademark red cardigan to lead the room in a singalong of “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” — and rumination on how the city and the region are connected, and what that means for its arts and culture.
Thabisa.
The proceedings began with Thabisa and her band, who embodied the ideal of good neighborliness that many talked about. The South African-born singer fronted a multinational, multigenerational, and multiracial band that tore through a few of her songs, particularly delighting the audience as she jumped from the stage to work the room. As Ivy said, “she brings something to this city — everyone who hears her is enamored.”
Ramos.
After that, Mayor Toni Harp presented this year’s C. Newton Schenck III Award for Lifetime Achievement in and Contribution to the Arts to Rafael Ramos for his work with Bregamos Theater, which he founded in 2000. Over the years — in addition to working for JUNTA for Progressive Action and the Livable City Initiative, New Haven government’s anti-blight agency — Ramos has made Bregamos into a spot for plays, music events, and celebrations, as well as a gathering place for Latinx artists and activists working on a variety of social justice issues. “A community’s commitment to the arts is a window to the soul of that community,” Harp said, and Ramos “has propped that window wide open.”
“I have been having some mixed feelings about this award,” Ramos began his acceptance speech, adding that he was “honored and humbled.” He acknowledged that “any endeavor in the arts is not without personal sacrifice — sometimes to family to friends. I share this award with countless volunteers and friends of Bregamos.”
He then got to why his feelings were mixed. “There is a vicious rumor that I am retiring — a rumor created by me — but I’m just getting started,” he said. “I learn something new with every production. … I stand before you today in enormous gratitude for this award, but I’m not done yet.”
In speaking to the theme of the day, Ramos said that “our community is what we make it, and it’s up to us to make it happen.”
Matlock, Barbara Lamb, Noah Bloom.
New Haven arts maven Bitsie Clark then announced the recipients of this year’s grants from the Bitsie Clark Fund for Artists. She explained that in its first year of fundraising, the fund managed to raise $250,000, halfway toward its goal of $500,000. This fundraising enabled the fund to give $5,000 grants to two artists: Harold Shapiro and Adam Matlock. Shapiro, who has been a practicing photographer for three decades, will put his funds toward completing Luminous Instruments, a photography series that conveys the energy of music by capturing the instruments themselves in a certain light. Matlock will use his grant to compose and pay musicians for dedicated rehearsals of the first act of an opera about the Tulsa race riot of 1921, which ended with several hundred people killed and the destruction of Tulsa’s black neighborhood, Greenwood, which was so prosperous that it was called the Black Wall Street.
The Amity Teen Center won an arts award for giving an outlet to teens in visual art, music, and the performing arts since 1987. “We operate like a big family,” said Jennifer DiBlanda, its executive director, upon receiving the award. “It’s truly an honor to be here today with others who share our goal of strengthening community through arts and culture.”
The Hamden Arts Commission won for its all-volunteer effort to bring arts programming to Hamden since 1981 — particularly its summer concert series on Hamden’s town green, which now draws hundreds of thousands of people over the course of each summer. Ruth Resnick Johnson and Mimsie Coleman accepted the award on behalf of the entire commission, who announced their presence at the luncheon by standing up in unison and ringing bells that sounded throughout the room.
Adger and Brown.
As members of the board of the Freddie Fixer Parade, Petisia M. Adger and Diane Brown accepted an award from the Arts Council recognizing the parade’s role in celebrating African-American culture and preserving heritage. Brown and Adger walked the audience through the parade’s history, from its origins as a neighborhood cleanup effort in 1962 — put together by Fred Smith, a Dixwell physician — to an annual event that was drawing 20,000 people by the 1970s and is today recognized as one of the longest-running African-American parades in the Northeast.
“We believe that by sharing the talents of our participants, we can facilitate conversation,” Adger said, “and construct the story of our history as we want to tell it for generations to come.”
Lindsey Bauer and Kellie Ann Lynch accepted an award on behalf of the Elm City Dance Collective, which, since 2008, has brought contemporary dance to New Haven through classes and workshops, after school programs, and productions in unorthodox spaces from beaches to buses to crosswalks. They even brought a dance to the arts luncheon.
“Look around,” Lynch instructed. “These are your neighbors. Take a moment and think of a word that best describes ‘neighbor’ to you. Write that word in the air. Write that word again using more space than what’s in front of you. Write that word to a friend at a table far away.” The audience did as instructed.
“That was your rehearsal,” she said, to laughter. “We’re going to perform our dance in a wave. Stand if you are able. Use the space in front of you.” The wave of words written in the air started in the back of the room and surged forward.
“We believe that dance is for everyone,” Lynch said. “Dance dissolves borders. Dance speaks. Dance challenges us to be a good neighbor.”
Nearing.
Elizabeth Nearing explained that her arts award had come at an auspicious time. She came to New Haven from New York in 2012 to work in community outreach for Long Wharf Theatre. She had originally planned to leave “as soon as possible.”
But instead Nearing “got to know this city,” she said, from the New Haven Free Public Library (“I got my education at Stetson Library hanging out with Diane Brown,” she said) to IRIS to Black Lives Matter New Haven to dozens of other local organizations. “Every corner you can find someone passionately working to make it better,” she said, including many of the people in the room. “I have seen the ripples of your work go outward.”
Working in New Haven’s communities changed her. “I thought I had to climb a ladder to succeed,” she said. Now, “I want to build with, not climb above. I want an ocean of power with shared love and shared imaginings.” As artists, she said, “we are powerfully equipped to build and rebuild our world. We are all architects of building it together.”
She left Long Wharf this year and is now a lead facilitator for Civic Impact Lab as well as working independently, continuing to work with the city government and nonprofits all over town. “Being in New Haven is no longer an accident,” she said. “New Haven, you are joy. You are home. Thank you.”