Brian Slattery Photos
Thabisa Rich at arts collective kickoff.
Musician and arts organizer Thabisa Rich stood before a packed room inside the NXTHVN arts complex at 169 Henry St. on Friday evening, ready to announce a new initiative. “I don’t know if I should be nervous or excited,” she said, “because this is a dream come true.”
That dream is the Rich Arts Collective, which seeks to “create cultural experiences that impact our community positively through music, art, and conversations with the intention to inform, educate, and entertain, as well as bring forth a focus on African diaspora,” as its website states. “We hope to foster experiences where all feel welcome, and all feel appreciated. A community that sees one another for who we are as we embrace and cherish our differences.”
The collective is a new nonprofit that is already receiving support from a city Neighborhood Cultural Vitality Grant as well as the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, CT Folk, NXTHVN and the Westville Village Renaissance Alliance. Among its first efforts are “a program for young people to express themselves through creative arts” as well as “connect with mental health experts and community leaders, via virtual and in-person sessions, opening the door to learning and healing.” It is also seeking to organize backyard concerts and organize a series of conversations “between artists, authors, and community change makers, including performances and artwork that speak to our uniqueness. We want to showcase the vibrancy of our cultures but also open this platform to people that are socially and economically excluded. This series will encompass a wealth of knowledge that will hopefully build a bridge of understanding to further strengthen our ubuntu.”
For its launch event, the collective organized one of those conversations, among dancer Rania Das, dancer, educator, and organizer Dr. Hanan Hameen-Diop, organizer IfeMichelle Gardin, and artist and organizer Kim Weston, moderated by Malakhi Eason II.
Charlie Rich.
As audience members snacked on food from Sanctuary Kitchen and RAWA, panelist Rania Das began the event with a dance that merged the classical Indian dance she has been studying for five years (she is 15) with contemporary pop music. The blend, she said, was a “testament to my identity as both Indian and American.”
Thabisa began by explaining her roots, born and raised in a township in South Africa. Her grandfather encouraged her to “get out of there and make something of myself, and now I’m here,” she said. But her values also taught her not to forget where she was from. “People where I come from, they are left behind,” she said. The intention behind the Rich Arts Collective was to address that by becoming a hub for activities centered around the arts and community building. “But I cannot do it alone,” she said. The collective “is not mine,” she continued. It was not “to stroke my ego.” She was there “to build the foundation … you all will keep it going.”
Rich Arts Collective Secretary Charlie Rich echoed Thabisa’s sentiments, saying that the nonprofit was in some ways the result of a decade of conversations around the dinner table that they were now making real. He encouraged those with ideas for initiatives, events, and activities to contact them. “There’s butterflies, there’s risk, but so much more can come from this,” he said.
Das, Gardin, Rich, Hameen, Weston, Eason.
The conversation among the panelists began by starting from the title of the event: “Carving a Path Forward: Exploring the Significance of Culture in Fostering a Vibrant Community.” Weston explained how she bought the space downtown at 139 Orange St. for Wábi Gallery, saying that “it’s something I am doing for my people,” to show that “you too can own something downtown.… It’s not easy to build,” but “you can exist in the economic development of New Haven.” She talked about the need to build bridges within the community and “with people who believe in your cause” all across town. Wábi Gallery needs support, she said to the assembled crowd, and Rich Arts Collective does, too.
Hameen, founder of the Artsucation Academy Network, explained how she had grown up in the arts as the daughter of a jazz musician and a filmmaker, but also felt keenly her roots as the descendent of people who came north during the Great Migration, and out of slavery. “We are descendents of the survivors,” she said. She described her youth as part of the “talented tenth” (a term coined by W.E.B. Du Bois) bussed to a White neighborhood to go to school and proceeded through her journeys to Senegal and other parts of Africa and her organization of New Haven’s Juneteenth celebration.
“I am culture,” she said. “I am the African diasporic experience.”
Das explained how she used dance to “emphasize my culture,” she said, explaining how she was grateful to live in an area as diverse as greater New Haven. “It’s like you’re traveling but you’re here,” she said. Through art, everyone could “tell people we are proud of who we are.”
Gardin began by explaining the concept of sankofa, “a bird that flies forward and looks back.” She recalled in her youth when the NXTHVN building was a factory, and reminded the audience that before World War I the Winchester factory didn’t hire Black people. Her grandparents arrived in the Great Migration and became movers and shakers in the neighborhood and beyond.
“This Dixwell neighborhood is entrenched in me,” she said.
Eason asked about the importance of building relationships across generational lines. “I think we can learn something from everyone,” Das said. In her experience, older people “understand the gravity of certain situations” and have “past solutions to problems,” the wisdom of which can be applied to the present. But “we all have good ideas” and it was important “to give each other the space for understanding.”
Weston, who is around 50, explained that she was at the age where she had to “walk the talk” because “everyone below you, they are watching.” Gesturing toward Das, she said, “you have to go back and you have to listen to this woman, because she’s going to teach me what’s happening now.” Communication “makes her smarter and keeps me younger.… When those conversations stop is when we stop developing and growing.” She then picked up on a theme Thabisa had started. Growth was possible “if we can put our egos to the side and listen.”
Eason asked what could be done to make the community more vibrant. Gardin, taking up the same theme, emphasized that for artists and organizations, in the end “it’s not a competition… Collectively you can make a place more vibrant.” The timing for that kind of thinking was urgent, as “there is a renaissance happening in New Haven right now.”
Hameen agreed. “There’s too much ego in New Haven,” she said, and “that means nothing when our children are killing each other.” Artists and arts organizations could accomplish more by collaborating, “coming together, creating opportunity,” and “sharing our resources to help.” Das concurred, referred to the forces, such as social, that fomented division, in the United States and India alike. With enough division, she said, “eventually we’re going to run out of brothers and start killing each other.”
Weston advised a little wariness, however; as a woman of some indigenous heritage, she knew that indigenous Americans “got into all this trouble in the first place because we opened our arms,” and “then we were slaughtered.” People could “trust,” she said, and “not be stupid about it.” America’s famed melting pot, she said, was more like a TV dinner, riven by segregation; but we could still “take a chance on each other” and “take a chance with the truth of our foundation.”
Drawing from her experiences working with people in the United States and West African countries, Hameen pointed out that “they’re not taught what happened to us and we’re not taught what happened to them.” That disconnection could create division. The way Black people appeared on U.S. reality shows, she said, was what “they think we are.” Meanwhile, she said, “we don’t know who we are,” because “it was taken from us.” Unity and strength were part of the solution. European colonizers, she said, “do not divide and conquer; they conquer the divided.… We are more alike than we are different,” and “we have to break the psychological warfare that we are force-fed” that pushes people to believe otherwise.
The audience was ready to hear the panel’s call to unity. One audience member took it a step further, pointing to the need for collective action in the face of more extreme weather wrought by climate change.
“This earth is dying,” she said. “We have to start coming together.”