This event has been postponed to September 12, 2020. Stay tuned for registration information.
The UNC Charlotte College of Arts + Architecture will host Arts Impact Charlotte: Working at the Crossroads, an opportunity to consider models to more effectively fund the arts and establish a greater presence for artists and designers in Charlotte’s future.
Arts Impact Charlotte is an initiative led by a collaborative of local artists and designers, arts advocates, and researchers. Among its goals are:
- To present a new narrative regarding the arts and design and their roles in addressing challenges in our city and region
- To establish creative practitioners as important contributors and decision-makers in Charlotte
- To build an arts community that serves as a model for inclusivity and collaboration
- To discover new approaches for funding, particularly to the benefit of grassroots and underrepresented groups
This program is an outgrowth of the Arts Impact Charlotte Survey, administered in the fall of 2019, and features presentations and opportunities for response and discussion. It is FREE and open to the public, but registration is required.
PROGRAM – Saturday, September 12
9:30-10:00 am Coffee and Registration
10:00-11:30 am Towards the Future of Arts Philanthropy: The Disruptive Vision of MMI
Amber Hamilton, Executive Director of the Memphis Music Initiative
Presentation followed by a public discussion facilitated by Nikkeia Lee, Managing Director of The Possibility Project - Charlotte.
11:30 am-12: 30 pm Lunch: Arts Impact Charlotte Survey Findings
12:30-2:00 pm Creative Collaboration in the Public Realm
Michael Singer, Director of Michael Singer Studio
Presentation followed by a public discussion facilitated by Jonell Logan, independent curator, Executive Director of League of Creative Interventionists, and founder of 300 Arts Project, LLC.
Arts Impact Charlotte: Working at the Crossroads will take place at UNC Charlotte Center City, 320 E. 9th Street, Charlotte, NC 28202.
PRESENTERS
Towards the Future of Arts Philanthropy: The Disruptive Vision of MMI
Amber Hamilton, Executive Director of the Memphis Music Initiative
Memphis Music Initiative (MMI) invests in youth through transformative music engagement, creating equitable opportunities for black and brown youth in Memphis, Tennessee, as both a direct service provider and a community funder. Since 2016, MMI has given more than $3 million, thousands of hours of consultation, led more than 40 cohort learning convenings, and most importantly, demonstrated that equity and trust-based philanthropy can be successful for grantmakers and grantees. MMI’s approach is inclusive and asset-based, shedding the conventional and highly exclusive philanthropic requirements for accessing funding, supports, or even a seat at the table.
Executive Director Amber Hamilton is a seasoned leader, coach, and trainer with extensive experience in leadership strategies and nonprofit management.
Creative Collaboration in the Public Realm
Michael Singer, Director of Michael Singer Studio
For more than 25 years, Michael Singer Studio has been at the forefront of re-thinking the role, community integration, transparency, environmental systems, and aesthetics of large-scale sustainable infrastructure projects in the United States and Europe. Each project encompasses a process from research and planning through concept, with a focused systems-based approach addressing environmental systems such as water, waste, energy, and ecology while also seeking to foster improved social well-being with considerations for health, mobility, and economic equality.
Michael Singer is experienced in working with teams that include a variety of other professionals, from choreographers to engineers to botanists and policy makers. Those multidisciplinary teams work closely with community stakeholders to address a specific challenge in the community. While the projects are place-specific, proposals often address broad issues – such as economic decline, infrastructure, food scarcity, underutilized natural and cultural resources, and the impact of climate change – and can serve as precedents for innovative community action on a wider scale.
Arts Impact Charlotte: Working at the Crossroads is supported in part by an Opportunity Fellowship from the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute amd a Chancellor's Mini-Diversity Grant.
(Pictured above: Detail, Halcyon Idyll II, 2016, CATS Transit I-277 underpass mural by UNC Charlotte alum Sharon Dowell.)