Sixty years ago this weekend, young activists marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, demanding their right to vote and changing history in the process. Today, another group of young people is using art to make their voices heard in Georgia.
A Boston-based arts group, beheard.world, has teamed up with Selma-area teens for "Selma Again," a production that blends dance, spoken word and music to shed light on the struggles the city still faces today.
Director and choreographer Anna Myer said the performance is about pushing forward, as well as looking back.
"The piece talks about real things that are happening and things that go to the heart," she said, "and it also talks about love and the only way forward is love and the only way to keep moving forward is if we do this together."
Myer said she first visited Selma years ago and was struck by how poverty and crime persist despite its historic significance. She and her husband, filmmaker Jay Paris, along with Selma natives, helped create a nonprofit initiative to blend nonviolence education, performing arts and storytelling for local youth.
It's part of the Selma Cross-Cultural Nonviolence and Performing Arts Academy, which was co-founded by Dallas County natives and civil rights veterans Charles Bonner and Viola Douglas, along with the Rev. Gary Crum of Elwood Christian Church. Through poetry and dance, teens confront modern challenges and honor past civil rights leaders.
Myer said this year's production highlights how today's youth can step into the legacy of activism left by the "foot soldiers" of the 1960s.
"In the performance in Atlanta, we're honoring civil rights veterans who are still alive - Andrew Young, and Charles Steele, and Faya Rose Sanders, and Lynda Blackmon Lowery," she added. "We're honoring them and we'll be also speaking their names in the piece."
"Selma Again" will be performed today (Fri., March 7) at Morehouse College's Ray Charles Performing Arts Center in Atlanta, and Sat., March 8, at Ellwood Christian Academy in Selma, as part of the annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee.
Myer emphasized the show's ultimate goal is to spark meaningful conversations, promote understanding and inspire action for lasting change.
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By Frankie (Amy) Felegy for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mark Moran for Iowa News Service reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration
Inside a two-story, century-old brick fortress, sun shines through stained glass artworks.
Music serenades down the hall; a koi pond will soon reflect a kaleidoscope of oranges and whites. Magic happens here.
But it isn’t a fairytale—this is Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Eastern Iowa Arts Academy—a nonprofit offering accessible arts education—recently purchased this historic Arthur Elementary school, which was meant to be demolished.
“It’s like a whole new place … You can unwind. You can be creative. You can be exactly who you want to be here. It’s a safe place,” says Heather Wagner, the organization’s executive director.
The building’s plans include a hallway gallery, open studio spaces, and a community room with a food pantry, clothing closet, and mental health support. Folks can rent out instruments; there’s a sensory room, and a kitchen and gym rental.
Students can sign up for band practice, create in the community maker’s space, or record tracks at the studio.
Music as Healing
One of those students, Zoe Wolrab, is a high school senior involved in three rock bands through the academy. She sings and plays bass guitar, covering artists from Carol King to Toto.
“When I was 14, I was kind of struggling a lot, just focusing in school and wanting to go to school in the first place. And I was also struggling a lot mentally,” Wolrab says.
So their mom suggested getting involved with music. Joining after-school sessions at Eastern Iowa Arts Academy perhaps saved their life, says Wolrab.
“Music is what I want in my life now. This kind of helped me find my career path in the first place. I just want to keep doing this forever.”
The academy is open to students of all ages and abilities, who pay full or partial memberships up to $190 or so a year. By the next three years, organizers plan to have full ADA-accessible programming.
It’s for everybody—by everybody.
“The whole community coming together is working … on making this the arts hub for this area,” Wagner says.
Meeting a Creative Need
When bringing folks back to the academy’s previous building after pandemic restrictions, the problem was clear: The demand was just too high.
“They came back in droves,” Wagner says of the students. “The need for expression in the arts was huge.”
Classes started racking up waiting lists and students wanted more private instrument lessons. The academy was running out of room. With the help of a cohort grant through the Iowa Arts Council, the team secured the school for $260K.
The building, though largely untouched save some painting, has transformed into an arts refuge. Wagner says people can come just as they are: There’s no need to put on a mask, empty your wallets, or be uncomfortable.
She just wants people to feel restored, much like the building’s newfound purpose.
“Art can do what it’s supposed to do. People can kind of bury themselves in the art,” Wagner says. “You can just heal. And that’s what it’s all about.”
Frankie (Amy) Felegy wrote this story for Arts Midwest.
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By Frankie (Amy) Felegy for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Minnesota News Connection reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration
Search "St. Croix River Valley" online and you'll find competition for your current desktop background.
The waterway is a government-designated National Wild and Scenic River, with all its blues and picture-perfect hues. Scenic is an understatement. Living in the dual-state area, which is 30-some miles northeast of Minnesota's Twin Cities, is an artist colony of sorts (how could you not be artistically inspired by the views?).
Local arts organization ArtReach St. Croix is helping to connect them.
Art to Art
"Artists often work in isolation, especially in the semi-rural and rural space," says Heather Rutledge, ArtReach's executive director. "In the St. Croix Valley, the artists are not parading down the street, but one of the ways that we [connect them] is network building among the artists."
Spanning the final 60 miles of the lower St. Croix River in Wisconsin and Minnesota, ArtReach has identified 168 local creatives on its directory.
Beyond the interactive list, the Stillwater-based nonprofit heads a mobile art gallery (which often sets up in nearby state parks), an area arts event calendar, and shares artist resources for folks in the region. ArtReach also hosts art at its gallery and month-long NEA Big Read programs. The list truly goes on.
Distinct Community, Place
ArtReach's slogan is "art at every bend in the river"-and it means it.
"The artists are building these bridges across the river, and see this geography as meaningful. And these programs that ArtReach does reinforce that," Rutledge says.
Harnessing multiple counties, small towns, villages-and two states-into a connected art community is special, she says, especially considering the area's unique suburban-skirt flavor.
"[We're] in this liminal space between the metro and fully outstate rural spaces," Rutledge says.
"When I moved here, I thought how incredible it was to be in a space that's very close to the metro and yet a world away," she says. "The other day I moved an exhibition from the Somerset Library to the Osceola Library, and then I came back to Stillwater. And on that little loop, I saw three different bald eagles."
She says the area sees a big economic impact from the arts, too-measuring nearly $170 million in historic total and employing over 2,000 people in the valley in one year, according to a 2022 Americans for the Arts report.
Rutledge and the ArtReach team continue fostering what they love best (hint: it's art!). They continually work with local tourism departments and the National Park Service to set up programming. And "Poets of Place," the next mobile art gallery, is set for this summer.
Frankie (Amy) Felegy wrote this story for Arts Midwest.
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By Frankie (Amy) Felegy for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Greater Dakota News Service reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration
For nearly two decades, Rachel Olivia Berg has created large-scale artworks for companies. Think hotel lobbies or resort hallways.
Though undoubtedly aesthetic, the works felt impersonal, branded, commercial.
“You’re telling other people’s stories,” the artist says. In 2023, she moved away from projects like those and focused on stories and communities important to her. So when Berg, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, heard of a Rapid City, South Dakota, tribal health center looking for art, she dove in.
Oyate Health Center
The project’s arts selection committee received maybe half a dozen proposals from Berg—as well as submissions from dozens of creatives across the region.
What’s now a clinic-wide, permanent collection with over 100 pieces was two years in the making, from the open call to installation process.
All the selected (and compensated) art pieces focus on culture-specific healing, made by 50-some enrolled tribal citizens from the Great Plains area, from professional artists to community creatives.
“[We] really focused on those visuals of healing and how we as Native people dissect that word—healing spiritual health as well as physical and mental health,” says committee member Ashley Pourier, a museum curator and a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe.
‘Our Own Visual Vocabulary’
The Great Plains Tribal Health Board spearheaded the project.
Taking over management and reconstruction, the former Indian Health Services Center-turned-Oyate Health Center became a brand-new building—with a brand new need for art. But not just any art.
Since the healthcare center is for Native American patients and staff, the art inside needed to be, too. Having Indigenous symbolism about has transformed the space, and what it means to heal inside it.
“It’s important for us, for Indigenous people, to have our own visual vocabulary, to have our own understanding. You can walk into hospitals across the country and there’s frequently flowers or things that are very universal,” Berg says of the more generic art.
“But what’s really nice about Oyate [Health Center] is that we were able to create art from our perspective, things we understand, things we relate to. It helps you feel like it’s your space; it helps you feel that you’re meant to be there.”
The art collection, from photography to paintings to 3D work, touches on spiritual and cultural understanding.
Berg’s piece, Eagle Buffalo Star, is an expansive wall relief artwork. Made of diamond-shaped resin tiles, it’s a lively, almost moving image of a buffalo and eagle connected by a star.
She started with the idea of traditional beadwork and star quilting: Little pieces come together, creating meaning. Its oranges, yellows, browns and blues—colors of the sky and earth in the Black Hills—shine in the center’s new pediatric area.
“The stars … are hopeful and help us to think of the healing aspect of our connection, of how we’re not alone,” Berg says.
There’s a new and meaningful feeling of community in the space. Berg calls the health center a “hub,” thanks to its art from people across her community.
“It’s literally a museum. It’s a collection,” Berg says. “It’s not just a building. It’s our building.”
Frankie (Amy) Felegy wrote this story for Arts Midwest.
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