Saturday, March 24, 2018, marked the 8th annual NYCoRE Conference held at James Baldwin High School in NYC. The New York Collective of Radical Educators is made up of public school teachers, youth workers and their allies committed to fighting for social justice in the school system and society at large. There were over 50 engaging workshops presented throughout the day, ranging from topics on migration, democracy, and social justice pedagogy, all kicked off by a powerful keynote address by Dr. Monique W. Harris, author of Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in School.
“___ Is All We Got”, was this year’s conference theme: In the unveiling and wake of the current (and past) administration, enduring political climate and ongoing state-sanctioned violence across our nation, there are individuals for whom this white supremacist nation-state was “new” news to them, while for many of us it is a reality we intimately know––have known all along. In fact, Black science fiction writer Octavia Butler imagined a version of our current reality in her dystopian novels Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents.
Rather than grieve in what to some is the “newness” of the depth and strength of White Supremacy, like Chance the Rapper, people of color were reminded what we have known all along: we are literally all we got.
We facilitated a session titled “(under)REPRESENT(ed) in the Arts: Claiming Our Brilliance”, led by Nadia Williams and Francisco Donoso, and included a panel presentation by PSP Alumni: Elizabeth Peralta, Youth Advocate, Nicolas Savvides, Youth Advocate, and Kadeem Lamorell, College Mentor. The workshop gave us a platform to share some of the resources and tools we’ve created over the years to support students, educators and community members in gaining greater access to opportunities and careers in art and design.
Here are some of the resources we shared:
Art Future NYC Career and Resource Guide
Art Future NYC Careers in the Arts Fair 2017
Art Future NYC NYC Youth Arts Resource Guide
Art Future NYC Facebook Page!
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