IAStoryShare

5. Marilyn Hays and Sandy Holman

Marilyn is a long-time community organizer and activist in northern California. She is the founder and director of WE People, a community-based organization designed to serve the needs of African American children and families.

Sandy is the founder of the Culture C.O.-O.P., an organization she developed to assist people and organizations working with equity and diversity in education, businesses and the community.

The two have known each other for close to three decades. They identify as “Sankofa sisters.” Sankofa is a word in the Twi language of Ghana that translates to "Go back and get it.“ The Sankofa bird has been adopted as a symbol in the African Diaspora to represent the need to reflect on the past to build a successful future.

Sandy honors Marilyn as an elder from whom she’s learned a lot over the years. They discuss the importance of cultural identity, the failure of the educational system to teach African American youth their history, learning from the experience of elders and their concerns about the future of social justice in the U.S.

4. Danielle Fodor and Meaghan Brady Nelson

Danielle is an artist, teacher and community organizer living in Davis, CA. She creates artworks that transform people, places, and communities by working in a variety of mediums, including murals, ‘zines, performance, audio and posters.

Meaghan is an arts educator at Belmont University in Tennessee.  She collaboratively created a huge Kids’ Arts Festival south of Nashville, that in its recent year attracted 6,000 attendees.

The two met for the first time at the Imagining America conference about an hour before they sat down to record their conversation.  They quickly bonded over talking about the art they do in communities.

They talk about the role of the arts in building kids’ identities, how art can be inserted into non-art areas of learning, the value of families making art together and how most artists are uncomfortable with the chaos of creating in community.

3. Milmon F. Harrison and Gwen Johnson

Milmon and Gwen met each other for the first time at the 2017 Imagining America national conference, just two days before they sat down to record their conversation. 

Milmon is a sociologist and member of the faculty in the African American and African Studies Department at the University of California, Davis.  His teaching interests include race and ethnic relations in the U-S, the Great Migration and the role of the Black Church in the African American freedom struggle. 

Gwen is an educator, community volunteer and lover of Appalachia.  Her family has deep roots in the coal mining community of eastern Kentucky.  She works as an Early Childhood Training Coordinator at the University of Kentucky.  

Despite their disparate backgrounds, they quickly learned they had a lot in common.  They discuss the importance of empathy, recognizing cycles of oppression and remembering our common humanity.

2. Amy Shimshon-Santo and Brittany Fields

Amy is Head of Arts Management for the Sotheby's Institute of Art, Los Angeles at Claremont Graduate University.  And, at the time of the recording, Brittany was a student, just a couple months away from completing the program and figuring out what to do next.  Brittany now holds a Master's Degree in Arts Management. 

Amy was Brittany’s thesis advisor, and in Brittany’s words, quickly turning into a mentor for her.  They discuss what it means to be an American, how to live as an artist, barriers and challenges in higher education and how to bring values and creativity to management.

1. Welcome to IAStoryShare!

IAStoryShare is a podcast from Imagining America, where publicly engaged artists, designers, scholars, students and community members share stories about their life and work.