While art and culture have always been forces in political change and revolution, somewhere along the line in the Western lexicon, the phrase “art and culture” began to shrink.
For a while, it was reduced to a synonym for the production of fine art as asserted and described by white European aesthetics.
We began to grow past that understanding to include cultural arts of varying traditions, and we became aware that cultural preservation is vitally important to society’s infrastructure and therefore deserves our support.
As our political understandings have grown, “art and culture” has also come to mean artistic expression and experiences that encourage us to think, feel, and act differently, as we make visible the coercion and terror and violence of systems of oppressions, whether quiet or loud.
Now we are at the next iteration.
Movement leaders such as Amilcar Cabral (PDF) and Claudia Jones understood culture as a fulcrum to rearrange society. In that spirit, the Culture Justice Initiative uplifts current theorists and practitioners who are experimenting with how culture shifts.
NPN is commissioning writing, hosting discussions, and supporting the exchange of ideas among artist coalitions, movement strategists, arts and social justice funders, and cultural organizations who have been practicing “The How” of revolutionary change.
CJI seeks to start answering the question, “What do we need to practice now for the world we are trying to build?” and then identifying the infrastructure needed to make that world a reality.