Wanda's Picks Special

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

1. Alma Robinson, Executive Director of California Lawyers for the Arts, expanded the organization in 1987 into a statewide agency with staff in San Francisco, Berkeley, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego. She has also led several successful statewide initiatives including Arts and Environmental Dialogues and Symposia on California Arts and Healthy Communities. In 2011, she began CLA's successful Arts in Corrections Initiative in collaboration with the William James Association to restore funding for California’s arts programs in prisons, which had been defunded in 2003. With support from the Art for Justice Fund, Alma produced a series of six Art for Justice Forums with co-conveners in Michigan, Texas, Alabama, Georgia, California and New York in 2018 while concluding a three-year project funded by the NEA that is demonstrating the benefits of arts programs in county jails throughout California.  CLA's third conference on Arts in Corrections will be presented in June,2019 at Santa Clara University. A graduate of Middlebury College and Stanford Law School, Alma was a founding board member of California Arts Advocates and the Museum of the African Diaspora, and has served as a trustee for the San Francisco Opera Association, Mills College and the Urban School.

2. Andrew Woods, Executive Director, SF International Arts Festival 2019