ITAC Anti Racist Practice Teaching Artists User Guide

ITAC Anti Racist Practice Teaching Artists

Specifications :

• Product Name: A Guide to Anti-Racist Practice for Teaching Artists
• Developed by: ITAC
• Target Audience: Teaching Artists
• Content: Guiding principles, self-reflection exercises, list of reading materials
• Scope: International usage

Product Usage Instructions

Introduction:
Becoming an anti-racist practitioner is an ongoing process that requires self-awareness, self-criticism, and self-examination.

Guiding Principles:

• Engage in self-reflection exercises provided in the resource.
• Utilize the list of reading materials to deepen understanding.

Positioning Yourself:

• Consider your position in your racialized context.
• Reflect on historical factors shaping racial power and marginalization in your area.

Journal Exercise:
Reflect on your understanding of anti-racism and assess your autonomy over content and teaching methods on a scale of 1-10.

Suggested Pre-Reading :
Explore resources like Hue’s Anti-Racism Kit and “What does it Mean to be Anti-Racist” by Kendra Cherry for foundational knowledge.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):

1. What is the purpose of this guide?
   The guide aims to assist teaching artists in their journey towards anti-racist practice by providing guiding principles and self-reflection exercises.

2. How can I use the journal exercise effectively?
   Reflect on your understanding of anti-racism and assess your autonomy over content and teaching methods to gauge your influence in promoting anti-racist practices.

A Guide to Anti-Racist Practice for Teaching Artists

• © 2023. This work is openly licensed via CC BY NC SA 4.0.
• Created by Rachael Jacobs, Rachael Dwyer and Karla Estela Rivera.
• Authors must be attributed. New work that builds on these ideas must include attribution of the original authors, must be non-commercial, and must be shared under the same Creative Commons license.
• This resource was developed with financial support from the International Teaching Artist Collaborative. https://www.itac-collaborative.com/

Introduction

• Artists, arts teachers, practitioners and teaching-artists are changemakers in the community. They are in a unique position to be leaders who can create positive change through engaging with individuals and communities creatively, aesthetically and artistically. Many teaching-artists also have a lot of autonomy over what they teach and how they engage with participants (although this isn’t always the case). We also know that arts-rich environments have the capacity to develop empathy and compassion. This is why it’s up to all of us to be anti-racist in our practice, modelling practices that embrace the values of diversity, inclusion, equity and justice. This needs to be done in a way that is intentional rather than passive. One cannot fight racism by simply being a good person, and one cannot learn to be anti-racist by osmosis. Sadly, our world is plagued by racism, perpetuated by individuals, systems and institutions. Racism can be active or passive, and is often internalized. Angela
• Davis argues that “In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.”
• Becoming an anti-racist practitioner involves ongoing work that can never be considered complete. Abram X Kendi explains that “like fighting an addiction, being an antiracist requires persistent self-awareness, constant self-criticism, and regular self-examination.”
• ITAC has developed this guide to assist teaching-artists to begin or continue their journey towards anti-racist practice. In this resource, we propose a set of guiding principles that we suggest can underpin anti-racist practice for teaching artists. There will be self-reflection exercises that can assist on this journey. There is an important list of reading materials that can be effective if you’d like to do more.
• This guide was created for teaching-artists and focused on providing a reflection space for professional and community arts practice. Inter and intrapersonal journeys with anti-racist education take place in many contexts and we are unable to cover everything in this guide. This guide is based on some assumptions. The first is that race exists, and that racism also exists and we should all work towards its eradication. We’ve suggested some pre-reading if you need to delve deeper into this contention.
• Like anti-racism, this guide can never be complete. The community’s journey to being anti-racist will be ever evolving and this guide will remain incomplete. This guide cannot replace listening to those with lived expertise, educating oneself by reading and listening, developing a critical understanding of histories or other activities that enhance anti-racist behaviour.
• And this guide will also date. This is a signal of progress, rather than signpost of the inadequacies of the initiative.
• Regardless of where you are and when you are accessing this guide, we hope that it gives you a moment to pause, consider and reflect in the hope of creating a better understanding of the journey towards being an anti-racist teaching artist.
• Positioning yourself in your context
• This is a resource that is intended to be used internationally. For this reason, there are some issues that aren’t dealt with explicitly, because they’re only relevant to specific parts of the world.
• Before beginning this work, it’s critical that you consider your own position in your own racialized context. Consider the historical factors that have shaped racial power and marginalisation where you now live (eg. Displacement, colonisation, slavery, genocide, religious and cultural oppression, etc). These histories have intergenerational impacts on access to resources and opportunities. Their legacies are long-lasting, and contribute to racial power and privilege.

Introductory reflection

This will help you to determine what is within your “sphere of influence” and what isn’t. While anti-racist practice is a continual process, it’s important to be realistic. Systemic racism is larger than any individual.

Suggested Pre-Reading

If you’d like to start by finding out more about racism and it’s causes, here are some helpful readings.

• Hue’s Anti-Racism Kit
• https://www.antiracismkit.com.au/
• This online guide was made in Australia by Hue. While it’s targeted at High School students, it’s an accessible introduction to anti-racism training.
• What does it Mean to be Anti-Racist by Kendra Cherry
• An accessible reading defining what racism is and ways to eradicate it.
• https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-anti-racism-5071426
• The Backlash against Racial Justice by Mario Peucker
• On your journey you might hear things such as ‘reverse racism’ or myths that racism doesn’t exist. Here’s some reading from Victoria University (Australia) to place these myths in context
• https://www.vu.edu.au/about-vu/news-events/news/what-is-reverse-racism-and-whats-wrong-with-the-term
• How to Overcome Our Biases? Walk Boldly Toward Them
• TED x Talk by Verna Myers, 2014
• https://www.ted.com/talks/verna_myers_how_to_overcome_our_biases_walk_boldly_toward_them?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

Deeper dives

• How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
• This is a bestselling book, that combines commentary with lived experience. Kendi provides examples for individual antiracist action and systemic change.
• White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
• We usually recommend books about antiracism by people of colour (which Robin DiAngelo is not). However, we know some White allies need to read this book before they’re able to engage meaningfully with other work.
• Borders to Bridges: Arts-Based Curriculum for Social Justice: Belonging, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Sovereignty, Reciprocity by Lynn Glixon Ditchfield
• Borders to Bridges is designed to promote dialogue in schools and communities by engendering deeper understanding and discussion to counter the myths and fears that negatively affect our learning institutions. This book also has a fantastic website with its own in-depth reading list https://borderstobridges.org/

Inclusive language

Key terms:
Diversity, inclusion and equity fields have a lot of terms that constantly change. You are not expected to know them all, and there’s nothing wrong with not knowing! These terms also change as society evolves (once again, this is a sign of progress).
Here’s a list of broad terms that are used in diversity, inclusion and equity fields:

• Journal Exercise: Some of these definitions are very technical. Write an illustrative example of each in your own words.
• E.g. Equality: The government has decided to give every family $50 to help purchase books for schools. Jane has 1 child. Tom has 4 children. Jane and Tom get the same amount.Work180 have an excellent glossary of key terms and acronyms that might help you. Not all of them will be appropriate to your context, but it’s a good guide to understanding basic terms and being as inclusive as you can in your language: https://work180.com/en-us/blog/diversity-and-inclusion-glossary-of-key-terms-and-acronyms
• Journal Exercise: Make a list of dot points that you learned from this resource. Are there any terms you would add from your own experience or context?

Guiding principles for anti-racist practitioners
There are many guiding principles for being an anti-racist practitioner. Here are some of ours:

1. Consider and continuously respond to the dynamics of privilege and power.
2. Listen to stories of lived experience and adopt a believing stance. Actively counteract racism.
3.  Support and centre artists of colour and artists from racialised backgrounds. Create works that honour the lived experiences of audiences and participants.
4.  Avoiding virtue signalling and performativity.

Journal Exercise: Do you have any principles to add? Are some of these more important than the others? If you feel like expressing yourself visually, sketch or create a graphic that reflects these or your guiding principles. Return to this exercise during and after working through the following pages.

Considering and continuously responding to the dynamics of privilege and power.

•  Intersectional power and privilege
• Power exists in a range of dimensions, and we all have more or less power in different dimensions. Importantly, having more power across multiple dimensions can compound, as can the impacts of having less power. For example, a person of colour who has lived in an English-speaking white community, has significant family wealth, and has English as their first language, has more privilege than a person of colour in a white community who is poor, even if they also have English as their first language, who in turn has more privilege than a person of colour in a white community who is poor and has English as their second or third language.
• Copyright Sylvia Duckworth. Image is used with permission.
• Content adapted from https://ccrweb.ca/en/power-wheel-update
• Note: This resource is from North America, and generally reflects the values of settler-colonial societies. Some of the dimensions hold across lots of different communities, while the markers (ie. what is  considered powerful/valuable) can vary. Examples of different markers of privilege: being a member of a specific religion can be valuable in one country but lead to marginalisation in another.
• Journal Exercise : Consider where you sit on each element of the Wheel of Power. Consider where others within the communities and organisations you work with might sit. (We make this suggestion cautiously – sometimes we don’t know the details of people’s lives well enough to do so, and can fall into relying on harmful stereotypes and tropes.)
• Situating your privilege in arts communities and organisations
• Having thought about your own positions of intersectional power, consider the artists, communities and organisations with which you work.
• The Wheel of power/Privilege not a complete list and there are a lot of things missing too! We share this continuum as a starting point for conversations. Take a highlighter and mark which of the  descriptions best fit with your organisation. Begin reading from the left column and work across to the right for each numbered point.
• Then, consider where you can make a difference. First, try to identify things that are within your ‘sphere of influence’ – change that is achievable, that you can enact, alone or with others, with resources you already have.
• Depending on your role within an organisation, your capacity to enact change will differ. You may be able to raise an issue but not drive change because the organisation isn’t yet ready. Sometimes the road is long. This often isn’t easy work.

Listen to stories of lived experience and adopt a believing stance. Actively counteract racism.

• Imagine you’re working on an arts project with a group of participants. Think through how you would respond in the following scenarios.
• You see someone telling a racist joke. What do you do?
• You see someone not invited to join a group. They happen to be the only person of their racial group. What do you do?
• One of your co-facilitators uses a racially inappropriate term while facilitating. What do you do?
• For facilitators and participants, any displays of racism are unacceptable and we must be proactive about stopping it, educating where necessary and making sure that positive steps forward can be taken.
• Here are some resources on bystander and upstander approaches to stopping racism. https://racismnoway.com.au/get-involved/bystander-action/
• https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/challengingracism/challenging_racism_project/our_research/bystander_anti-racism

This principle guides all of us to:

• Listen to someone if they say they have experienced racism
  Things you might say: “That sounds so difficult, I’m sorry.”

• Believe them.
  Things you might say: “Is there anything I can do to support you?” “What would help right this wrong for you?”

• Be proactive about responding to racism to ensure it doesn’t happen again Things you might do:

  • Make structural changes in the workplace or community environment to ensure it doesn’t happen again
  • Be proactive about speaking to someone who has done the wrong thing. Explain and educate if necessary
  • Lean into difficult conversations if you have made a mistake. Try not to be defensive – apologise and ask how you can repair the harm that has been done. Learn, and try to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

• Often, it’s not as straightforward as telling someone to stop. Your action might need to respond to resources or the context of the project. You might need to change the text or stimulus material to make it more inclusive. You might need to self-reflect on the needs of your participants and their safety. It’s even possible that you may not be the right teaching-artist to facilitate in various circumstances.

• While this can be hurtful to hear, true anti-racism work involves the ceding of power.

• Claire Haas has a resource on Mapping and Ceding Power that explains why this is important https://www.clairehaas.com/map-cede-power.html

• Supporting and centreing artists from racially marginalised backgrounds. Create works that honour the lived experiences of audiences and participants.
  The arts and artists are central to social change. Throughout history arts activists have played a critical role in advancing the dialogue and movements around issues of racial justice, as well as other conversations around power such as patriarchy, classism, ableism and more.

• Journal Exercise: Do you have a favourite artist or piece of art (music, film, poetry, dance, script) that speaks strongly about racism or racial justice? Write about why this is so powerful to you.

• It’s vital that art reflects the community and the wider world around us. As anti-racist practitioners we should aim to honour, protect and help foster the work of racially diverse artists. First, as an arts community we have to recognise that there is generally not a level playing field for everyone. Inequities exist and these are often racially rooted. Artists from racial minorities often have their art tokenised or minimised. Their art is often pushed to the margins, considered of lesser value that western high artforms, or in some cases, not considered ‘real’ art. For example, artforms such as graffiti, hip hop or Bollywood might be viewed by an academy as lacking in technique, or their artists might be considered disruptive. Artists from racial minorities are under-represented in arts leadership and management. They are often less represented in galleries, museums and performance houses, and need to fight for comparable funding or pay to their majoritarian counterparts.

• Here are a few ways to counter the myriad of challenges faced by artists from racially marginalised backgrounds, as well as ways to centre their work.

• Nurture artists: Keep in mind that racially marginalised people tend to be “over-mentored”. Mentoring is important, but ultimately, sponsorship is what makes a difference. Make direct contact with a funder and ask them to consider a project run by racially diverse artists. Check the artistic programming of your organisation and ask yourselves if it is racially diverse. Look at your board or governance to see if there needs to be more racial diversity. We know that more diverse organisations are more likely to thrive, so proactively hire artists from diverse backgrounds. Take artists from racially diverse backgrounds along to networking events. Give them your funding and a place at the table. Sometimes this might be your place and that’s going to be hard. But anti-racist work involves the ceding of power at its core. In order for it to be effective, it has to be hard.

• Celebrate, share and promote racially diverse artists: Fill your social media with diverse artists. Follow organisations and institutions that centre racially diverse artists and attend their events. Become a donor or a subscriber. Take community members, especially participants in your programs, to see art made by racially diverse artists. Write to your local arts programmers to demand more diversity.

• Listen and learn: A lot of allyship involves listening and learning. If an artist or participant from a racial minority says they have been treated badly or they are uncomfortable, you need to listen and take their concerns seriously. Lean into difficult conversations. Ask yourself what you can do to help or remedy the situation. Take yourself off the panel discussion or remain silent during a planning meeting if the topic concerns a racial group that you’re not a part of. Once again, the ceding of power is central to anti-racist work. Accept that some days, your privileged position means that you’re structurally part of the problem. This doesn’t mean that you yourself have done something wrong, but you have a key role in the eradication of racism. And remember and acknowledge that there is historical and contemporary hurt and pain in all of these conversations. Finally, lead by example. By virtue of being a teaching-artist, you are a community leader. There are other teaching-artists and participants around you who will learn from your actions. Take every opportunity to model good allyship to those around you.

Avoiding virtue signalling and performativity.

• What is virtue signalling? https://helpfulprofessor.com/virtue-signaling-examples/

• Anti-racist work is hard because change can’t occur if we just say the right things, but don’t follow up with actions. It’s important that spending time critiquing others, or being vocal about how progressive we are, doesn’t overshadow the hard work that has to come with anti-racist practice. As a good ally, you may never be noticed or celebrated for that. And that’s the point! It’s not about you.

• Virtue signalling and performative allyship happen everywhere, including in the arts. Journal Exercise: Write an example of virtue signalling or performative allyship in the arts  E.g. A theatre company publishes an anti-racist statement on their website, but only hires white employees and programs a season of plays written by racial majority playwrights.

• Here are 7 Empty Actions to Avoid Performative Allyship https://www.deannasingh.com/blog/avoid-performative-allyship

• Journal Exercise: Make an affirmation list of things you will endeavour to do as a teaching-artist to avoid performative allyship or virtue signalling.
  e.g. I will educate myself about my local communities of colour without telling people how educated I am.Ways to move ahead

• Working with communities that are not your own

• As a teaching-artist, it’s quite common to be asked to work on a project or in a situation where you are not a member of that community. What steps should you take to ensure that this is a positive and empowering engagement for everyone?

• What’s the problem?

• As artists, we are skilled professionals and often want to share the benefits of our work with a range of communities. But there’s a big difference between working ‘with’, rather than working ‘in’ or ‘for’ communities. Sometimes an organisation seeks to “serve” a given community. These top-down engagements are framed by the perspectives of the organisations, and typically reinforce dominant cultural norms, and could even marginalize certain participants. The assumption is that the community is a deficit, and thereby they are the problem. Dale McCreedy, Nancy Maryboy, Breanne Litts,

• Tony Streit and Jameela Jafri say
  “Instead of building on the community’s assets, these programs may ignore, discount, or simplify local contexts, and thus deepen divides between organizations and their communities.”

• Read more here: file://ad.uws.edu.au/dfshare/HomesBNK$/30048843/Downloads/BP-11-Working-With-Communities.pdf

Some things to consider

• Is your work needed, and who benefits from it?
• How much agency do participants have?
• Who invited you, and are they community members themselves?
• What is the power relationship between you and the participants? How can you co-design to take power imbalances into account?
• Do you have adequate training or experience to work in this situation? For example, do you need to engage trauma informed practice, and do you have the expertise to do this?
• Do you need to build time into the project to build trust, rapport and relationships?
•  Is the work sustainable?

Some easy initial actions to get you started

• Ask participants if they’d like to engage with you. Seek permission before beginning your work.

• Learn about the historical and cultural context

• Don’t drain a community of labour, resources or skills. Similarly, don’t take jobs or resources that should have gone to that community. Rather, transfer power and resources to communities

• Be transparent about why you are doing this work and what the benefit is to yourself

• Set up good leadership models that aid transparency, such as MOUs (Memorandum of Understanding)

• Commit time, people and resources long term

• Learn cultural protocols

• Respect participants’ knowledge and expertise

• Prepare for difficult conversations about what you’re doing and why you are there. A lot of marginalised communities have been used in negative ways and treated badly by various people and agencies.

• It’s critical that you understand this and don’t become part of the problem

• Think before you take photos, videos or make speeches about participants. Ask yourself who it benefits and if its necessary

• Journal exercise: As teaching-artists, we have all seen practices or projects where the process was less-than-ethical. We may have even been part of these practices ourselves. It’s fine to have made mistakes, what’s important is that we keep learning. Write about a situation that you have seen or experienced that was not positive. List all the things that could have been done to prevent the damage.

• Some tools to help

• RPP (Research-Practice Partnership) toolkit

• http://researchandpractice.org/toolkit/

• Borders to Bridges by Lynn Glixon Ditchfield

• https://borderstobridges.org/

• Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets (1993)

• https://resources.depaul.edu/abcd-institute/publications/Pages/basic-manual.aspx NOTE: this resource is fairly old and has dated in some areas, but it was a landmark resource of its time

• Evaluating anti-racist practice at your organisation

• If you’re ready for an evaluation tool to assist your orgnaisation, or yourself as an individual, on the road to becoming an anti-racist arts and cultural organisation, we highly recommend this resource by
  Kathy Hsieh for Racial Equity Arts Lab Forum (REAL Forum) © based on an adaptation by Crossroads Ministry, Chicago, IL, © from a Multicultural Organization Development theory authored by

• Bailey Jackson and Rita Hardiman ©.

• https://www.seattle.gov/documents/departments/arts/downloads/grants/caregrant/continuumonbecomingananti-racistartsandculturalorg_2022update.pdf

• Theories to help you

• For some people, theories can seem heavy, but for others theories are helpful. Anti-racist practice has its origins in many theories and you may with to do some more reading.

Intersectionality
Refers to the way in which different aspects of a person’s identity can expose them to discrimination, vulnerability and marginalisation.

• Read more here: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/5/20/18542843/intersectionality-conservatism-law-race-gender-discrimination

Critical Race Theory

• A theory that sees race as socially constructed and racism as perpetuated by individuals, institutions and structures
• Read more here: https://theconversation.com/critical-race-theory-what-it-is-and-what-it-isnt-162752

Postcolonial Theory

• A theory that aims to reclaim and rethink history and agency of peoples who where colonised
• Read more here https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780190221911/obo-9780190221911-0069.xml

Decolonial Theory

• A process of critiquing and undoing colonialism
• Read more here https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-decolonisation-131455
• Decolonization is not a metaphor (Tuck & Yang, 2012)
• https://clas.osu.edu/sites/clas.osu.edu/files/Tuck%20and%20Yang%202012%20Decolonization%20is%20not%20a%20metaphor.pdf

Reading list

• The rise of land acknowledgments — and their limitations by Emily St James https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23200329/land-acknowledgments-indigenous-landback
• Continuum on Becoming an Anti-Racist Arts and Cultural Organization by Seattle Office of Arts and Culture
• Adapted from original concept by Bailey Jackson and Rita Hardiman, and further developed by Andrea Avazian and Ronice
• Branding; further adapted by Melia LaCour, PSESD.
• https://www.seattle.gov/documents/departments/arts/downloads/grants/caregrant/continuumonbecomingananti-racistartsandculturalorg_2022update.pdf
• Concentric Circles: Unpacking Privilege and Power Developed by Maggie Potapchuk, MP Associates
• https://www.njjn.org/uploads/digital-library/potapchukm.pdf
• Anti-Racist practice for Teaching Artists by ITAC https://sway.office.com/IxGIP3Bycc038Vse?ref=Link
• Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets (1993)
• https://resources.depaul.edu/abcd-institute/publications/Pages/basic-manual.aspx
• What Does Working “With (not For) Our Communities Look Like by McCreedy, Maryboy, Litts, Streit and Jafri file://ad.uws.edu.au/dfshare/HomesBNK$/30048843/Downloads/BP-11-Working-With-Communities.pdf

Listening list

• Asking Hard Questions: A podcast for arts educators that explores issues of cultural representation and appropriation by Rachael Jacobs and Rachael Dwyer (Episode 6 with Karla Estela Rivera)
• https://soundcloud.com/asking_hard_questions/tracks
• Code Switch from NPR
• https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch
• About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
• https://open.spotify.com/show/6RNwASBcNjuK4tuqdaXzBn?si=7wG82LpBROOOww9-xL1ndQ&nd=1
• The Diversity Gap: Race Conscious Leadership by Bethany Wilkinson
• https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bethaney-wilkinson

References

• Research-Practice Partnership Toolkit |
• Home | Borders to Bridges
• Power wheel update | Canadian Council for Refugees
• CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Deed | Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International | Creative Commons
• 16 Virtue Signaling Examples (2024)
• About Race with Reni Eddo-Lodge | Podcast on Spotify
• Bystander action - Stand up to Racism - Racism. No Way!
• Anti-Racist practice for Teaching Artists
• Mapping and Ceding Power - CLAIRE HAAS
• No More Performative Allies: 7 Empty Actions to Avoid
• ITAC
• Code Switch : NPR
• Postcolonial Theory - Literary and Critical Theory - Oxford Bibliographies
• Ibram X Kendi on why not being racist is not enough | Race | The Guardian
• Anti-Racism
• The meaning — and limitations — of land acknowledgements - Vox
• The meaning — and limitations — of land acknowledgements - Vox

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