ALLIANCE FOR CULTURAL EQUITY
“Black communities have had cooperation as the center of sustainability forever. True collaboration is possible when each institution understands its unique mission, process and people served. New strategies can be imagined, a connected vision can be expanded upon and new understanding can solidify a foundation for new ways of engaging in our work.”
- Gia M. Hamilton
Executive Director and Chief Curator
New Orleans African American Museum
Ashé is leading a collaboration of the New Orleans Data Center, Shift Collective, Helicon Collaborative, and Southern University at New Orleans in conducting a study with a cohort of local organizations to report on the role small museums and archives focused on preserving the histories and culture of marginalized people play in the welfare of their communities, the value they bring to their local cultural economy, and potential models for their financial sustainability.
Because Ashé is committed to ensuring that the record of the shared cultural heritage of New Orleans and the African Diaspora becomes more inclusive and remains accessible, this research will focus on community-based archives that primarily serve or document marginalized people and communities, including LGBTQIA people, indigenous people, African Americans, Latinx people, immigrants of color, and victims of police violence and mass incarceration.
These organizations who continue to collect and preserve histories of marginalized people and are recognized as essential threads of the cultural landscape, yet in cities like New Orleans, they receive only a tiny portion of financial support given to culture and arts organizations in the region. This inequity is typical of the cultural funding landscape in the United States, in which some of these organizations have found ways to thrive, while others barely keep the doors open with volunteer staff, individual donations and memberships.
While people of color represent 37 percent of the US population, just 4% of all foundation arts and culture funding is allocated to groups whose primary mission is to serve communities of color. Even though there is recognition of this inequity among public and private donors, and many are working to address it, the funding is in fact growing less equitable. While major institutions reach for ways to embrace diversity and inclusion, we are focusing on our institutions in marginalized communities that are serving the cultural needs of our diverse American population now. We believe that better understanding the inequity in funding along with identifying successful models like Sustainable Tourism, that can be policy-based—regulated and replicated—is the best way toward survival.
