HartBeat Ensemble Receives $100K Grant From ArtsHERE To Support Stories Toward A Beloved Community

HartBeat Ensemble is one of 112 organizations nationwide selected to receive an ArtsHERE grant of $100,000 as part of a new pilot program from the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with South Arts and in collaboration with the other five U.S. Regional Arts Organizations.

These grants support specific projects that will strengthen the organizations' capacity to sustain meaningful community engagement and increase arts participation for underserved groups and communities.

“The National Endowment for the Arts is thrilled to provide resources to a group of exceptional organizations through ArtsHERE, a program to help deepen meaningful and lasting arts engagement in underserved communities,” said Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD, chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. “Everyone should be able to live an artful life, and ArtsHERE is an important step in ensuring we are strengthening our nation's arts ecosystem to make this a reality.”

Historically underserved groups and communities—those whose opportunities to experience the arts have been limited by factors such as geography, race or ethnicity, economics, or disability—frequently report lower rates of participation in various arts activities than other groups do. ArtsHERE aims to address disparities in arts participation through grants that help organizations better serve and reach their communities.

The ArtsHERE grants is specifically designated to support HartBeat Ensemble's new Stories From a Beloved Community initiative. Artistic Director Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr. states, "This program is a professional development enterprise of storytelling and theater-based practices to help organizations build more empathetic and just working and learning communities. These interactive engagements, in a variety of forms, allow participants to practice stepping up, using empathy, active listening, and making conscious choices. We utilize interactive theater, drama-based strategies, and experiential learning to address complex DEIJ issues and foster meaningful change."

“We are very excited to work with these organizations on their projects,” said Susie Surkamer, president and CEO of South Arts. “The arts are essential to the fabric of our nation, and at the heart of this necessity are the organizations and individuals who champion them. Through ArtsHERE, we are excited to continue expanding and enriching the arts landscape both nationally and within these unique local communities.”

In addition to grant awards, ArtsHERE grant recipients will also participate in quarterly peer learning workshops, monthly cohort sessions, and one-on-one meetings with technical assistance coaches and field experts. These meetings are designed for knowledge sharing, learning, and capacity-building, to help reinforce the initiative's opportunities for cross-sector engagement.

As a pilot program, ArtsHERE will be documented and evaluated by the NEA to better understand the project activities supported by this program and how grantees approached the work. These insights may inform the future of ArtsHERE and similar funding programs in the future. More than 4,000 organizations applied for ArtsHERE funding in late 2023 and early 2024. Applications were reviewed by multiple review panels based on published review criteria, including the applicant's organizational capacity and their capacity-building project, alignment with ArtsHERE's commitment to

equity, and engagement with historically underserved communities. The selected organizations will receive funding to support their projects, which will take place between October 2024 through June 2026. For more information on all of the ArtsHERE recommended grants, visit artsHERE.org.

ArtsHERE is also supported by The Wallace Foundation through matching funds to the Regional Arts Organizations in support of this program.

About Stories Toward a Beloved Community:

Stories Toward a Beloved Community is a professional development program of storytelling and theater-based practices providing a framework for organizations to build more empathetic and just working communities. The program is adapted from a series of community-building anti-racism initiatives HartBeat Ensemble Artistic Director Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr. co-developed for Civic Ensemble in Ithaca, NY.

The foundation for all these practices is the Story Circle, an equitable listening exercise developed by the legendary African-American theatre maker and organizer John O'Neal, where each participant tells a personal story relating to a prompt relevant to the challenges faced by their organization. Though effective as a community-building tool on its own, Story Circles, along with other data-driven approaches are used to develop Forum Plays Toward Beloved Communities in which real-world situations provide opportunities for participants to practice productive ways of solving intractable problems. These interactive simulations, in a variety of forms, allow participants to practice stepping up, using empathy, making a conscious choice. 

Simmons states, "One of the core complaints organizations and individuals have about DEIJ work is that it either unwittingly shames them or leaves them without tools to solve their problems. What our Forum Plays do is empower organizations and their constituents to solve their own problems through storytelling, reflection, practice, and more reflection.”

HartBeat Ensemble members initiate a deep-dive within an organization, be it a school, a workplace, or an organization. After they conduct story circles, interviews, and work climate surveys to discover what is really going on in a particular environment, HartBeat uses the data to create an original, tailor-made play that ends in a micro-aggression. The play is then performed for the organization's constituents twice. The second time through participants are instructed to interrupt the action of the play at a moment where they feel they can stop or change the series of events that led to the micro-aggression. Participants are able to insert themselves into the play to change the narrative themselves. 

According to Simmons, “Our forum plays help empower stakeholders to recognize micro-aggressions and affect change. People learn that it is never too late to clean stuff up after we mess up. We can undo systems that don't work for people. Participants not only change the narrative of the play; they see their blind spots and change outcomes." 

To find out how to bring HartBeat Ensemble's Stories Toward a Beloved Community to your school, workplace or organization, contact Jeanika Browne-Springer at jeanika.browne@hartbeatensemble.org. HartBeat Ensemble was selected as a participant of Hartford Foundation for Public Giving's Social Enterprise Accelerator (SEA) to help launch Stories Toward a Beloved Community in 2023.

 

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