Arts & Culture Roundtable

We invite you to join us this spring and summer for a series of Arts & Culture Roundtables addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion in our Lane County arts community, focusing on racial justice.

Thursday, May 6th, 5-7pm
Thursday, May 20th, 5-7pm
REGISTER: https://lanearts.org/roundtables/

Participation is free and open to all.

The first two (virtual) roundtables in May will be community-guided conversations. Following roundtables will be planned in response to the needs that arise from those initial conversations.

The arts are an integral and powerful tool in helping communities reflect, grow, and heal, but first, we need to examine how our local arts community excludes some of the most relevant voices of our time. Through this series of roundtables, we want to better understand and acknowledge the inequalities that exist in Lane County’s arts community. We are striving to:

• Take an honest look at the issues and challenges in our own arts communities
• Identify strategies to improve equity, accessibility, and representation in our own practices, programs, operations, and organizational cultures
• Recognize gaps and identify existing resources and support for artists and arts professionals
• Cultivate space for the voices of black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) and other underrepresented community members to be heard

These Arts & Culture Roundtables are planned in response to the larger need to address harmful systems of power. It is our responsibility to acknowledge our community’s history and actively gather to have courageous conversations about its current state of exclusion, inclusivity, and representation.

Ultimately, we hope participants will gain new perspectives and information, find inspiration to create change in their organizations and communities, and garner a newfound connection with other artists and arts professionals for support and resource-sharing.

Roundtables are a partnership of Lane Arts Council, Arts & Business Alliance of Eugene, Florence Regional Arts Alliance, Minority Voices Theatre, and Wordcrafters in Eugene. Sponsored by Springfield Arts Commission and Columbia Bank.