The Gathering Workshop Series
- Black Cultural Studies Collective
- School of Arts & Sciences
- 2020 Black Artists Support Grant
The Black Cultural Studies Collective (BCSC) is an interdisciplinary working group committed to critically engaging the histories, literatures, and cultural production of African-descended people across the diaspora. In our current moment where there is a renewed commitment to abolishing police and divesting from anti-Black institutional structures, we recognize that building communities of mutual support is extremely important to counter punitive institutions that commit anti-Black violence. The Gathering Workshop Series (August-October 2020) will thus expand BCSC’s commitment to the wellness and survival of African-descended people through art, collaborative education, and community building. Each program invites a Black Philadelphia-based artist to collaborate with BCSC toward creating in-person and virtual hybrid workshops that will explore creative strategies for processing the intense conditions of our present moment by utilizing embodied, literary, visual and sound-based arts. The series will be grounded in the political and ethical principles of Black studies and Black feminist praxis by centering the principles of transformative justice, community healing, and the expansion of radical Black political education.