Making Waves - Impact of regional regranting programs supporting socially-engaged art

Round Table

MAKING WAVES – IMPACT OF REGIONAL REGRANTING PROGRAMS SUPPORTING SOCIALLY-ENGAGED ART

Locust Projects, 3852 N Miami Ave | Transportation Options

With a range of experts, this roundtable will discuss how organizations best support artists who seek to create socially-engaged works that address socially complex issues and struggles of relevance in our South Florida communities. The discussion aims to address measuring success and impact, what is at stake for artists, the community and the organization when working in this way, and who is responsible to the communities involved. This discussion will be navigated through the framework of regional regranting programs like WaveMaker, that support socially-engaged, non-institutional, non-commercial projects that can, and are, have an impact.

Michelle Lisa Polissaint is a visual artist & arts organizer. Her current practice is focused on producing activations that encourage artists and community members to form collaborative longstanding relationships. She is the Program & Outreach Manager at Locust Projects where she is at the helm of all public programming including Talks and the R+D / Mobile Studio. In her previous position as Programs Manager of The Miami Rail she successfully implemented the Visiting Writer Program, Block by Block Program and produced the new Writer’s Retreat partnering with The Standard, Miami Beach.

Lee Heinemann is an artist and organizer who makes programs and events with individuals and institutions. Lee is the initiator and lead facilitator of Get Your Life!—a collaborative, youth-centered video production company that partners practicing artists with middle school students at Baltimore, MD community center 901 Arts. Lee is the current Education and Community Engagement Manager at ArtCenter/South Florida. Previously, he served as the Education Director of Baltimore nomadic museum The Contemporary and as the 2018 program coordinator for United States Artists.

Jason Fitzroy Jeffers is a Miami-based writer, filmmaker and musician from Barbados. As a filmmaker, he wrote and produced the award-winning short film Papa Machete, exploring the esoteric martial art of Haitian machete fencing, which premiered at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival and in the U.S. at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. He is co-founder of Third Horizon, a Miami-based collective of Caribbean filmmakers, musicians and artists, and is the Festival Director of the collective’s annual Third Horizon Film Festival, which aims to celebrate and empower the new creative voices emerging from the region. He is currently the Cinematic Arts Manager at ArtCenter/ South Florida.

Elizabeth Spavento is the Visual Arts Programmer for SPACE in Portland, ME where she curates exhibitions, administers the Kindling Fund Grant and runs a residency program dedicated to highlighting the contributions of queer artists and artists of color. From 2014 – 2016, Spavento co-curated ALL RISE, a temporary, multi-disciplinary public art program that took place on an acre of vacant land in downtown Seattle. Previous curatorial projects include exhibitions with Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, Open Source Gallery, and Interstitial. She is the Co-Founder of Border Patrol, a curatorial collective and exhibition space that explores the intersection of contemporary art and corporate aesthetics.