Requiem for the Living, In Color, will build on a piece created in 2020 as a response to the murder of George Floyd and protests for racial justice and police reform across the US. This work will respond to current critical events, amplify RI’s creative voices and incorporate new sounds. Now is a moment of evolution or extinction, a moment for a new ecology of art with a new focus on empathy for one another and a focusing of that empathy. We must marry our loving, creative acts of defiance with immediate, specific, systemic policies of change and anti-racist practice.
This grant is in honor of Dr. Larry Simpson, a NEFA board member from 2006–2020, including six years as chair, and a champion of the arts.