EMANCIPATE: Press
The Culture Project will gear up for its spring "Women Center Stage" festival with an artists trip to New Orleans.
Emancipate – the Culture Project's producing arm, which focuses on supporting and promoting the work of women artists – will send eight musicians to New Orleans in March in order to meet with members of the community.
The exchange program will connect women musicians in New Orleans with women musicians from other parts of the country. The March trip is part of an ongoing initiative exploring the re-birth of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.
Included are Pamela Means, Alix Olson, Vicki Randle, Cris Williamson, Charmaine Neville, Asia Rainey, Gabrilla Ballard and Sunni Patterson. While in New Orleans, the songwriters will meet with women from Louisiana ACORN, New Orleans Outreach, Silence is Violence, Renew Our Music, Friends and Family of Louisiana's Incarcerated, INCITE, Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, the People's Hurricane Relief Fund and the Grand Bayou Community.
Each musician will create songs based on her experiences that will be recorded on disc in June. Proceeds from the recording will be donated to a New Orleans service-oriented community organization.
Participants in the program will document their experiences through EmancipationInititaive.net, which will have daily blogs from the musicians, photos and video diaries.
As part of the "Women Center Stage" festival, the Culture Project will present a live performance of Emancipate on April 27. Further details will be announced shortly.
Further information is available by visiting www.cultureproject.org.
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For more than a decade The Culture Project has produced thought-provoking political theatre, tackling contemporary global issues. Under the wings of Allan Buchman, The Culture Project has presented numerous critically acclaimed and award-winning productions, including Eve Ensler's The Treatment, The Exonerated, Sarah Jones' Bridge & Tunnel, Iris Bahr's Dai (enough), Guantanamo, AMAJUBA: Like Doves We Rise, My Trip To Al-Qaeda and George Packer's Betrayed.
Women Musicians Shine a Light on New Orleans
March 2-6, four women arts activists (Cris Williamson, Vicki Randle, Alix Olson and Pamela Means) will travel to New Orleans to collaborate with four local women musicians (Asia Rainey, GaBrilla Ballard, Sunni Patterson, and Charmaine Neville). The trip is being organized by the Artistic Director of Women Center Stage, Olivia Greer, who I interviewed last year, as part of Culture Project's EMANCIPATE program. During the trip, the eight women will travel together throughout the area to meet with activists and community-based organizations.
On April 27 the eight musicians will meet again in New York City to perform new songs inspired by their trip as part of the Women Center Stage Festival. In June, their songs will be recorded, and the CD sales will benefit a community organization in New Orleans.
Jacqueline Lee, a Women's eNews correspondent went to the first EMANCIPATE event this summer during the Women Center Stage Festival. In her post, Center Stage Struck, she wrote about the experience:
"I felt more confident about myself and my own thoughts just being in a roomful of women who could speak their minds so strongly and have it be OK, and to hear how they think and what they have to say."
Melissa Silverstein also reported from the Festival for the Huffington Post in her piece, Women Center Stage -- Women Artists and Activists for Social Change:
"Emancipate brings together activist women songwriters using art to raise consciousness in their communities. Singer Taini Asili, who is committed to the movement to free Mumia Abu Jamal, used her set to sing about breaking out of our own mental prisons, and Alix Olsen a self defined radical lesbian feminist railed against the political establishment."
You can follow news from the eight women's travels on the EMANCIPATE web site and leave a comment in their Guestbook.
A group of activist women musicians will be hitting town March 2-6, thanks to Emancipate, a project of Culture Project’s annual Women Center Stage series. Women Center Stage is focused on supporting and vigorously promoting the work of women artists, writers and musicians.
Here is a great link to a page on Emancipate’s website outlining their goals of standing in solidarity with the people of our city and insisting that the rest of the country engage in the rebuilding of New Orleans. There will be blogging on this site during the entire stay here.
“The struggles that the citizens of New Orleans face are in many ways no different than those of any small- or mid-size American city, where corporate interests have plundered all the natural resources, including the people, and are proceeding to suck out the bone marrow. Problems of housing and healthcare, education and employment, existed before Katrina, and they are exacerbated a hundred times over after Katrina.”
Some of the organizations the women will be interacting with are Louisiana ACORN, New Orleans Outreach, Silence is Violence, Renew Our Music, Friends and Family of Louisiana’s Incarcerated, INCITE, Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund and the Grand Bayou Community.
This is so exciting!
On April 27, the women will perform brand new songs inspired by their visit here as part of the Women Center Stage series. Later, the songs will be recorded on CD with the proceeds going to a New Orleans service based community organization.
All this news has me so excited I had to go to YouTube and post this video. Sistah’s Are Doin’ It for Themselves. The video’s kinda campy but Annie’s voice is smokin’.
Never underestimate the power of a woman….(a saying from back in the day.)
Culture Project has announced that Emancipate, a project of its annual Women Center Stage series, will bring a group of female musicians (who are also activists in their communities) to New Orleans to meet with activists doing rebuilding work in New Orleans, and bring their stories to a national audience. The artists will be in New Orleans March 2-6, 2008, and will create new songs to premiere at Culture Project's 2008 festival this spring.
Emancipate will gather Pamela Means, Alix Olson, Vicki Randle, Cris Williamson, Charmaine Neville, Asia Rainey, Gabrilla Ballard and Sunni Patterson in New Orleans to meet with community organizers leading the rebuilding and advocacy efforts in the continuing aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
The musicians will meet with Louisiana ACORN, New Orleans Outreach, Silence is Violence, Renew Our Music, Friends and Family of Louisiana's Incarcerated, INCITE, Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, the People's Hurricane Relief Fund and the Grand Bayou Community. People can follow the musicians' trip by visiting EmancipationInititaive.net, which will have daily blogs from the musicians, photos and video diaries.
The March trip is the first of 3 phases in a long-term project connecting these musicians to each other and to New Orleans. On April 27, 2008, as part of Culture Project's Women Center Stage series, all eight participants will perform brand new songs inspired by their March visit to The Big Easy. In June 2008, the artists will meet again to record their songs. Proceeds from the CD will be donated to a New Orleans service-oriented community organization, which will be chosen collaboratively by the participating artists after the initial March visit.
"The struggles that New Orleans and the surrounding region face are not going away. In nearly three years, they've increased. Emancipate is working to keep New Orleans in the national conscience (and consciousness) by taking stories around the country through the voices of these extraordinary participating musicians. They will continue to speak on behalf of New Orleans and build a motivational demand for action," declare press notes.
Emancipate is housed by Culture Project's Women Center Stage, a multidisciplinary producing arm focused on supporting and vigorously promoting the work of women artists, writers and change makers.
Culture Project's mission is to bear witness to injustice, to stimulate challenging conversation about the most profound and urgent matters of our time and to convert interest, energy and engagement into a motivational demand for progressive change. Culture Project has premiered celebrated shows including The Exonerated, Sarah Jones' Bridge & Tunnel, Guantanamo, AMAJUBA: Like Doves We Rise and Lawrence Wright's My Trip To Al-Qaeda and most recently presented Dan Hoyle's acclaimed solo show Tings Dey Happen, Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove's Rebel Voices and their provocative A Question of Impeachment series. They are currently presenting the World Premiere of George Packer's critically acclaimed play Betrayed.
For more information visit www.EmancipationInititaive.net or www.cultureproject.org