A Message from Our Programs Team
This month marks Juneteenth, Pride Month, and Caribbean Heritage Month, where we reflect on the 1865 emancipation of enslaved African people in the United States, the history of LGTBQ+ activism and the Stonewall Riots of 1969, as well as honor the achievements and contributions of Caribbean immigrants and their descendants to this country. At Brooklyn Arts Council, we continue to deepen our commitment to seeking equity and justice for people of all backgrounds through the arts. We cherish and celebrate the diversity of this borough and are grateful for the energy you bring into our lives each and every day. Please find the inclusion of Juneteenth, Pride, and Caribbean Heritage programs and resources from our network as well as external organizations.
On June 2nd, we announced the Creative Equations Fund, an investment strategy dedicated to arts for social justice made possible by the support of the Howard Gilman Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Hopestreet, and the New American Economy. Guidelines will be released on June 14 and applications will open on June 28.
Click the button below to learn more.
Our June Programs
We are excited to announce a return of in-person events as well as a continuation of our online programming.
Phase 1 of our Financial Literacy Suite begins this June with 1:1 counseling sessions between 10 individual artists and representatives at the Brooklyn Co-op Federal Credit Union. Among the cohort are film makers, puppeteers, opera singer, visual artists, thespians, and writers exploring topics from taxes and expense tracking to home-buying and credit. We look forward to featuring them in the summer webinars that will follow the counseling sessions when representatives from our partners, the Brooklyn Coop Federal Credit Union, TD Bank and the Business Solutions Center at the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce will share best practices in areas of both personal finance and small business development.
A big thank you to those who came out to the Opening Night of Access Art 2021 and showed their support of BAC and Brooklyn artists. It was truly an uplifting evening and a reminder of the powerful role that the arts play in our lives each and every day.
AccessArt
June 4 - June 12
Open Daily
12 PM - 6 PM
CityPoint (Main Floor)
445 Albee Square West
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Arts Council is proud to present our first in-person event in a long time: a return and expansion of our beloved AccessArt affordable art sale. This year’s event benefits both BAC and participating artists, whose world has been turned upside down by the pandemic. All works are currently available for sale at fair market prices to the public, with proceeds split between BAC and the artists. Come by the gallery often during the course of the run to see open rehearsals and pop-up performances from some of the artists and collectives in our grantee and fiscal sponsee roster.
All necessary health and safety measures are observed, including masks, social distancing, and capacity limits, as needed.
Neighborhood Clinic Healing Installations
Aeilushi Mistry. Aarti Hindu Lamp Ceremony (AHLC).
Weeksville Heritage Center
58 Buffalo Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11233
Brooklyn Arts Council's Neighborhood Clinic Healing Installations amplify the healing power of art and cultural traditions. Mounted at Weeksville Heritage Center, these installations continue Brooklyn's legacy of self-determination by allowing each featured artist to define "healing" in the terms of their own culture and practice. The Neighborhood Clinic installations make space for community healing and for self-determination, just as Weeksville offered a space of community independence, thriving, and wellness. These installations claim safe space for community healing by affirming the right to community expression, cultural preservation, and creative vision.
Each of these installations will be available in person, livestreamed, and recorded for free on demand viewing.
June 15 | 3 PM - 5 PM
Neil Clarke
Brooklyn Bugarabou
Internationally renown percussionist, abstracts, contemporizes, and elevates traditional West African drum resonances as sonic pathways to deeper breath and higher consciousness.
RSVP
June 17 | 12 PM - 2 PM
Nate Martinez
Musician and sound practitioner draws on various healing, shamanic, and creative traditions of world cultures in sound bath demonstration and discussion about sound therapy for mindfulness and self-healing.
RSVP
June 18 | 11:30 AM - 1 PM
Aeilushi Mistry
Classically trained Indian dancer and cultural preservationist leads Aarti Hindu Lamp Ceremony and Davida Dance circle, incorporating, light, water, and movement for grief, memory, and release.
RSVP
June 23 | 3 PM - 5:15 PM
Ifetayo Cultural Arts Academy
Intergenerational and interactive practices of community wellness through connectedness including:
Conversation with Ifetayo IWA, Council of Elders, and the Ifetayo Youth Ensemble. Topic: What hurts? What helps? Healing through sharing and hearing
Quilt making and the Healing Qualities of Color with Sister Tamika Albertini
The Legacy and Symbology of the Ring Shout (Presentation) + Community Ringshout led by Dr. Angela Fatou Gittens
Roundtable Connections: Producing Brooklyn
June 17
5:30 PM - 7 PM
Virtual
Developed in partnership with community partner and lead cultural producer, Yvette Rennie, Brooklyn Arts Council presents a Community Roundtable featuring leaders of Caribbean cultural community and representatives from city agencies to talk about safety, permitting, and liquor licensing. Speakers will represent neighborhood organizations and the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice and the Mayor's Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety. This conversation will establish points of connection and exchange so community cultural practitioners can more successfully navigate city systems and city systems can be more accessible to community.
Events, Artist Opportunities & Resources from Our Grantees & Many Other Organizations!
We are excited to share upcoming events, reliable funding, artist opportunities, and other resources from our grantees, fiscal sponsees as well as external organizations. Keep scrolling for a full, comprehensive list of what's top-of-mind this June.
Our Grantees' Events
Upcoming in-person & virtual events hosted by our grantees & fiscal sponsees.
Proud voices: a multi-city pride month audio festival
Ania Upstill and Butch Mermaid Productions is a 2021 Brooklyn Arts Fund grantee. Visit Ania on their Instagram.
Ongoing
Park Slope, Brooklyn
Proud Voices is a multi-city, interactive queer audio festival redefining togetherness by safely celebrating the diversity of queer expression. Proud Voices showcases the beauty and diversity of queer artists and stimulates the queer economy by highlighting queer-owned businesses through a unique form of safe community engagement.
In 2021 Proud Voices takes place in Austin, Brooklyn, and Auckland. In each city the festival revolves around "stops", which are a total of eight participating queer-owned and queer-friendly small businesses. At each stop, participants can discover an exclusive QR code that allows them to stream a song, poem, or auditory piece from a local queer artist. Reconfiguring what a festival can be — Proud Voices will be ongoing throughout Pride month, so folks can participate at their own pace.
Proud Voices is brought to you by Butch Mermaid Productions, Thee Gay Agenda, and Embrace Austin.
chamberqueer concert
June 12
12:15 PM
Brooklyn Pride Stage
5th Ave & 4th St
ChamberQUEER was founded in 2018 by Jules Biber, Danielle Buonaiuto, Brian Mummert, and Andrew Yee, with a mission to program queer artists and composers; highlight historically under-represented queer figures in classical music; and provide an inclusive and intersectional space in classical music for artists and audience alike. In addition to the flagship concert series, held annually in Brooklyn in June during Pride, ChamberQUEER hosts community events such as reading parties and house concerts, and will soon expand to provide education and mentorship to emerging queer performers and composers.
arts gowanus: we’re still here…
May 15 - June 25
J.J. Byrne Playground
5th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11215
Arts Gowanus is holding a public outdoor portraiture exhibition featuring over 130 works created by and depicting local Brooklyn residents. After over a year of struggles during COVID, this exhibition celebrates the resilience, strength, and diversity of our amazing Brooklyn community. This project is in collaboration with The Old Stone House & Washington Park and is part of the Arts Gowanus Gallery Dispersed initiative partially funded by the Brooklyn Arts Council.
Events & Programs
Additional happenings hosted by outside organizations, collectives, and institutions.
brooklyn museum programs
Honoring Juneteenth
Thursday, June 19
11 AM & 6 PM – 8 PM
Brooklyn Museum Plaza
200 Eastern Pkwy,
Brooklyn, NY 11238
Honor Juneteenth—the annual holiday commemorating the end of legal slavery in the United States—and support the ongoing movement for Black lives and liberation. Come together to hear music and remarks by local community leaders before Good Company Bike Club kicks off their Freedom Ride, then return at sunset for live music, food provided by Black Chef Movement, and mindfulness with Meditating for Black Lives. Plus, stop by throughout the day to share what Juneteenth means to you and have your portrait taken by Souls in Focus.
Pop-Up Performance: Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra
June 20
2 PM - 4 PM
Drop by our plaza to hear string players from the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra perform a festive, family-friendly selection of music by Strauss, Prokofiev, Brahms, John Williams, and Adele led by Associate Conductor Felipe Tristan. This event is free and takes place outdoors.
Art World Conference Webinars
The Future Of Leadership
June 8
4 PM - 5 PM
Recess, a nonprofit in Brooklyn partnering with artists to build caring and accountable creative communities, recognizes the work to make equity possible and acts on their collective vision, with the conviction that their decisions within the organization have a ripple effect into their surrounding ecosystem. Join Co-Directors Shaun Leonardo and Allison Freedman Weisberg of Recess as they discuss the enactment of values-driven, embodied leadership.
The Future Of Contracts
June 22
6 PM - 7:30 PM
In early 2021, the exhibition “Drawn Together” opened at Cuchifritos gallery. The project as a whole focused on the contractual underpinnings of power, the etymology and embodiment of the word contract, and the potential for values-driven, constituent-led conversations to lead to positive, systemic change within an institution. The artists and curators (Maia Chao, Mira Dayal, Anaïs Duplan, Yxta Maya Murray, and Simon Wu) will share their process, translation, and recommendations for the creation of contracts that recognize vulnerability, power dynamics, and intersectionality.
lmcc’s river to river festival
June 10 - June 27
Downtown NYC
LMCC presents the 20th edition of the River To River Festival, Downtown New York City’s leading free summer arts festival, on June 10–27! Curated by Lili Chopra and Nanette Nelms, this year's festival features the work of groundbreaking artists, including Arthur Jafa, esperanza spalding, Wayne Shorter, Black Gotham Experience featuring Kamau Ware and Rodney Leon, Okwui Okpokwasili, Miguel Gutierrez, The Illustrious Blacks, Maria Hassabi, nora chipaumire, Mariana Valencia, Meg Webster, Onyedika Chuke, Damon Davis, Muna Malik and more.
photoville fence
April 16 – June 20
DUMBO
Water Street, Old Fulton Rd & Washington Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
The Photoville FENCE is a year-round public photography project exhibited in major parks and downtowns across North America. Featuring over 85 photographers annually, the exhibition brings compelling visual stories into the public realm, and to a wide and diverse audience.
Klompching Gallery: Photos, Interrupted
Artist: Samin Ahmadzadeh. “Recolletion 27.”
April 21 – June 12
Wednesday-Saturday, 11 AM - 6 PM
89 Water Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
In this exhibition—selected from the gallery’s inventory—we draw attention to artworks in which the artist’s labor of the hand is evident. Here, we see how the artists have cut, crumpled, woven, dissected, scratched, stitched, painted, and layered the photograph to achieve an authorial and conceptual statement in their work.
The exhibition features the work of Samin Ahmadzadeh, Cara Barer, Antony Crossfield, Odette England, Doug Keyes, Diane Meyer, Helen Sear, Leah Schretenthaler and Krista Svalbonas.
AT-HOME HEROES: AN HOMAGE TO PARENTING THROUGH THE PANDEMIC
May 8 - June 20
Nightly: Dusk - 10 PM
Projected on to the Manhattan Bridge
DUMBO, Brooklyn
Parenting and care giving through the COVID-19 Pandemic has meant a lot of changes in households across New York City. Moms, dads and caregivers of all sorts have become teachers, kids have become coworkers, and a new level of creativity and patience has been brought to endless hours of family time. For too many, the toll of it all has been immense.
To honor the extraordinary efforts of those raising human beings through a pandemic, the Dumbo Improvement District, in partnership with Photoville, is putting New Yorkers' Pandemic Parenting moments up in lights.
Artist Opportunities
Reliable workshops and funding opportunities from outside collectives and institutions.
Workshops
teaching artist project Summer Institute 2021:
Art as Activism in the Classroom
Deadline: June 15
Summer Institute 2021 is a three day intensive virtual workshop series for teaching artists of all disciplines. This year we will focus on art as activism or “artivism”. This past year, our students have experienced extreme societal upheaval and social injustices amidst a pandemic. We believe it is our job as teaching artists to help them navigate these events, their emotions, and their response to the world through art-making.
During this three day intensive, teaching artists across the country will work with Teaching Artist Project staff to develop skills, lessons, and activities that will help support their students and bring activism through art into the classroom.
Open Calls
Common field 2021 convening
Deadline: June 11
Oriented towards our work ahead, our 2021 Convening theme – Sustaining Futures – seeks to embrace a plurality of strategies, ideas, and expressions of how to sustain our values in practice while remaining responsive to local, national, and global shifts beyond the horizon of tomorrow.
Emerging in response to a need for reflection, solidarity, and sharing, this year’s Convening theme provides a framework for addressing where we’ve been and how we commit to our values today and in the future. In a time when our communities are faced with ongoing inequity, injustice, and violence, Common Field offers this year’s Convening as a site to build resilience and dream together.
Public Artists in Residence (PAIR) Program
Deadline: June 27
NYC Department of Cultural Affairs has launched the open call for the 2021-22 cycle of the NYC Public Artists in Residence (PAIR) program. Established in 2015, PAIR was inspired by artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles' residency with the Department of Sanitation, which she pioneered in the 1970s. Based on the idea that artists are creative problem-solvers, the program embeds artists in City agencies to propose and implement solutions to pressing civic challenges. The following City agencies are each seeking to host a PAIR artist for the 2021-22 cycle: NYC Department of Sanitation; NYC Department of Records and Information Services and; NYC Department of Design and Construction.
Grants & Funding
city Artist Corps
$5,000
Deadline: June 22
City Artist Corps Grants is part of City Artist Corps, a new $25 million recovery initiative designed to help artists who were both hard hit by the pandemic and who may have been left out of other local and federal funding opportunities.
City Artist Corps Grants are intended to support NYC-based working artists who have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. The program will distribute one-time $5,000 grants to over 3000 artists to help sustain their practice and engage the public across New York City’s five boroughs this summer beginning July.
bronx cultural visions fund
$10,000 for Concept Development
$20,000 for Production
Applications Open: June 15
The Bronx Cultural Visions Fund (BCVF) seeks to support the development of new ideas and the production of new work in the performing arts, including but not limited to dance, music, theater, performance art, and multi-disciplinary performance work. Open to Bronx-based emerging and mid-career individual artists and organizations with budgets up to $250,000, BCVF awards are intended to have a meaningful impact on an artist’s career or an organization’s development.
Pandemic Small Business Recovery Grant PRogram
$5,000-$50,000
Applications Open: June 10
The $800 million COVID-19 Pandemic Small Business Recovery Grant Program provides grant funding to small and micro businesses and for-profit independent arts and cultural organizations impacted by the pandemic. The grants will be flexible and can be used for a number of different business operating expenses, including payroll, rent or mortgage payments, taxes, utilities, PPE or other business expenses incurred between March 1, 2020 and April 1, 2021.
NYFA: The Barbara and Carl Zydney Grant for Artists with Disabilities
$1,000
Deadline: June 15
New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) is pleased to launch The Barbara and Carl Zydney Grant for Artists with Disabilities. The program will distribute unrestricted cash grants of $1,000 to artists with a disability who have experienced financial hardship due to the COVID-19 crisis. The program is open to visual, media, music, performing, and literary artists who live in New York City (five boroughs).
2021 MUSEUM WORKERS RELIEF FUND
$500
Deadline: Rolling
The Museum Workers Relief Fund operates by the principles of mutual aid: organized by and for museum workers, founded on equity, trust, solidarity, and empowerment of our members, without conditions. We will gather the voices of museum workers offering and asking for aid and, together, we will advocate for a transformation of museum culture that will center dignity, justice, and humanity.
Additional Resources
transgender law center
Transgender Law Center changes law, policy, and attitudes so that all people can live safely, authentically, and free from discrimination regardless of their gender identity or expression.
Darkness Rising Project
Darkness RISING is a mental health awareness nonprofit offering community wellness workshops geared toward people of color, inspirational cover songs, visual albums, and live concerts created by Black Broadway and theatre professionals, many who have experienced a mental health condition. Their goal is to inspire conversations about mental health, address issues which directly affect the Black community, connect attendees to resources, and erase the stigma.
Learn More
Democracy NYC voter Resource Guide
On June 22, New Yorkers will be using Ranked Choice Voting in an important citywide Primary election. Ranked Choice Voting is a new system of voting in which you can rank up to five candidates in order of preference. With so much at stake in local elections and the implementation of a new system of voting, public education is even more important than ever this year.
What We're Reading
Have you encountered an inspiring or engaging read related to the COVID-19 era lately? Tell us about it at webmaster@brooklynartscouncil.org.
Aton, Francesca, “Five Black Run Art Spaces to Watch,” Art in America, May 2021.
Dafoe, Taylor. “A Spanish Art Professor and Her Students Staged a Silent Protest at the Picasso Museum to Raise Awareness of the Artist’s Treatment of Women,” Artnet, June 2021.
Teixeira-Vesey, Luiza. “Business of Art | How to Monetize and Build Online Performance Projects,” New York Foundation for the Arts Blog, May 2021.
Help Sustain Brooklyn's Artists
During times of uncertainty, Brooklyn Arts Council depends increasingly upon community members like you to help us continue celebrating and empowering local artists.