You become more tolerant and accepting of people different from you.
It seems like a no-brainer: having LGBTQ friends leads to more accepting attitudes towards the rights of queer people, but until now, little has shown this all goes together when someone comes out to their straight friends.
Muralist and new mom Lauren Pallotta Stumberg walked past The Edge construction site every day while she and her son strolled through their Old Fourth Ward neighborhood. She eventually gathered the courage to cold call the apartment complex’s property manager and propose a mural for the nine-story wall facing Edgewood Avenue.
Starting in the 1970s, people began to notice that Asheville had very little public art compared to other cities around the country. As an outgrowth of the Streetscapes program, the Urban Trail Committee was formed in 1992 to develop a walking art trail highlighting historically important architecture, people and events within downtown Asheville. The Urban Trail became an Asheville treasure and helped show citizens what public art could do for our community. In November of 1998, a group of eighteen concerned citizens came together to form the Public Art Working Group. Many meetings and a great deal of research later, City Council adopted the City’s first Public Art Policy. A newly established Public Art Board started meeting in May of 2000.
Happy Father’s Day from The Representation Project! Fathers in the media are often portrayed in stereotypical and even insulting ways. Since the fathers that we see on screens send powerful messages about this important role, it’s helpful to reflect on how content producers choose to portray dads. Here are our picks for best and worst dad representations in entertainment media.
The City is continuing to implement the River Arts District (RAD) Public Art Plan.
The City of Asheville and the Public Art and Cultural Commission (PACC) seek qualified artists to submit Letters of Interest in becoming one of three artists asked to submit proposals for a project called Playful Art. When complete, Playful Art will provide an interactive and playful experiential installation for all ages.
From this call for artists, the review committee will choose the top three most qualified artists for this project. Those qualified artists will each be provided with a $250 honorarium to develop two project proposals to include a sketch and narrative for a work of art inspired by the theme of “playful art.” The committee is especially interested in work that highlights the location in the River Arts District as well as accessibility, creativity, play, engagement for all ages, and experience. The work could be a sculpture, earth work, or other appropriate and engaging piece to be installed in a park-like setting along the French Broad River East Greenway. It will be visible from public streets and pedestrian walkways, free of any admission fee.
Funding for this project comes from the City’s 1% for Public Art commitment. To learn more and/or to stay up-to-date with the River Arts District Public Art projects, please visit ashevillenc.gov/publicart or click here.
For more information, please contact Stephanie Monson Dahl, Public Art Program Administrator, at smonson@ashevillenc.gov or 828-337-4111.
Interested in local energy and climate issues? Come to the City of Asheville’s Climate Resource Guide release and Renewable Energy Initiative community update.
Set for 5 to 7 p.m. June 19 at The Collider, 1 Haywood St., Fourth Floor, the City’s Office of Sustainability and the Sustainability Advisory Committee on Energy and the Environment (SACEE) will share information on how — as a community and individually — we can become better prepared and more resilient to the effects of climate change. The event will feature the release of “Building a Climate-Resilient Asheville — Personal Action Guide.”
Asheville has a history of climate-related impacts — major floods in 1916 and 2004, landslides, nuisance flooding, wildfires, and the record drought of 2007–2008, to name a few. The city is also facing other stressors, like pressures from population growth, increasing demand for city services, economic changes, land use issues, and the desire to preserve a sense of place. Click here to continue reading
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
City of Asheville earns GIS award for racial equity mapping project
Asheville was recognized during the 2019 N.C. GIS Conference in Winston-Salem. City Council officials received the award during their May 14 meeting.
GIS is a geographic information system used as a framework for gathering, managing and analyzing data.
The GIS team worked with the Equity & Inclusion office to map and record some of Asheville’s history around race. This included mapping out areas where red-lining and urban renewal occurred. They also crowd-sourced African American history, displacement and neighborhood change.
The City of Asheville is a member of the Government Alliance on Racial Equity (GARE) and is able to use its resources and network to continue learning and advancing racial equity goals in Asheville. “In order for transformation to occur, an understanding of our racialized history is required,” said Kimberlee Archie, Director of Equity and Inclusion for the City of Asheville. “There are specific past and current policies, procedures, practices, and budget decisions that result in disparate outcomes by race. A mapping tool such as this is critical for us to use for change to occur.” Click here to continue reading
24 Years Celebrating Bluff Mountain with Music and Art
Music, art vendors, the river, clogging and great food are all part of the Bluff Mountain Festival in Hot Springs, NC, Saturday, June 15 beginning at 10 AM. A fundraiser for the Madison County Arts Council began as a community effort to stop clear cutting of forests on Bluff Mountain. Family friendly and supports seven non-profits in Madison County. More here!
The poets Nickole Brown and Jessica Jacobs were married in California in October of 2013. Following the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling, they exchanged a series of letters from their home in Little Rock. Nickole begins:
Some images I want to bless in clear water and hold up to the light. Like my sister, nearly six years ago now, sitting up during a contraction to touch the crown of her son not yet born. Or my peonies in Kentucky—one June, I cut every single stalk and brought the armload inside, blooms big as grapefruit, blasting open with black ants.
This is what I’ve been looking for as I thought our NC Supreme Court could still challenge our gerrymandered state. They did it in Pennsylvania, so hopefully we can do it here. Read below….I’ve bolded and underlined the hope for NC.
June 25, 2019, Adrian, Michigan – The General Council of the Adrian Dominican Sisters issued the following statement concerning the treatment of immigrant children at the border between the United States and Mexico.
We denounce in the strongest possible terms the unconscionable mistreatment of children on the U.S.-Mexico border by the Trump Administration, and call on our elected leaders to take all measures necessary to provide them with adequate food, shelter, and healthcare – and, most importantly, to reunite them with their families.
Children need art and stories and poems and music as much as they need love and food and fresh air and play. If you don’t give a child food, the damage quickly becomes visible. If you don’t let a child have fresh air and play, the damage is also visible, but not so quickly. If you don’t give a child love, the damage might not be seen for some years, but it’s permanent.
Postpartum depression doesn’t only affect women. According to research, new fathers can suffer the same symptoms — and if their partners are suffering from postpartum depression, as many as 25 percent of new fathers may also experience it.
In September 2016, a sign was unveiled just up the street from my home in Kamloops. It’s the kind of familiar sign that dots Canada’s highways, meant for motorists to pull over, learn a thing or two about local history, and move on with new appreciation for the landscape. The new sign kicked off a campaign by the BC Ministry of Transportation to expand the province’s stock of public history and to invite suggestions about the stories people would like to tell.
Welcome toThe Kicker from Carolina Public Press, a North Carolina news show bringing you conversations with journalists, sources and newsmakers from across the state.
In this episode, Kicker host Peter Kent talks with Hannah Randall and Amy Sims of Manna FoodBank, which serves a 16-county region of Western North Carolina, about issues of food insecurity the region they serve.
A century ago, historian Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. argued that history occurs in cycles. His son, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., furthered this theory in his own scholarship. As I reflect on Schlesinger’s work and the history of the United States, it seems clear to me that American history has three 74-year-long cycles. America has had four major crisis turning points, each 74 years apart, from the time of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 to today.
By Stan Link Associate Professor of the Composition, Philosophy and Analysis of Music, Vanderbilt University in The Conversation
If you haven’t seen Kodi Lee’s May 28 performance on “America’s Got Talent,” it’s worth a watch. The 22-year-old Lee is blind and has autism. His rendition of Leon Russell’s “A Song for You” brought the crowd to its feet – and thrilled viewers at home.
