Deconstructing the Boundaries: A Future of Land & Food Resilience

Presented by Indigo Arts Alliance in partnership with Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.
 
This program is the first symposium in a multi-year collaboration between the two organizations. Indigo Arts Alliance assembled a curated panel of thought leaders and workshop presenters to discuss how Black and Brown communities have always held spiritual, traditional, and cultural relationships to the land. Conversations, demonstrations, and interactive workshops will present experiences from multidisciplinary artists, cultural workers, and members of the local, national, and global community.
 

Through this symposium, we hope to explore and address these three key questions:

  1. How do we evolve our personal, communal, and institutional relationships with land ownership and stewardship?
  2. How do we address and heal the deep distrust that has taken root in Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities?
  3. How do we acknowledge and appreciate the ways in which African, Brown, and Indigenous cultural and social systems, as well as spirituality exist outside of settler colonial paradigms?

Founded in 2018, Indigo Arts Alliance (IAA) is a Portland, ME-based, Black-led organization dedicated to professional development and amplification of Black and Brown thought-leadership, vision, and creative practice. As an organization of social practice artists, scholars, and activists, it seeks to strengthen multiracial democracy by cultivating and celebrating art as a key resource for healthy communities, connecting global and local Black and Brown artists, providing an affirming environment for the creation of artwork across disciplines, and promoting engagement through participatory events that bring artists' and activists' work into public conversation on social justice, culture, and community. IAA is the only Black-led, established arts incubator in northern New England. That being the case, they fill a critically important gap in representation lacking in other regional arts and cultural institutions.

Location: Bosarge Family Education Center Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Indigo Arts Alliance
Price: Free
Sign Up

Deconstructing the Boundaries: The Land Fights Back

Saturday, July 20th, 10 a.m.–5:30 p.m.

Our Northeastern United States indigenous citizens are the Maliseet, Micmac, Penobscot, and Passamaquoddy, collectively make up the Wabanaki Confederacy. They are also known as “People of the Dawnland.” As members of a global community, we are people of the land. With the growing climate crisis and its reverberations in our societies, we bear witness to how the land fights back. Indigo Arts Alliance and Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens commissioned the work of Anna Tsouhlarakis, Shane Perley-Dutcher, Daniel Minter and Arisa White to envision and create a permanent public art piece that amplifies Indigenous wisdom, artistry, and presence.

This year’s 2024 symposium and public art commissions will focus on environmental justice in urban and rural spaces and why it is critical that Black and Brown experiences and knowledge be centered. The work will unpack methods of reparative justice and challenge systems in place today. Witnessing through the lens of scholars, artists, historians and members of our community, we will honor our collective wisdom and forge new ways to be in harmony with the land known as Maine and beyond. Participants will have an opportunity to learn actionable steps that they can take to help create a better world.

Location: Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens 105 Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Indigo Arts Alliance
Sign Up