Episode Notes:

What we build, and what we choose to save, reveals what we believe the future is owed.

In this episode, we travel to Chicago's South Side — to The Land School, a building Theaster Gates rescued from demolition — for a conversation about Black cultural production, community stewardship, and the long arc of institution-building. We speak with Theaster Gates, Artist & Founder and Executive Director at Rebuild Foundation; Michelle Boone, President and CEO at The Poetry Foundation; Marshall Hatch Jr., Co-Founder and Executive Director at MAAFA Redemption Project; and Faheem Majeed, Artist, Educator, and Co-Founder and Co-Director at Floating Museum. Together, they explore what it means to build and sustain worlds of possibility rooted in art, faith, place, and the slow, deliberate work of community.

The conversation moves through questions of time and transformation, the distinction between culture and artist, how faith shapes long-term vision, and what it actually requires to invest in futures we may not live to see. Rooted in the specific geography of Chicago's South and West sides, it is also a conversation about what any city owes the people who made it.

Jump straight into:

00:00 Introduction.

02:50 Theaster Gates on his calling: stopping the demolition of Black space.

04:50 Michelle Boone on growing up less than a half mile from The Land School and returning to the community that shaped her.

06:30 Faheem Majeed on Margaret Burroughs, the South Side Community Arts Center, and building with rather than for.

08:50 Marshall Hatch Jr. on his grandfather's 1924 journey from Mississippi to Chicago and what it means to carry a 100-year inheritance.

12:50 Structure as permission, not limitation, and why a neighborhood needs 50 years to think about its total transformation.

15:35 Buying land before speculation, seeing beauty when things are not beautiful, and building an infrastructure of language that says Black people deserve great places to be.

17:50 Philanthropy's resistance to long-term thinking and why the goal of great cultural work is not to survive forever, but to build toward a future where it is no longer needed.

21:00 Cathedral thinking, the Sankofa Wellness Village, and 33 years of community-building in West Garfield Park.

31:00 Faith in the unseen, Reinhold Niebuhr, and why receiving the baton and passing it on is liberation.

37:46 The arrogance of perpetuity and making the case for going hard and deep with philanthropic resources.

46:35 Funders as collaborators and why transparency and dialogue produce better outcomes than performance.

47:00 The difference between art and arts, why systems love culture but resist artists, and the extraction problem in cultural philanthropy.

Resources:

Rebuild Foundation: Theaster Gates's cultural organization dedicated to neighborhood revitalization on Chicago's South Side through art, preservation, and community development.

The Poetry Foundation: An independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture, home to Poetry magazine.

MAAFA Redemption Project: Marshall Hatch Jr.'s organization working at the intersection of faith, healing, and community restoration in West Garfield Park, Chicago.

Floating Museum: Faheem Majeed's co-founded arts organization operating on the principle that the city is the museum, neighborhoods are galleries, and citizens are cultural producers.

South Side Community Art Center: One of the oldest African American art institutions in the United States, foundational to Faheem Majeed's practice.

Other Resources:

Toni Morrison: Referenced in the opening invocation: "This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal."

W.E.B. Du Bois: Referenced by Marshall Hatch Jr.: "Art is the spirit that knows beauty."

Reinhold Niebuhr: Theologian referenced by Marshall Hatch Jr.: "Nothing worth doing can ever be achieved in our lifetime, therefore we must be saved by faith."

Sankofa Wellness Village: West Garfield Park capital project; the largest investment in the neighborhood since 1968, developed by MAAFA Redemption Project.

#DreamingInColor #DEI #LeadersOfColor

Darren Isom:

Welcome back to Dreaming in Color LIVE, a special series within the Dreaming in Color universe. The series is rooted in our belief that the equitable future we seek requires celebrating the genius of today's leaders of color and creating space for their brilliance, lived experience, and imagination to shape how we think about our impact. Dreaming in Color LIVE is a live conversation and convening series, small rooms and shared tables where bold questions, creative spirits, and community energy meet. Each gathering brings artists, funders, thinkers, and community builders together to explore the ideas shaping a more just and more beautiful world. I'm your host, Darren Isom. Welcome to Dreaming in Color LIVE.

Today's conversation comes to you from The Land School, a new cultural campus created by Rebuild Foundation on Chicago's South Side. More than a gathering place, The Land School is itself an expression of ideas at the heart of today's conversation, that art can shape communities, culture can strengthen institutions, and imagination can help build more beautiful futures.

Joining me are at Theaster Gates, artist, founder of Rebuild Foundation, and one of the world's leading voices on the relationship between art, architecture, and community transformation. Michelle T. Boone, president and CEO of the Poetry Foundation, whose extraordinary career has helped shape the cultural life of Chicago and demonstrates the power of institutions to expand our collective imagination. Marshall Hatch Jr., pastor, educator and co-founder of the MAAFA Redemption Project, whose work reminds us that faith is not simply something we profess, but something we build together. And Faheem Majeed, artist, educator, and cultural steward whose work invites us to see art as a tool for memory, belonging, and collective possibility.

Together, we explore black cultural production, stewardship, institution building, public imagination, faith, and the long arc of community building. More importantly, we ask what becomes possible when artists are recognized not simply as creators, but as architects of possibility. I'm your host, Darren Isom. Welcome to Dreaming in Color LIVE.

All right, we're going to go ahead and start. So, really excited to be here with you guys today. This will be a fun conversation. Chicago always delivers, so appreciative of that.

Those of you who've listened to the podcast, who have seen me speak before and know that in honor of my good New Orleans Jesuit Catholic upbringing, I like to start every conversation with a bit of an invocation, a nonsecular one, if you will. So, Fred and I won't quote the Bible this time. There's some good verses in there. This one is from Tony Morrison and the quote is, "This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There's no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal."

And I love starting out with that one particularly because what strikes me about the people gathered on this stage in front of you here is their commitment to cultivating beauty, nurturing imagination, and expanding our collective sense of what is possible through art, culture, faith, stewardship, and community building. Each has spent years helping us imagine building sustained worlds of possibility that makes us more whole. So, with that, welcome to Dreaming in Color LIVE. Happy to have you guys here the conversation. And over the past five seasons of Dreaming in Color, we've explored how leaders of color draw on lived experiences and imagination to shape the future.

Today, we extend that conversation into community with you today. So, as an opening frame, earlier today, many of you gathered over tea and moved through the cultural corridor before arriving here at The Land School. I want to thank Theaster and his team for having us here in this beautiful space. It's really just an amazing spot to have this conversation. Along the way, we experience firsthand some of the institutions, the spaces, the relationships that make this conversation possible. And this conversation explores Black cultural production. More importantly, stewardship, public imagination, institution building, faith in the long arc of community building.

And so, with that, I want to ground us in place as a first question. Get ready, Theaster, I'm going to throw it to you. So, as I know, I'm coming to you after him though, so get ready. And so, ultimately I would love for you guys to share as a bit of an introduction, but not too long introduction because we only got 45 minutes. Keep it real. What is your connection to this place and who or what brought you here? And Theaster, I mean, clearly for you, Chicago is essentially your story. I'm curious about the people and traditions that taught you how to see possibility in the first place.

Theaster Gates:

Yeah. Well, thanks everybody for being here. It's really beautiful. Thank you, Darren. There are a couple places that I think I'm connected to. Chicago's one of them definitely, but let's say, this school as a connection. I remember the day that St. Lawrence Church was torn down and we were delivering the last sermon in the church as the bulldozers were tearing the church down. And I was asking the remaining last supper contenders with Jesus, "What should I do? What can I do? I can't stop the demolition of this church," which in some ways felt like the loss of faith in this community or something. And I found out a couple weeks later that this school was going to be torn down.

It'd be a parking lot for what is now the assisted living facility across the street, which is amazing. And I just thought, I think I could save the school. And it was why would one need to save the school from being a parking lot? And I feel like my connection to this place is my psychic job is to stop the demolition of black space. And I think I'm from a tradition of people who just made things a little bit better. And it's mainly farmers. It was dirt and then they planted some seeds and they did some stuff and then there was sun and rain and things grew. And I really believe in that. So, I think that for me, my life's work is growing things. And so, we're in the byproduct of some farming labor today.

Darren Isom:

Yes. Thank you. And you're teeing up all my questions perfectly. So, I'm going to come back to this growing. I mean, they haven't seen the questions, so it's wonderful when you're hinting at stuff that comes later. Michelle, you've occupied so many different roles across the civic and cultural life of the city. How has your relationship to Chicago evolved over time?

Michelle T. Boone:

It's constantly evolving. I was born in Chicago. In fact, I grew up less than a half a mile from here. My grandmother had a two-flat building on 72nd and Ridgeland, and I had cousins next door, and their kids went to school here. So, my grandmother who had dropped the kids off when they were late or missed a school bus. So, this space, St. Lawrence has a familiar history. There's a lot of personal DNA with this community. And I live in South Shore now. I spent a lot of time growing up in Gary, but I always gravitated back to Chicago. I've been here all of my professional life. It's home.

And it's interesting to me that of all the places I could live in the city, I didn't stray very far from where I grew up. So, this is my community, it's my home, it's my family, it's my people. And just being in this building in this space and seeing the amazing transformation and re-imagination of something that has always been very present for this community is really an amazing thing to experience. So, thank you for that, Theaster.

Darren Isom:

Thank you. Thank you. Faheem, I'm coming to you next. My fellow Howard brother, HU. Your work often lives at the intersection of artistic practice, education and community. Where do you locate the roots of that commitment?

Faheem Majeed:

Yeah. So, I was born here, not raised here. We talked about this. I threw a whole source of things went to the South when I was very young, two years old, born right down the street on South Shore. Went to Minneapolis with my mother. So, a little bit of Southern hospitality, some Minnesota nice. Made my way back here, following my girlfriend there, then my wife now. And as my father liked to say it, I actually live on the same street four blocks down from where I was conceived. So, I didn't know that. So, full circle. Thanks, Dad. Right, right. My father's like, "Yeah, that's where it went down."

But all that to say, when I came back, I have a lot of my founding from two things that grounded me in how I think about all those things that you had mentioned about public practice, community education. I found a space called South Side Community Arts Center, which is this ADO arts institution that was under $200,000 black budget. So, it was a lot of creative, you had to be really creative when you didn't have a budget to do arts and cultural production. In that space, I also met a woman named Margaret Burroughs. Margaret Burroughs founded the first museum of African American History across the street. But I spent a lot of time with her in her last years.

What's interesting about Dr. Burroughs is she didn't really want to found the first Museum of African-American history. She's just responding to a lack of diverse curriculum in the school she was teaching in. Instead of waiting around for someone to fix it, she did it herself. So, I take those core lessons into the founding of my arts nonprofit, Floating Museum, about moving into design, engagement, willingness to shift, change, adapt based on who's sitting at the table with you and let things go and then reshape it.

So, I think in all those spaces, there's a very specific process that's done from the beginning to the end that results in different types of outcomes, whether it's curriculum, spectacles, programs, or real estate.

Darren Isom:

We'll come back to Faheem as well about how do you create as a way of celebrating things that are often overlooked. Marshall, I want to end with you on this one. Much of your work is rooted in lineage, faith and community. What inheritances do you feel most responsible for carrying forward?

Marshall Hatch Jr.:

Well, let me start by saying I'm a west sider.

Darren Isom:

Dana, I already started with this earlier today. I had all kind of lessons. I'm not walking into this beef. I'm just-

Audience:

Right, right.

Marshall Hatch Jr.:

It's really not a beef. We got to do more bridge building and it's good to see so many familiar faces in the room. Shout out to my brother Rami Nashashibi. We've been building bridges over the years. And Acacia, thank you for the invite and of course Ellen. So, my paternal grandfather, Elijah J. Hatch, this is the hundredth year that he came to Chicago from Aberdeen, Mississippi. And if any of you, I'm not encouraging you to follow me on social media, but if you do, you'll see the-

Darren Isom:

Follow him on social media.

Marshall Hatch Jr.:

... my profile pic.

Darren Isom:

Please do.

Marshall Hatch Jr.:

My profile pic is of EJ when he got off the train hat cocked to the side. I mean, the guy was smooth, met my grandmother under the L, and he was invited by his oldest sister, Mary Pullen, who actually won the... It's the lottery now. What was it called back to you?

Michelle T. Boone:

Policy.

Marshall Hatch Jr.:

And one of those pieces comes from the Root's scene where the protagonist Kunte Kinte is holding Kizzy up to the heavens saying, "Behold, the only one greater than yourself." And it's not just art that was done in 2000. It's not just art. We reenact that every first Sunday when we do the baby blessings and hold the newest member up. All of that to say, because I know you don't want me to draw it on, I'm reminded of W. E. B. Du Bois' quote, "Art is the spirit that knows beauty." And I think that's my inheritance and that's what I hope to carry forward.

I'll get a chance to talk a lot about the MAAFA Center for Arts and Activism and the work that we're doing with the MAAFA Redemption Project. But essentially, that's become my legacy already at 38.

Darren Isom:

And we'll talk a little bit more about that as well. I feel like give you full permission, all of you to go on as much as you like with this conversation, we could do this every week if you like. I can be happy to fly into Chicago. But I do want to move to the second part of the conversations around the side, building worlds of possibility. And one of the things I hear in each of your stories is that none of you arrive here alone. We inherit people, places, traditions, responsibilities, and possibilities, which raises a question that sits at the heart of today's conversation and one of the questions at the heart of my work more broadly. And Theaster, I'm going to come to you again.

What does it actually take to build and sustain worlds of possibility? And I asked that question quite intentionally. I'm asking about building projects, organizations, not programs, but actual worlds. Each of you has spent years creating spaces, institutions, communities, all those things that people believe is possible for themselves and others, expanding that from a thought perspective. And I really want to get a sense of what does that work actually require? And so, Theaster, for you, I mean, you're often described as an artist, but so much of your work involves building institutions, ecosystems, and conditions.

At what point did you realize that making culture and building infrastructure were part of the same project?

Theaster Gates:

Well, I think I was trained to look at structure and kind of think about structure as the set of permissions that allow for greater and greater creativity to happen. So, rather than thinking about structure as the thing that limits, structure was the thing that could potentially open things up. And I think two things were really important for me as a young person. One was understanding that language was power and that I could say, oh, I need a house and I would probably get a house. But if I said we needed to commit ourselves to the restoration of this place, then language was giving me a different infrastructure by which I could spend my time.

And then time became important so that rather than an artist is usually thinking about the next work of art that we're making or our next exhibition. So, let's say, time is based on every year or every six months, but I was like the work of transformation from my planning background, it's like I need 50 years. A neighborhood needs 50 years to think about its total self-transforming. So, let's say, I'm in the 15th year of 50 years of transformation in Grand Crossing. And by giving myself that permission to have big infrastructure, bigger language and more time, it means that creativity can be happening alongside the infrastructural investment or the infrastructure making.

So, we can buy land and do things on that land, but we need to buy land sooner before speculation on land happens, which means that we're often having to see beauty when things are not beautiful. We have to have a language of beauty when things are disturbing. We got to know we have to have a belief in ourselves when we're not being our best selves. And I think for me, understanding time and language was a way of understanding like, "Oh, the contribution that I make is beyond me buying a crib on the south side. The contribution I'm making is an infrastructure of language that says Black people deserve great places to be." And that just changes how a day works.

So, I feel like if you're talking about geologic time, thousands and thousands of years, I'm talking about urbanistic time, which is at least hundreds and hundreds of years. And I'm at the beginning of a project that I won't see the end of it, but I feel like, "Oh, someone has to start thinking about something beyond how they're going to live. It has to be how we going to live." So, I feel-

Michelle T. Boone:

I think that's really profound to hear you say that, particularly in a society now where everything is so immediate, right? The short attention span moment that we're in and to think about your work as a 50-year project, to hear that, to verbalize that, to digest what that means and to be committed. I think we need to hear it more often.

Darren Isom:

No. Well, I was coming to you for this actually. No, I originally was going to go to Faheem, but I was like, "No, this is teeing up my question to you." I think that you really have an understanding and appreciation of the fullness of time, but also the work that we do in building things out over time. It is such a flex to be able to be thinking 50 years out, 100 years out and think about what we're building from a time perspective. I also think you mentioned Theaster this concept of being able to see beauty. I love the Bill Cunningham quote, "He who sees beauty will find it." And I think that Black Americans are naturally gifted at finding beauty in places.

And my uncle used to always say that there's an optimism that characterizes Black Americans. When you can find light from the belly of a slave ship, you can find light anywhere. But my question for you, Michelle, is you've worked across philanthropy, government, cultural institutions, and civic leadership. What have you learned about the conditions that allow cultural work to thrive over time and how time becomes a way of not constraining the work, but actually allowing it to survive and live in a more beautiful way?

Michelle T. Boone:

Well, I learned that the ship turns really slowly. I work at the Poetry Foundation here in Chicago and next year we'll be celebrating our 25th anniversary. And one of the things that we're going through now is trying to imagine our place in the city, in the world, in poetry 25 years from now. And putting that prompt out to the staff and the board has been surprisingly really hard for people. Some people have really resisted it and said, "Well, I'm not going to be here in 25 years. I don't want to say what we're going to do and where we're going to be because why should I project that?"

And the world is changing so rapidly now too with AI and just the rapid speed of technology. And so, this resistance to long-term thinking, future thinking, I find really curious. Also, I think there's, in philanthropy, a need for immediacy. We want to make the investment and by God, in three years, we better see something happen or you might not get it again. But to be committed for the long haul and say, "No, this kind of work takes time. This kind of work needs continuous investment, significant investment."

If you really want to move the needle on change, if you really are committed to what cultural change means, what cultural investment means, that's not a one-year or a three-year grant. It's a commitment to the idea, the imagination, the community of the folks whose work that's going to touch.

Darren Isom:

And we all the time within the philanthropic space, at least philanthropy work at Bridgespan about this concept of one of the most dangerous myths that exist within the nonprofit sector is that good organizations should put themselves out of business. And I've worked with a lot of organizations. I've created some beautiful theories of change. Ain't nobody going to solve poverty in five years. Ain't nobody that smart. And so, how do we think about the long game? Because as my dad would say, oppression is clever in this country. The second you figure something out, something else pops up.

But I want to turn to you, Marshall, because I think that very often people think about building in physical terms. So, much of your work and your life is about building people, relationships and community. What does sustainable community building require?

Marshall Hatch Jr.:

I want to piggyback on this conversation of it's really futurism, right? It's cathedral thinking, right? It's multi-generational strategy. And for us, it's taken the form of artwork. So, back to those stained-glass windows, the most recent one is called the Sankofa Window. And it's of a Black Messiah leading children back to the spirit of village. And we've coined that the Sankofa Wellness Village and it's attracted a lot of investment in West Garfield Park, just given a lot of the pathologies of West Garfield Park. But we've always been convinced that it's not the bad data points that define, determine, even describe who we are. It's in the image. It's something we can point to.

So, we have this rich history and legacy to build upon. But it's a double-edged sword because you have a lot of legacy residents who've been there 50, 60 years. And now that there's this whiff of change in terms of more investment, more projects happening, the question is, will I be here five, 10 years from now? And so, now we're doing more and more organizing to make sure folks, especially those legacy residents, understand that power so that we can hold our elected officials, but also folks with a lot of money accountable.

Darren Isom:

Got it. Faheem, I want you to build on that a little bit. I mean, so much of your work lives at the intersection of artistic practice, education, community stewardship. And how do you think about building in ways that strengthen both creative practice and collective life? And more importantly, giving people a sense of belonging in what you're building and creating?

Faheem Majeed:

Yeah. I think I'm a part of a collective and that brings me a lot of joy. People bring me a lot of joy. Investing in finding... We move around the city. One of the mantras of Floating Museum is city as museum, neighborhoods as galleries, citizens as cultural producers. We don't build for, we build with. So, in that kind of model I was talking about earlier about shifting and changing based on new knowledge, we try not to duplicate things that already exist. I was just saying we don't have a youth program because we have Sky Art that's in our network. They have youth. We don't need a youth program. We go to them. We don't garden or work in there. We go with Urban Growers Collective.

So, we have this networked approach of moving through the city and moving resources as well. But when we go into a neighborhood, we are trying to find early on, Michelle's very supportive of this back when she was commissioner, and we had this crazy idea, but we started in Austin on the west side and we started in West Pullman and Calumet Park right on the edge. The neighborhood's furthest away from the city. And we went into those spaces. We find the people doing the work. So, this notion of bringing art to a community is false. There's art and culture in every community, every space in the city.

Oftentimes, it's coming out of Ms. Jenkins' own pocket to do the neighborhood block party she'd been doing for 20 years. So, now we walk in with resources, huge inflatables, all these things that say, "Hey, can we work together and learn? And then would you like this?" And sometimes people say, "Yeah, bring that on down." And not only do we bring it down, we give Ms. Jenkins a stipend too. She's like, "What I got to do for that stipend?" "Ain't got to do nothing. Go get a hat. Go whatever you want to do, you got a back pat."

Darren Isom:

You already deserved that.

Faheem Majeed:

You already got that.

Darren Isom:

You already earned that stipend.

Faheem Majeed:

So, this is just a little thank you. We want support, we want to vet, we want to put a magnifying glass on what you're doing and then share our network with you so you can do better at that. And that's a sliding scale. We say Lalapalooza has to pay out the ass for it. Ms. Jenkins gets it free with a stipend. You know what I mean?

So, in that sort of way, another thing, just these ideas or philosophical ideas of practice and rehearsal, one of our co-directors, Avery R. Young, who is a performer and really brought into the design space these aspects of the performance side of things and the notion of practice and rehearsal, which is very different from my training to in the musical space, this notion of the rehearsal and the practice together is the choir rehearsal. And that's actually where the performance is because that's when you're kind of innovating and figuring out.

And he says this notion of learning to breathe together so that when you're in public space and something goes wrong, I'm breathing in, you're breathing out. We already know how to work off of each other. So, if you take those things and put it into community engagement and how you think about things when things go wrong, we've already built a really strong tether throughout the city in ways that we already know how it's going to work and the artwork is actually the building.

So, that thing of that longevity, I actually think along the way in Theaster's point of those 50 years, it's just like actually there's these beautiful moments even in the trajectory, like you did this tour today and I was talking with Chanel about these like, "Oh, we had a party there and this and that." Those are really profound, beautiful moments along the way. So, I think that's what I find joy in is those really deep entrenched relationships where you know each other and support each other. And I think that's the artwork for me. That's what brings me a lot of joy.

Darren Isom:

And I was going to jump into another set of questions, but y'all just keep talking about the future. And I have a whole set of questions about the future. So, I want to get to those honestly feels right. I mean, I list all of you. I'm reminded at the end of the day, stewardship is ultimately an act of belief and possibilities to some degree. So, we care for things that we believe because we believe they matter. We invest in them because we believe they can shape the future. And I had a lunch with a colleague and was reminded of a hadith from the Islamic tradition during the lunch conversation, brilliant philanthropic leader that I'm lucky enough to work with.

And the hadith is, "if the day of judgment comes while you are holding a sapling in your hand and you can still plant it, then plant it." And I've really been thinking about that image since that lunch. What I love about it is that it's not really about the end of the world. It's about our obligations to the future as stewards of the future. It's about stewardship. It's about doing our part to build a future we may never see. And that's why it feels so relevant in this moment because we're living in what can be called a planting season from a cultural perspective. Season of collective imagination, season of possibility, a partnership.

So, with that, as we think about this planting season and what we're trying to build, I would love to get your thoughts on what futures are you helping people imagine and build? So, what's that sapling that you're planting that you may not see? My dad used to, and I probably shouldn't tell this joke, he used to always joke about those black leaders getting up and saying, "I have a dream that my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren." What about now, right? My dad had an off sense of humor, but I think there is something really beautiful about black leadership is having to think in the future, having to have faith that there are things that you may not see that you're shaping and you're building towards.

It's that long-term goal and that long-term vision. And there's also the flex of knowing that we will be here 50 years from now, 100 years from now. And so, Marshall, I'm going to start with you on this one. I mean, faith traditions often ask us to believe in futures we cannot yet see. How has faith shaped your understanding of possibility in your role in shaping it?

Marshall Hatch Jr.:

Yeah. I know in the invocation, you didn't have a scripture, but maybe now we can have one. Of course, it's faith in the unseen. Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen. And it reminds me of one of my favorite theologians, Reinhold Niebuhr, who said that nothing worth doing can ever be achieved in our lifetime. Therefore, we must buy. Therefore, we must be saved by faith. And it's faith in the future. And so, to your point, it's sowing seeds, knowing that the trees that will grow will shade the coming generations. And it takes a lot of pressure off to an extent. It's knowing that I received a baton. My responsibility is to carry it and pass it on. That's it.

I think it's liberation in that. And I think that the future that we're building now is a future where I got two kids. I got a seven-year-old Sophia. She's seven going on 17. I got a two-year-old, Elijah Jackson, EJ, and both of them are named after ancestors. And so, literally creating a future that echoes the past and just the cyclical nature of that is what's beautiful to me.

Darren Isom:

Theaster, I'm going to take you next. So, much of your work begins with physical spaces, but ultimately seems concerned with imagination. What future are you hoping people can see more clearly because these spaces exist?

Theaster Gates:

I wanted to give four examples.

Darren Isom:

You got the floor.

Theaster Gates:

But there was something about her belief in this thing that I didn't know how to do and her willingness to believe in me and then her death that made me accountable in my life to the investment she made that she didn't see. So, the pursuit of Dorchester has absolutely nothing to do with anybody except my mama. We can talk about neighborhood revitalization and I'm actually just trying to make good on my mama's $10,000. I went to Captiva, Florida, for the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation residency. Never met Robert. Don't know his politics.

But the byproduct of this artist's life is that I could be in his studio using his paper on his lithography machines in the middle of a beautiful island as gradus for a life well lived by this guy. My first grant was from Jacob Lawrence in Seattle, Washington. One of my first major exhibitions was because this Black man who did exceptionally well in his life left his legacy as something that other Black and Brown artists could benefit from. And then Warhol, never met Warhol. Don't know much about him. Complicated cat. His foundation is worth $400 million.

And with that $400 million, Warhol is ensuring all I knew was my mama, but I've been benefiting from the legacies of artists my entire artistic career. So, if I'm the beneficiary of other people's resources, how is it possible that I wouldn't also want to be the benefactor in understanding that I'm part of a continuum of people who will die and I'll die with land and that land will be used for Black and Brown artists who are not born yet. That excites me.

Darren Isom:

Wow. Okay. Sorry, that was great. Sorry I got caught up in... What am I doing here? You got a podcast there. You got questions. Michelle. Cut up another beautiful world. I want to come to you thinking about a few things. One, as we think about this whole concept of stewardship and what you're building from a safe perspective, those of us who work in philanthropy as well, and as we think about the role that we play in planting seeds and building things out, what advice do you have? Well, I want you to answer the question as well around the future that you're imagining for sure. But also jumping in really, what's philanthropy's role in shaping that future? I'm so sorry.

Michelle T. Boone:

It's an easy question.

Darren Isom:

I know, I know.

Michelle T. Boone:

I'm thinking back to your analogy about planting the sapling and the sapling also in order to thrive needs an orchard. It can't just be that one thing standing alone. So, what other kinds of investments, nurturing, planting needs to happen around that sapling so that in the face of Armageddon, it can thrive, that it's not out there on its own? We're a relatively small foundation, about $300 million. And so, back to the question about thinking about the next 25 years, one of the things I pushed the board on is the arrogance of most foundations is that they're set up to operate into perpetuity. And so, I say, "Okay, but what are our goals?"

Darren Isom:

They have to be stewards. They have to be stewards. They have to be stewards.

Michelle T. Boone:

But what are we trying to do here? And is it really going to take us forever to do that? And so, are we going to just keep spreading the peanut butter really thin? Or can we have a plan? Should we have a plan that says, "Okay, and with the resources we have, here's the timeline and we're going to go hard and deep on this and make sure that we're building the infrastructure, giving the infrastructure of poetry, the resources, the investment that it needs so that they can carry it on and not be dependent on this one source." So, I think it's a shift in thinking about what are you trying to do? What is the change you're trying to make?

And this model that we have of got to hold tight to the resources because it's got to be here for tomorrow. That's one way about thinking about the future, that you are the primary source to ensure that it happens and not allowing yourself to free up the resources to give the trust over to others and knowing that no, this work can continue, but it's going to take some significant investment for it to happen and to make that leap of faith and say no. And here's where we're placing our bets on the future and not relying on one primary source to be able to realize it.

Darren Isom:

And also, I want you to, because I know this is something we've talked about before as well. I see within the philanthropic space as well, I talk about how historically foundations would have these beautiful theories of changes. I've developed some beautiful ones. They're very pretty documents and they have these wonderful boxes on them and they look at nonprofits as vendors for their strategies. Look at my theory of change. How can you respond to box two, box three? And I think that we definitely have an understanding that success is actually letting the nonprofits have their theory of change and understanding as a funder how you're supporting and advocating for that work.

And I think that what we've seen and we don't talk about is that actually produces a better answer. When nonprofits and those that are closest to the communities are allowed to think and strategically and not play the strategic telephone game of communicating with a funder, the answer better and the work is stronger. And so, if that's the thinking, how do we shift our practices to make sure those organizations have the resources they need to actually have the space to think, have the space to dream, have the space to be in conversation with the actual community who has the answers as opposed to the funders who don't have the answers for the record. The funders don't have answers.

Michelle T. Boone:

As soon as you say theory of change, my-

Darren Isom:

I'm sorry.

Michelle T. Boone:

... eyes just glazed over. So, imagine if that's how I feel-

Darren Isom:

Theories of changes are very important. You're not going to have the Bridgespan partner out here saying that theories of change are not important.

Michelle T. Boone:

Theory of change, just write the check. What was the question?

Darren Isom:

How should funders be acting differently?

Michelle T. Boone:

Funders should be talking and listening. That's how they should act differently. Start with just listening. I think you need the nonprofits to realize your foundation mission. If you're committed to X, you're not doing that work, you're investing in others who can. And you have to have an openness to listen to the ways that people imagine achieving that goal. And it might not, I tell this to my team all the time, everybody doesn't think like me and that's okay.

And the surprise that you might get when you listen to how people approach problem solving, their theory of change, the achievement of mission without having the benefit of consultants and education and all these things that people on the other side of the table may have, but they're just doing the work and they know what the people need. They know-

Darren Isom:

And there is an intuitive genius in the world.

Michelle T. Boone:

And there's an intuitive genius that people know. And if you can free yourself from the rigidity of process and go with gut, instinct, trust, I think that's how you get there.

Darren Isom:

And I think there is something beautiful about honoring that there is an intuitive genius, right? And I reminded all the time when I left for college, which is hilarious because I was going to Howard, so I don't know why my dad was so paranoid, but he remembers like, remember, you'll never beat white people at being white because you can beat them at being black and that's probably a better game to play anyway, right? And so, the question is how do you shape the conversation in the way that your assets are what's celebrated and your answer is the right answer, right?

I'll come to you now, Faheem, because I think that one of the things that we've noted in so much of our work is that it's so interesting watching how 56 years ago within the Black community, so many of our social justice, racial justice leaders came from the church. They were all reverend something or another. And those are the folks that we really trusted with imagining a new world, with giving us hope and inspiration on a weekly basis through their sermons and their teachings and how there's been a shift to some degree. Now it's the artists. It's the artists that we're looking to lead the movements, to lead the stories, to really allow us to dream into different worlds.

And those are the folks that are given the space to reimagine the world as well. And so, given that artists help societies see what does not yet exist, it's kind of the role of an artist to some degree, it's a dream another world, what role do artists play in helping communities imagine futures beyond their current realities and conditions?

Faheem Majeed:

Yeah. So, one of the benefits of being an artist I think is creative problem solving, seeing the possibility of something. As Theaster says when no one else does, it's not a coincidence that artists are often the ones dropped in as first wave gentrifiers in most places that don't benefit from those places' evolution by the time the third wave or fourth wave kind of comes in, they moved out. It's because they seed something in a way that others oftentimes do kind of benefit from even if the artists don't. The ask is a prime example of someone who said, "Nah, that's not going to happen. I'm going to benefit at every phase because I'm going to own the property and we're going to lock in."

So, I do think along the lines of innovation is important. One of the things that I'm doing with my group and Floating Museum is start to push the conversation away from just tourism and beautification because there's industry in production of art. We deal with engineering, we deal with fabrication. We're spending millions of dollars all over the world just to beautify our areas. But oftentimes, we're just seen as, oh, you have that conversation like, "Oh, I'm an artist." They're like, "Oh yeah, my aunt paints in the garage sometimes. I used to do that." I'm like, "That's nice. But cool, I get it. It's a spectrum." But yeah, in that way.

And I think along the lines of navigating, I can do something for $5 or I can do something for $5 million, but I'm always going to do something. Something's going to happen. I think once again, this network and Michelle, who was with the Joyce Foundation when I first met. And when I first met Michelle, I was a young acting exec director at South Side Community Center in my 20s. And I was taught from other leaders, Black leaders, that you got to put on airs and show them what you got and how good you are and how you got everything under control. And over time, people like Michelle said, "No, show me the problems.

I wouldn't be here if I didn't think there was value. So, take me to the seepage issues because we can fix that. But if we lose that, there's no getting these 80 years of history. We can't get that back," right? So, really learning how to talk. So, actually now I see my funders and foundations as collaborators. I don't see them as the table. The city's the table. I see them sitting at the table with a set of missions and needs. And I have a set of offerings and I have some needs too. And it's really about a dialogue. I see them as a part of the solution. So, I don't hide things. I'm very transparent. If it doesn't work out, that's fine. This ain't the opportunity. But I think that's something I learned over time.

A lot of us don't know that. So, we think we have to be everything that we're not when really the foundations I think should be there to support. I can't write grants well. I can't come and have a development because I'm dealing with Little Jackson that came through, just got kicked out of his house. I can't do that and then go write when you got a whole team. The Art Institute got a whole sets of team. I got two people and they got to teach. So, why would you expect me to show up the same way they showing up? So, I have a little understanding that I'm doing the work and they sit in there with me and I build those... And I do feel some foundations are open to that.

Many of them are given the opportunity, but I still think they still need to push to understand that and give a little faith and trust and resources as well.

Darren Isom:

Got it. And we're going to open it up soon for questions if you guys have any as well. But Theaster, I want to come back to you and ask the same question around the role of the artists in the moment and imagining the world. And I think one of the things that I see all the time and this is doing work in Memphis and arts philanthropy many moons ago. And it was always interesting when you talked about funding the arts, how different communities had different understanding of what the arts were, right? And so, I think in wealthier, particularly wealthy white communities, arts and culture is what you do on a Friday night if you have extra time and money, right? It's a way of showcasing your wealth, a way of distraction.

Whereas in Black and Brown communities, arts is kind of how you navigate life. It's the world around you. It's a celebration of that world, right? And so, I would love your thoughts. And as you think about success in this work, how do you in many ways celebrate the artistic genius and pedigree that is the Black community and present that as a model for others to follow from a success perspective? Beat them at being black.

Theaster Gates:

Yeah. One of the things that comes up for me, Darren, is maybe the highlighting, maybe the separation between art and arts. And I would say arts is the culture that we want to see on the main street and it's the celebration of heritage on the block. And it's seeing the Ukrainian museum that might attract a thousand people a year, but it's absolutely necessary that that building is there because that neighborhood was Ukrainian. I think arts is the mechanism by which people can express themselves and culture is built and culture keeps a place connected.

Art and artist, I think art and artist is the deep belief that you've been called to do a thing that is different from that you're willing to be reflexive and undetermined and indeterminate in your thinking and that something great might happen as a result of not thinking like other professions and vocations. So, the artist is trying to do something that is by design different from the things that exist in the world already and that they're trying to make something new and fresh and alive. And I feel like people want arts, but they don't really want art or artists.

And so, how do you start to cultivate the lives of the people who are going to give you the outcomes and not imagine them as secondary or second-class citizens to these outcomes? But it's like artists have to live somewhere and if they're painters, they need to paint somewhere. And the byproduct of having an artist on your board is that they'll help that board think about things a little differently. And so, I feel like in some ways we love culture. We hate artists because they're unwilling to just play by the rules. You just put on a tie and fill out the grant application.

And I'm thinking about this also with Stephanie Platts in the back of the room. When people meet me these days, I'm a little prickly.

Faheem Majeed:

Say prinkly?

Theaster Gates:

Prickly. I say prickly. I ain't got time for a lot of shit.

Faheem Majeed:

They say prickly.

Theaster Gates:

But I think that what's happened is that I've come to understand that my deep belief in art is something that is worth protecting and it's worth protecting against people's extraction measures because they ultimately want the culture that I'm able to produce without caring for the people, for the person. But what's happened in my friendship with Stephanie is that we've gotten to know each other as people, not as a funder and an artist, but just like come kick it with me today. Michelle Boone and I, we've known each other 20 years plus. And most of the time there's not a grant application on the table.

There's friendship and cooperation and food and fellowship. And I think that for most of the world, that's how it works. So, sometimes the philanthropic folk, I think they're actually really kind to some people in a Rolodex in their friendship circle and they believe in the people who they're close to. But I think that sometimes it's like how do we humanize without having to totally professionalize artists so that the weirdness that makes a place a very special place so that those things can live.

Michelle T. Boone:

I think part of it is that the systems, they don't hate artists. What they hate is risk.

Theaster Gates:

Yeah, that's right.

Michelle T. Boone:

So, being very risk averse is what it might represent more than a lack of understanding.

Theaster Gates:

That's right.

Michelle T. Boone:

But investing in the leap of faith of where an artist imagines they want to go is risky and scary because what if it doesn't work? Well, I mean, I'm just saying from a certain perspective that there's no guaranteed straight line to the endpoint. And if it has to be that thing at the end for it to be deemed successful and not valuing the process, I think that's where the attention lies.

Darren Isom:

And Michelle, can you jump in there? And we want to open it up to the... I know y'all have questions. That's literally what I was going to ask. And so, I think that if the metrics are off.

Faheem Majeed:

I've been in a panel discussion where there's more people sitting up here than in the audience and I was able to talk to that one individual, got to know them really well, had a very intimate, really deep, deep, deep conversation. That was great. But if I measured it by how many people were sitting in a seat, then that was not a success. So, it's really about starting out with what is it I want to achieve? And it's not always about numbers. I always argue with the museum. I'm like, well, why does the museum work have to be in the building?

If you're producing something out in the city, no, your metric is how many people cross, how many people cross the threshold? But if all your content, your collections are out there, then that should call that.

Darren Isom:

Yeah. We even argue that if your content is out there, then measuring what's inside is actually problematic or it's opposite.

Faheem Majeed:

But it's the same thing. You're getting the same information. If I moved out onto the street, it's coming from the content, the curriculum's all coming from there. So, why wouldn't that count as visiting the museum? So, it's just stretching how you measure a metric thing. And that's when I start oftentimes talking, be like, "No, no, no," because we can't quantify why we built that building or why we did this thing.

Darren Isom:

Theaster's about to explode. You got something?

Theaster Gates:

Yeah, Darren, because I'm meeting all of these VC investors. It feels like the philanthropic world toward the humanities is becoming, not iconic, maybe it's loosening its rigidity. But when you look at business, these business guys, they're like, "I like that guy. I feel good about him. They're going to do great things. I don't know why." And it's like, "Yeah, so we gave him $50 million." And these are 20-year-olds out of Stanford. And so, there's a way in which the business world is embracing-

Darren Isom:

What'd you say? That guy. You haven't met them?

Theaster Gates:

Yeah, yeah. I know them guys. The business world-

Darren Isom:

You better cultivate them because that's where the money is at.

Theaster Gates:

We're still waiting on a $100,000 grant. And these guys are like, "Yeah, I want to do something big and important." And venture is acting more like a faith-based investment firm. They're like, "I think this person's going to do great things. I don't know what it is, but let's give them a hundred million."

Darren Isom:

Well, I talk all the time about this wonderful French term, a necropolitique, this idea that certain communities only exist when they're dying. And there's a whole narrative we've shaped around a necropolitique. There's so much of philanthropy. I mean, they know NAACP exists because we're being lynched. Black Lives Matter, I can't breathe. There are whole societies from Palestine to Congo. We literally only talk about when they're getting bombed to death. They only come up in conversation. There's a funder that loves a necropolitique. There's a funder that loves a going out of business sale that they can come in and save.

They invest in what they call, I call it philanthropic sharecropping. They give you just enough money to last a year and then come back and ask for more money the next year because they love that role. And there's also a funder that loves a liberation politic. There's a funder that loves betting on a winning horse. They bet with more money. Their time horizon is longer. They're betting in seven, eight figures because changing things requires a lot of money. And time. But I think that requires organizations and leaders to be able to tell a story that has a liberation politic. You can't go in asking for $10 million with $100,000 worth of programs. And I think that requires a shift from what good looks like even for the organization and the leader.

Faheem Majeed:

But I also say it was a shift. And I learned this. It was this interesting moment when I was South Side Community Center. It was just like the sole survivor. And I said, "We need to stop surviving and start thriving." Because why would I throw money into something that's already sinking? I'm not going to throw money into a boat that's sinking just because it should float. No, I find it better when it's like I have a vision. I'm going to do it with or without you. You have an opportunity. You're lucky to be a part of it. You can be with me and we can do it together, but it's going to happen one way or the other.

Hook or crook, it's going to happen. So, I think also shifting this mentality of I don't believe in charitable exchanges. I believe everyone sitting at the table has something to offer. I believe in curating those tables. And if someone ain't eating at the table, either we need to shift. I got this from Black Lives Matter, we need to shift or you need to push away because this ain't that opportunity. So, I think everyone has something, even the money needs things.

Darren Isom:

Yeah. And I would argue, I would take it the next level. I think that we have to price with pride our work. We have to price point our work. Stop giving people Old Navy right prices when you can charge them Neiman Marcus. Step it up. I don't want our host to kick us out. So, I do want to take some question if folks have... Rami, go ahead. Get the mic, get the mic, get the mic.

Rami Nashashibi:

This has been just Rami Nashashibi, founder Inner-City Muslim Action Network, and just been privileged to be an extraordinary beneficiary of the types of genius that's kind of sitting here and talking about this over the last 30 years. And I love that symbiotic relationship between a politique about liberation and about death. I'm convinced and would love your thoughts on this because we've been talking about Chicago, Inglewood, 32-year largest life expectancy gap out of 500 urban centers in the country eight miles between Streeterville and Inglewood.

Absolutely convinced that that 50-year transformation vision is going to take the radical re-imagination that only artists that are rooted in those type of spaces and understand that are going to fuel movement through transformation, through community projects, through the projects that we're involved in. The question I have is, and Michelle, you've been around, you've all been around, Theaster you've been around.

I have still not seen University of Chicago in our backyard, all this extraordinary scholarship, all this extraordinary philanthropy, Chicago at the epicenter of so much of this, but speaking of theories of change, and we got theories galore, I still have not seen a credible vision that has been put together that allows us to make the argument that you're making that says what is absolutely necessary is to get to the 50, 75 year vision and to begin to create ecosystems that support and sustain that. The question is what is preventing us advancing that type of vision?

Michelle T. Boone:

Collective will. I mean, collective will.

Theaster Gates:

But I really think that there's a resurrection story that's possible, but it requires that we start to restructure our imaginations and trust. I'm not sure if Black and Brown folk trust each other.

Michelle T. Boone:

Black and black.

Darren Isom:

I was going to say the exact same thing.

Theaster Gates:

Yeah, I was going to say yeah. And sometimes, I feel like our collective gain is just a little bit... it needs to be tweaked.

Michelle T. Boone:

But I think this thing Rami brought up, Chicago is quick to always say, "You are a city of 77 neighborhoods," versus saying, "We are a city of one." And as long as we see neighborhoods and pockets as these individual things, I think it's going to be really challenging to have that 50 year, 30 year, 100 year even vision for communities like Morgan Park, Inglewood, South Shore even as long as we're thinking about these individual pieces and not how if Inglewood is not thriving, Chicago is not thriving. And we keep saying this rap over 77 neighborhoods are about to have 78 neighborhoods as a badge of honor, this distinction of neighborhoods versus one city united.

And I guess that's what I was really trying to get at with this collective will that if we're not all feeling the responsibility to pull up Gage Park, Albany Park, downtown in the same way, if we're thinking about it as these pieces, oh yeah, we'll wait till one other funder invests in that neighborhood or this other person is going to take care of that neighborhood. Chicago has to take responsibility for it and see it as one and not this. If your arm is infected, your body is going to be infected, right?

Faheem Majeed:

It moves from the city. I think the reason my organization is called Floating Museum isn't because it's a counter museum, it's an adjacent museum, right? I love my museums, but I also don't have certain expectations of those museums. A lot of those museums weren't built for me. I love what they do, but the expectation they're going to be the community center, they're going to solve all the culture. No, I don't put that on them, but there's this other model maybe that could be in collaboration. We have a set of expertise, you have a set, we can work together or not. So, I think for instance, we've done things in Inglewood.

My brother Fred Warren came and spoke and my Afghani brother. But the thing is when I go to Inglewood, I went and found the organizations doing the work and figured out how we could work together. I didn't just step over that. So, I hear what you're saying, but I also, I mean, I'm not saying we're solving all of those things, but I think there are other models in the world that could be built upon. And yes, we need to be able to benefit from those models, but I don't like to think we own those models.

Share it because the goal is to make the city better. The city gets better than the metric. It starts to work, even if it's step by step. So, the organizations in Inglewood, there's some great organizations in Inglewood. Why would I not go to them because they've had 20, 40 years in that space? I get 40 years of consulting. I don't work with community. I work with consultants. I don't need you to help me make a sculpture because you spent five minutes on that. That don't look good. But I spent 20 plus years on what I do. You spent 40 plus years on what you do.

Why would I not hire you as a consultant to help me figure that out? So, I do think there's just some ways that we don't see the values that we have, the things that we have because we have it in abundance, that we don't see it as something valuable because it's so abundant around us. Every kid on the block know how to take a belt and make an outfit out of it, right? You take that out of that space, put it somewhere else, all of a sudden becomes seen as a different sort of way. So, we have towns we oftentimes don't see our value unless it's seen through other people's eyes. So, yeah, collaboration, I do think it exists. Just build on it.

Darren Isom:

I have to close this out. I think it's collaboration. We'll come back to this another point. I think it's collaboration. I think it's also just the will. I don't think that we understand the role that we play in shaping the future. What role have you played in naming the 50-year goal and 75-year goal and how do you normalize that from an agency perspective? But don't put us out. So, I want to just close. So, thank you guys for the time. It's a great conversation. The conversation really reminded me that possibility is not something that we discover. It's something that we cultivate and our role in cultivating it all.

Something we imagine, something we build, something we steward, and also something we pass forward. So, our role in passing things forward. So, I want to thank each of you. Thank you, Theaster, Michelle, Marshall, Faheem. And thank you all for being part of this conversation and being a part of Dreaming in Color. Thank you.

My great-grandfather, Lee, was an architect and like his grandfather before him, he studied in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts after being denied entry to architecture programs in the American cell. At the time, Southern professional schools were close to Black students no matter how accomplished a world positioned their families might have been.

So, following a well-worn path among ambitious old New Orleans families of that era, they crossed the Atlantic to study. Early generations in my family also studied engineering at the École des Ponts et Chaussées, including several great uncles who returned home to New Orleans to build roads, buildings, and public works. My great-grandfather built a successful career designing public buildings across the city, extraordinarily beautiful buildings that by Jim Crow's ugly design, he himself would not be allowed to enter for much of his life. His story's a remarkable one. It is also remarkably familiar.

Long before my great-grandfather Lee, free Black architects and builders helped shape the physical character of New Orleans. They designed homes, churches, businesses, and public buildings whose beauty still defines the city today. Their names have too often been forgotten, but their work remains etched into the city's streetscape. And when emancipation came, newly free Black Americans didn't simply embrace freedom. They built it. They reunited families. They established churches. They founded schools. They created businesses. They organized mutual aid societies. They built colleges and universities.

They voted in extraordinary numbers, sent more than 2,000 Black leaders into public life, rewrote state constitutions, expanded public education and helped redefine American democracy. Though many of those gains were later met with violence and systematically dismantled, those generations of Black builders left behind an inheritance of possibility that each generation since has been called upon to continue building. It was that inheritance I found myself thinking about as I said at Theaster Gates' Land School. Listening to Theaster, Michelle, Marshall and Faheem, I realized we weren't simply talking about artists. We were talking about architects.

Architects of institutions, architects of neighborhoods, architects of community, architects of memory, architects of possibility. Building is one of Black America's oldest and most profound acts of love. We built schools because we know knowledge changes lives. We built churches because we know hope needs a home and faith can keep us whole. We built institutions because we know memory matters. We built neighborhoods because we know place shapes possibility. We built art because we know beauty expands our collective imagination. Artists imagine futures long before institutions know how to build them. They sketch the first blueprint for the world to come.

Some build with brick and stone, some with paint and clay, some with music, some with policy, some with prayer, some with capital, some with beauty, some with love. Different tools, same blueprint. Sitting there at The Land School, I was reminded that perhaps the greatest inheritance our ancestors left us was not simply the institutions they built. They left us the blueprint. What a beautiful legacy to inherit. What a beautiful gift to carry forward.

And that is a wrap for today’s Dreaming in Color LIVE conversation.

A heartfelt thank you to Theaster Gates and Rebuild Foundation for hosting us at The Land School and for curating such an extraordinary space for imagination, creativity, and community. We’re also deeply grateful to Ellen Hartwell of Hartwell Creative, Afton Battle, and Acasia Wilson Feinberg, whose partnership, care, and generosity helped make this gathering and this episode possible.

Dreaming in Color LIVE is a Bridgespan-supported production, created in partnership with Content Allies and Studio Pod. A special thank you to our show producers, Denise Savas and Dustin Sese; our associate producer, Sakeena Khan; and our onboarding producer, Lambert Cruz. We value every voice and thank everyone who supports making this community stronger.

And, as always, a special thank you to my Bridgespan production partner, the ever-brilliant Cora Daniels, my partner in good trouble and in all the dreaming that happens behind the scenes.

If you enjoyed today’s conversation, be sure to subscribe, rate, and review wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Thanks for listening.