2022 ACF Equity Summit: Lifting Up Our Youth
Part 5: Immigration, Identity, and the Arts Preview
Saturday, September 17, 2022
Walker West Music Academy
Produced by Claim Our Space
Each year, ACF hosts an Artist Equity Summit that centers music creators and examines themes related to equity that impact the field and beyond. Our theme in 2022 is “Lifting Up our Youth.”
This event is the culmination of artist PaviElle French’s residency with six St. Paul-based arts organizations working together as a group for the first time. Liberation! Lifting Up our Youth is PaviElle French’s vision, and comes out of our collective need and responsibility to empower our young people and give them a platform.
Featured in this video:
Vanessa Rose — Executive Director, ACF
Vanessa Rose joined the American Composers Forum (ACF) in January 2019. For more than a decade, Vanessa has been working with artists and organizations dedicated to living creators, including the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Lark Play Development Center, The Knights collective, the American Composers Orchestra, and Arco Collaborative. She has led organizations through significant transitions: establishing new leadership positions, guiding strategic transformation, and centering racial equity. She is Board Chair of the Performing Arts Alliance, a coalition of national performing arts organizations focusing on public policy and advocacy to ensure equitable participation in the arts.
Carolina Heredia — Director of Artist Support, ACF
Carolina Heredia is a composer of acoustic and electronic music, and an intermedia artist. She has a background in Argentinian folk and tango. As the ACF Director of Artist Support, Carolina is the liaison with the artists creating music today. In collaboration with other staff and Board, she helps to ensure that ACF is an inclusive space for diverse artists to feel welcome and connected to other artists and collaborators. In her role as an arts administrator, Carolina served as the Associate Director of the Mizzou New Music Initiative overseeing music composition programs for composers of all ages and career stages. In this position, she contributed to the design of policies that ensure equitable practices in the selection processes, budget distribution, and the curation of concerts and annual guest artists, as well as to creating connections with the local community. She was a founding member and the Executive Director of the Khemia Ensemble, and is currently a founding member of ANTiCX, a collective of multimedia artists.
Clarence White — Associate Director, East Side Freedom Library
Clarence is a writer, editor, typewriter poet, and arts organizer and administrator. He has worked for a wide range of organizations including the National Farmers Union (working in media in their Washington, DC Capitol hill office) the Minnesota State Senate, several nonprofits in the arts, community development, public policy and media, including the Minneapolis Urban League, the Twin Cities Daily Planet (news), Nonviolent Peaceforce (international civil society organization) and the Saint Paul Almanac, and as a bookseller with the Hungry Mind Bookstore. He taught management and organizational behavior at Metropolitan State University and North Hennepin Technical College. His publications are included in several editions of the Saint Paul Almanac, Suisun Valley Review, Public Art Review and the anthology Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota. He is a past Givens Foundation Retreat Fellow and was a finalist for mnartists.org‘s flash fiction contest miniStories. He is intrigued by baseball stories and how they are vivid touch points for American history. In his first paycheck job, he was a Teamster. He lives in Saint Paul.
