The Art House community: board of directors, staff, and teaching artists have participated in DEI and Racial Equity workshops and training. As powerful as these trainings are, we sought a way to go beyond this type of outside intervention, a top-down specialized experience set apart from the day-to-day and instead take a grassroots approach, working from the ground up to effect change within our psyches and the organization, and to ultimately become be a catalyst for change.

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     An Equity Steering Team made up of a core group of staff and teaching artists embarked on this initiative with the intent to create a safe space within which our teaching artists can gather informally to openly discuss implicit and explicit biases, inequities, fears, frustrations, pain, and trauma that we experience due to the racialized construct within which we all live. In so doing, we seek to heal and empower each of us to continue this work. As these conversations develop, we will expand them to include the board, more staff members, volunteers, and others from outside the organization.

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     The Equity Steering Team has worked with a consultant for over a year and a half to clarify the vision and goals for this initiative and to co-create a framework that included content, skill building, resources, and strategies to prepare us to guide the conversation sessions. We will use art and other media samples as entry points for discussion topics.

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     We are planning to launch the Equity Conversations in the fall of 2024.