Culture is a Tapestry We Weave Together
by Sahar Driver
On the eve of launching the Color Congress with Sonya Childress about a year ago, my instincts told me that the Intercultural Leadership Institute (ILI), made up of organizations I deeply respect, would be a valuable companion as we embarked on this project of building community across cultures and identities. I just ended a year-long experience with ILI and can now report that my intuition was well-founded. But the greater revelation is that the people of color (POC) ecosystem building work we are doing in the documentary sector is a winning strategy with relevance across sectors.
The ILI Experience
The “ILI experience” is an offering from a coalition of culture-based organizations in the US: Alternate Roots, First People Fund, the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC), the PAʻI Foundation, Sipp Culture, the First Alaskans Institute, and The International Association of Blacks in Dance. Like Color Congress, they are ecosystem-builders; their focus is artists and culture bearers in the broader arts and culture sector. As the leaders of these organizations encountered one another more and more in different leadership and networking spaces, they saw the limitations of building power and leadership in spaces that emphasize dominant cultural norms. That led them to create their own spaces to learn from one another, about one another, from within the cultural contexts that shape their experiences and understandings. The ILI fellowship is an extension of that commitment, an invitation to broaden the circle.
We met regularly over the course of the fellowship and were periodically invited into “cultural intensives” hosted by each of the ILI partners. Alternate Roots invited us to North Carolina where we connected with people and organizers they have built community with over years. We stayed at the Franklinton Center at Bricks, located at the site of a former plantation, now a social justice retreat space, a place for African American historic preservation, land-based innovation, and social justice. I met the other fellows in person here for the first time. Having such a painful history so present with us every day, I believe, called forth a level of honesty in us that fostered a deeper level of presence and connection than we might have found otherwise.
Mayor Mondale Robinson of Enfield, the seventh poorest county in the US, came to visit us at the Center one evening. In conversation with him, I caught a glimpse of what political power looks like in the hands of a leader who deeply loves the community he serves. In Durham, we met with the Earth Seed Land Collective and Spirit House, a Black woman-led organizing collective committed to safety, community, and healing. I was struck by how deeply consequential and life-changing their efforts have been for some people there. We also visited the Hayti Heritage Cultural Center (a Color Congress member organization) for a tour of their neighborhood, Black Wall Street; through live street performances by a local playwright, they brought to life the rich history of the area. In all of these experiences, I was reminded, again, of what a significant role art, storytelling, and care play in our social movements.
The PAʻI Foundation hosted the fellows on Hawaiʻi Island. There we met with local leaders who spent decades organizing to protect their sacred sites; through culturally rooted practices, we were invited to learn their deep relevance to communities on the Island. We met with MANAOLA, a family-run clothing designer and hula school committed to preserving the cultural, spiritual, and creative traditions of their Hawaiian ancestors. There we were introduced to the deep and cosmic essence of hula as practice and prayer. I will never again think of it in the same way.
By the time we visited Mauna Kea and spoke with land protectors who are fighting to defend the mountain from the construction of a telescope that threatens it, I understood the stakes in a much more profound way. And when we visited Ke Kula ʻo Nāwahīokalaniʻōpuʻu, a K-12 language immersion school that is part of the Hawaiian renaissance movement, we had built the foundation we needed as visitors to recognize how consequential this work is toward ensuring the language and culture will thrive for generations to come.
These were just two of the cultural intensives we participated in. Over the course of each, the people we encountered generously shared their stories with us, invited us into a deeper understanding of their worlds and worldviews, and on their own terms. The layers of understanding we built over the course of our time together were made possible by the relationships and trust we built together. This was a tremendous gift.
During these intensives and our meetings throughout the year, the fellows engaged in conversations about each of our unique racial and ethnic backgrounds. We explored the intersections between our experiences and the various ways they are distinct. And we discussed the unique or culturally rooted practices that honor our communities or help us to build power where we are located. Through these conversations about cultures and traditions that are not my own–conversations that were sometimes challenging but always honest–I came to understand my own experience a little more deeply.
In particular, I was moved to witness the confidence and strength that comes with having a clear sense of place and identity that emanated from so many of the Hawaiian people we met. As a second generation Iranian American–whose people are immigrants, whose stories are tied to a land I know once-removed, whose place is here and not-here, there and not-there–I felt an ache to reclaim pieces of myself that I have quieted or hidden to survive in Diaspora. I felt emboldened to define myself in terms of what I am as opposed to what I am not. And I was also moved to learn how common that desire, that ache is among the other fellows of all identities. The experience only strengthened my commitment to them and the communities they represent.
There is deep resonance between the ILI vision and the vision of Color Congress.
Ecosystem Building
As a people of color documentary ecosystem builder, we are committed to creating spaces of our own–unmediated by dominant cultural norms that harm our communities–where we can speak frankly and learn from one another, about one another. This is important because the 90+ organizations that make up our membership–all led by people of color–are serving communities of color in varying contexts across the US and US islands.
In other words, we are a “big tent,” with a diverse range of commitments, experiences, and relationships to documentary. We have a lot to explore, learn about, and discuss on our own so it’s helpful to have a space where we don’t feel pressure to perform. What our members do share in common, however, is knowing what it’s like to be working in an industry that is not set up to recognize, value, resource, distribute or otherwise support POC talent.
So every month, representatives from our member organizations meet online, for two hours in private, to talk about themes that have ranged from a conversation about disability justice with the Reality Poets of OPEN DOORS; to one with Crystal EchoHawk of Illuminatives on what narrative sovereignty means to Native communities; another with Karim Ahmad of Restoring the Future, Marjan Safinia of Beyond Inclusion, and Kashif Shaikh of Pillars Fund about how and why Muslim filmmakers have been organizing to confront Islamophobia in the doc field; and another with recent Sundance winner Michele Stevenson of Rada Collaborative (for their film, Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project) and Maori Karmael Holmes of BlackStar about the role afrofuturism and speculative nonfiction play in building Black futures. These are generative conversations, held in a space we’ve co-created to be healing-centered, both about the challenges our communities face, but also about what we’re doing about it and what we’re learning through the process.
By creating this space to think together through these conversations, we are building power together.
“Racism” is a label we use to name how systems harm us. But “culture” is a label we use to name what we are made of. The people and legacies, the rituals and practices, and the stories that shape us. Racism divides us, pits us against one another so a few can accumulate more power, more wealth, more control. Culture is what holds us together. When we create healing centered spaces, we are creating the spaces we need to nurture what we love about ourselves and each other.
In our first year, Color Congress has been using our monthly meetups as a space to get to know one another, deepening our understanding of why some organizations focus their work the way that they do, and how this is mediated by the unique identities and cultures that make them up. In this way we’ve been building a culture of learning and collaboration, and cultivating a sense of collective identity.
But we have an even bolder vision: to actualize a reimagined documentary landscape.
This is necessary. The documentary field is a storytelling incubator and platform for some of the most consequential stories that will ever reach audiences. But as we speak, the industry is being fine-tuned to support commercial profit; the cost is filmmaker independence, career sustainability for only a lucky few, and a narrowing of the kind of stories that will find support. A report by the Center for Media and Social Impact at American University found that the films that are consistently distributed by broadcast and streaming platforms are films by white men about white men. (This report was led in part by my Co-Director, Sonya Childress.) It also found that public media is one of the few platforms where filmmakers can find support for social issues storytelling. Whereas we continue to see audience appetite for a range of different kinds of stories, the marketplace for them is tightening. A report by Distribution Advocates found that over 80% of documentaries don’t sell out of major festivals, once the go-to platform for independent artists.
No one organization is going to solve these problems; collective action is necessary. This takes time, relationships of trust and shared commitment, and strategic alignment. But this is not possible while so many of our organizations are struggling. That’s why in our first year, our Field Building Program focused on strengthening the sustainability of our member organizations as a first priority. We came together to define the kinds of skills and resources that would benefit and set each of them on a path toward greater stability. This is urgent work in an industry that has chronically underinvested and overlooked their powerful contributions. Through that process, we began building the muscles we need to make decisions collectively.
We’re now ready to harness that collective power toward much needed changes and interventions that will serve the ecosystem we are a part of and the field at large. This year our monthly meetups will be increasingly focused on building solutions to the challenges our members collectively face. Color Congress is providing the space to dream together and the infrastructure needed for collective deliberation and decision making. We are also raising the funds needed to implement those solutions.
We are built to put into action the creative will of our members.
We are doing this because we trust that the answers, the most promising interventions, lie within this ecosystem of POC-led organizations in the documentary field, organizations that have reliably and steadfastly remained committed to the communities they represent, organizations with a unique lens into the experiences of people of color in the field and in society at large.
Equity Benefits All
What we’re after is a stronger and more equitable field. When filmmakers of color have the power to negotiate for better terms–for greater authorship and independence, for our communities to also be centered as audiences, cared for as film participants–this improves conditions for all independent filmmakers, broader audiences, and communities that interface with the documentary field.
Why is this urgent now? Because when we work together to reshape the industry toward one that trusts people of color to tell our own stories on our own terms, to tell stories not just about what harms us but also about what we love about ourselves, then it can become an even more powerful force for social change. Then our relationships with one another, our commitments to one another, grow stronger. These are what guide us through the ongoing catastrophes in our lives, communities, and worlds.
I was deeply affected by the generosity of the ILI partners’ vision, to widen the circle of care that draws in more culture workers, artists, and arts practitioners committed to cultural equity and change in our own communities. To be invited into someone’s home changes your understanding of their world. The understanding of course is not complete; it can never be. But it is intimate.
Storytelling is like that.
The stories we tell each other about each other, shape the ways we treat one another in broader society. When we tell our stories, it can be layered, nuanced, painstaking. We don’t map our stories onto one another in perfect algorithmically designed shapes. We map our stories in kaleidoscope. Fragments of ourselves find a place and resonance within that. And when we see our own tiny place in the larger story, we are a little more whole than we were before it.
Whether it’s in person or on the screen, our stories are powerful. Our stories are our power. This is why Color Congress is dedicated to strengthening the POC documentary ecosystem that creates space for our stories, resources them, platforms them, champions them, and centers the audiences for whom they matter most. Relationships of care and shared commitment are the politically necessary underpinnings of this work. It’s a beautiful thing to look across at ILI and see a family of people with aligned commitments and strategies. In their work, I see reflections of our own work. And that’s how I know the cultural fabric we’re weaving will be strong and beautiful.
