Core Partners
CEI Core Partnership
CEI core partners shape and lead CEI collective governance. Representatives from each of the core partner organizations make up the CEI Leadership Council, which meets regularly through group gatherings, committee meetings, and 1:1 contact to facilitate collective decision-making. Core partners are compensated through annual general operating grants and direct payments for work related to the CEI collective.
Interested in learning more about our model and becoming involved? Email incubator@artsconnectinternational.org for more information.
Meet the Core Partners
Abilities Dance Boston
Abilities Dance Boston is a performing company designed to provide a professional platform for dancers of all physical abilities. We strive to increase inclusion in dance and in the arts for folks with disabilities. Our productions involve choreography that emphasizes the dancers’ strengths, original music that is tailored to the movements and abilities of our dancers, and access points and technologies to increase accessibility for our audiences. We teach intersectional disability rights, provide lectures and movement workshops, and facilitate conversations with our community partners about inclusive practices in their spaces to bring back to their communities. Outside of our company productions, we have performed and showcased our work in festivals and events such as: the MFA, Peabody Essex Museum, Boston Contemporary Dance Festival, GRUNT Festival at Links Hall in Chicago, markeddanceproject’s 10th anniversary show at Gibney in NYC, The Series: Vol IV at the Ailey Citigroup Theatre, and more.
Art in the Antilles
Art in the Antilles (AITA) empowers artists of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora to equitably bridge access to the arts sectors. With Art in the Antilles, Caribbean immigrants and descendants of the Caribbean build community, connect resources, deepen their cultural and historical knowledge and have professional development opportunities in order to equitably navigate the growing creative economy. AITA empowers black Caribbeans of immigrant backgrounds to design their own futures. We help to cultivate the artist identity for Afro-Caribbean people. We celebrate our black culture in the Caribbean and de-stigmatize the perception of an “Artist” in our communities. We make art and creativity accessible, prosperous, and a part of our innate identities.
Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston
Arts Connect International
Danza Orgánica
Dunamis
The Flavor Continues
The Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston, Inc. is dedicated to leveraging the strengths and resources of the business and legal communities to build knowledge, organizational capacity, and infrastructure in support of the individual artists and arts and cultural organizations in our region. Our goals are: 1) to provide quality direct legal services to the creative professionals and arts and cultural organizations that could otherwise not afford it, 2) to provide innovative and relevant professional development programs that address the complex needs of artists and arts and cultural organizations, 3) to support diverse communities through the identification, development and ownership of safe, affordable, permanent, and equitable creative spaces, and 4) to invest in and support arts and cultural organizations' boards of directors with qualified business and legal professionals and ongoing board development trainings.
Arts Connect International’s (ACI) mission is to build equity and inclusion in, and through, the arts. We believe that all people deserve to live creative and expressive lives on their own terms, making cultural equity and creative justice the focus of our work. We practice and strive towards creative justice through emergent, responsive and iterative work. Our work includes: 1) sector supports, featuring the Cultural Equity Learning Community, an anti-racism training for sector leaders, alongside consulting services, 2) leadership development, including our Community Ripple Grants, Youth United Artists Program, Artist in Residence Program, and Leadership Retreats, 3) community convenings, most recently manifesting in our nation-wide Arts Equity Summit, and 4) research, with our most recent publication, Moves Towards Equity: Perspectives from Arts Leaders of Color, released in 2019.
Danza Orgánica is a Boston-based dance theater company that creates antiracist, antipatriarchal and decolonizing work. Through high-quality performance, education (Dance for Social Justice™), and our annual festival We Create, we work with-and-for communities interested in embodying a liberated future. We honor our right to express our BIPOC experience, joyfully reimagine ourselves in liberated BIPOC bodies, and leave a legacy that sheds light upon an untold side of history. We are in solidarity with BIPOC, LGBTQI, and communities that face racial, ability-based, economic, xenophobic and/or colonial oppression.
Dunamis ignites agency and transformative growth for emerging artists and arts-managers of color by serving as a nexus for professional development, community-building, consultation, production, advocacy and developing equitable pipelines for access and leadership in creative spaces. We give folx the support they need to grow into greater and more complete versions of themselves.
The Flavor Continues (TFC) is a non-profit organization based in the Greater Boston area spearheaded by members of the street and club dance community. Starting as an organization focused solely on curating live dance events, TFC soon found themselves at the intersection of historical and community preservation, education, and public health. “The flavor continues” was first used as a moniker, eventually evolving into a statement representing the organization’s consistent dedication in providing for their community. Seeing value in the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual blessings various street and club dance cultures have brought to the world, TFC believes in returning the same honor to the culture. Now, TFC seeks to evolve the culture by continuing to serve through transformative and novel methods in its programming pursuing the creation of a sustainable foundation for the street and club dance community.
What People Are Saying
“In what was easily the most isolating year most of us have ever faced, we’ve collectively come to understand the power and necessity in being in community with each other. The opportunity to do so with these particularly phenomenal people unified in the purpose of supporting our sector in deeper and more intentional ways was one of the easiest and most exciting decisions we’ve ever made as an organization.”
“Across our lives, we have witnessed the spiritual bankruptcies of the white-dominated american arts & culture sector. This Cultural Equity Incubator platforms our community in embodying the modes of kinship we inherit from our ancestors, while seeding vibrant futures for our descendants. This is the work of our lives and I’m ecstatic to live it out through relations and experiments like this.”
“I was encouraged and inspired to be a part of the Cultural Equity Incubator because of the shared values that deeply resonated with my personal and professional world-building model. In value-based work like this, practitioners of color often feel isolated and marginalized in the arts sector. I wanted to be a part of a community that prioritized togetherness, belonging, and integrity. To be in solidarity with other like-minded and open-hearted arts workers is a unique privilege that I couldn’t pass up. I feel incredibly thankful to walk this uncharted path with these collaborators.”
“I am interested in joining CEI because equity is a focus of my own artistic practice. In my experience, cultural workers in Boston often find it difficult to produce creative work due to the capital overhead — a paradox in a place culturally diverse but divided in the shadow of biotech and academia. I’m excited about the opportunity to work with others who are passionate about what they are doing and focused on connecting back to their communities. In a time when the future of performance feels unclear, it brings hope to be a part of such a supportive collective.”
“The CEI brings together organizations and artists who strive for intersectional justice work and building bridges with the Boston community. That is why Abilities Dance Boston is incredibly excited to be a part of this opportunity.”
