A concert series highlighting talented, local Black and brown singer/songwriters got Charlotte Symphony violinist Kari Giles out of her “classical bubble.”
Will Keible, WDAV’s director of marketing and corporate support, said he’s heard the same thing from listeners about NoteWorthy, the innovative series presented by WDAV Classical Public Radio and FAIR PLAY Music Equity Initiative that’s been introducing Charlotteans to musical talent that’s been right in front of us.
Murals have been popping up on walls all across the Queen City in the past few years, but certain neighborhoods—especially those further away from the Center City area with larger minority and immigrant populations—seem to get less attention than others.
Inspired to make a change in this inequality, Davidson-based artist and 2020 ASC Emerging Creators Fellowship recipient Irisol Gonzalez is creating community murals in three different areas of Charlotte with content that reflects the diverse, vibrant and often under-represented Latinx cultures of the people who live in each location.
All organizations, especially historic sites and history museums, have a fundamental responsibility to tell the full truth about the history they are sharing with the community with careful intention and action.
After 25 years teaching theater arts – the past 20 at Charlotte’s Northwest School of the Arts – Corey Mitchell asked himself a question that changed the trajectory of his career.
Is there more I can do to help build and support the next generation of theatre professionals?
As a young boy growing up in Shanghai, China, Raphael “Ray” Tsu would look skyward wondering about the universe beyond the clouds. “I asked my mother, ‘What is behind the clouds?’” recalled Tsu. “She told me, ‘The sun.’ I’d then ask, ‘What is behind the sun?’ and she told me, ‘The stars.’ When I finally asked, ‘What is behind the stars?’ she told me, ‘Only God knows.’ I knew then at 10 years old there was so much we didn’t know. This is what drives me as a scientist, to learn about what we don’t know.”
Telling others’ stories is a privilege documentary filmmaker Beverley Penninger undertakes with the utmost respect and sense of responsibility. “I never start a project with any preconceived ideas,” said Penninger. “My goal is to honor the subject and share the journey of discovery with the viewer.”
Sonia Handelman Meyer’s passion for photography grew from a chance encounter she had in 1942 while working as a civilian for the U.S. Army Signal Corp at Ft. Buchanan in Puerto Rico. “I met a young man working for the National Youth Administration taking pictures of the conditions,” recalled Meyer. “His photographs were beautiful and exposed things that needed to be changed. I knew immediately this was something I wanted to do.”
Tyrone Jefferson likes to quote civil rights activist Marcus M. Garvey who said, “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” The quest for ancestral knowledge is not only Jefferson’s lifelong passion, but part of the mission of A Sign of The Times, the nonprofit community service organization he founded in 2006.
When Tom Hanchett arrived in Charlotte in the early ‘80s to work for the Charlotte Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission his job was to study neighborhoods many saw as old and run down.
For Julie McConnell, AP biology teacher and science department chair at Hough High School, teaching students to “think like a scientist” is a way to equip them with problem solving skills they’ll need in their studies and throughout their lives.