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The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, in its latest grant cycle, will fund 25 arts projects with $177,000 in funding. The grants support, among many other themes and explorations, work that asks bold questions about speculative futures, translates the stories of frontline workers during the pandemic into theater, and spotlights marginalized voices that might otherwise go unheard.
“With our annual grants, we’re always thinking about how we are supporting marginalized communities, thinking about balancing our concrete aims in doing that, and being responsive through calls for supporting Black and AAPI artists,” says Chloe Reison, associate director of The Sachs Program. “And I do feel that, with those particular calls especially, we are reaching more people and that’s contributing to the diversity of our more general pool.”
Since its formation in 1970, UC Berkeley’s African American studies department has been at the forefront of African diaspora scholarship.
According to Leigh Raiford, associate professor of African American studies, the department was born from the work of the Third World Liberation Front, a student movement that called for minority representation in academia.
“The Third World Liberation strike here on campus sought to create, basically, an ethnic studies college for the study of underrepresented minority groups,” Raiford said. “Once the ethnic studies program was started, a couple of years later, African American studies broke off and created its own department.”