IBPOC Speaker Series: Bekezela Mguni of The Black Unicorn Library & Archive Project
Please join IDEAS in this virtual event welcoming Bekezela Mguni, founder of The Black Unicorn Library & Archive Project, located in Pittsburgh. Bekezela will be talking about her journey within and outside the library profession, as well as the creation of The Black Unicorn Library & Archive Project. This event will be virtual and is reserved for IBPOC-identifying iSchool students.
Flowers For Black Beloveds - Solstice Care Packages
Join us on Sunday, December 11th from 3 -7pm at the Irma Freeman Center for Imagination. We'll be processing seeds, arranging dried flowers, blending herbal teas, assembling care packages and writing cards to share with Black folks to celebrate the solstice. Refreshments will be provided. Masks required.
Global Screening to Honor Audre Lorde: A Litany for Survival
In honor of Audre Lorde's ascension day on November 17, join us virtually for a special 24-hour virtual screening of A LITANY FOR SURVIVAL: a powerful film uplifting her life and celebrating her legacy. Let's lift up her immeasurable contributions to our lives!
RSVP on Eventbrite and you will receive a Vimeo link with a password to watch the film on November 17, 2022 (EST).
This is a presentation of Black Unicorn Library(https://www.theblackunicornlibrary.org/) and co-sponsored by Third World Newsreel (twn.org)
Questions to blackunicornproject@gmail.com.
With eternal thanks to the filmmakers Ada Gay Griffin and Michelle Parkerson
Radical Art Market
Welcome to Let’s Get Free’s 5th Annual Art Show. This year’s show features 34 artists in prison and 35 artists in solidarity expressing a range of media, from watercolor to cross stitch to sculpture. Art as a tool for liberation has been a central element of Let’s Get Free’s work since its inception, and its annual art shows have steadily built advocacy to end mass incarceration and work for peace.
This is a contest. Winners will be announced by December 19th and all participants will be notified for both the visual art show and poetry contest. Please vote for your favorite piece in each gallery.
Last Weekend of Show - Radical Art Market. Come support and buy art!!!
December 18 – 19th
Saturday & Sunday
11- 3pm
Brew House 711 21 st. (southside)
Take Up Space Festival
We are so excited and honored to be in community with Yogamotif and to be a sponsor for the Take Up Space Festival!
A fundraising event for The PostpARTum Project, enjoy a day-long ticketed fall festival of creativity, yoga, and meditation in the company of:
Crystal McCreary, @iamcmccreary
Roopa Bala Singh, @roopabalasingh
Sheba Gittens, @shebasheba7
Alecia Dawn, @thealeciadawn
Felicia Savage Friedman, @yogarootsonlocation
Alecia Young, @thealeciadawn
Heather Manning, @heather.louise.m
The Take Up Space Festival will support sending 100 Black mothers and people who birth on postpARTum retreats.
Take Up Space Fest is part of ongoing fundraising in support of The PostpARTum Project. What is the PostpARTum Project? It is a self-guided artist retreat for postpartum Black Mothers and people who birth. Guests will experience one-day retreats at a nature-based cabin allowing for spiritual renewal from childbirth. In our fast-paced culture, The PostpARTum Project offers a magical space for Black Mothers to slow down and appreciate the many forms of healing.
Visit the website to learn more and support this work. Buy a ticket to the Take Up Space festival on Dec 11th or become a sponsor of our event. Sign up ✍🏾 yogamotif.com
Hold space and let's support collective care together.
👉🏾 Save the date, Dec 11th
👉🏾 Become a sponsor or donate items
👉🏾 Click the link in the bio to learn more @yogamotif
Cultivating Genius Within Black Children: P.R.I.D.E. Virtual Speaker Series
Registration is free and be sure to attend! This event is one-night-only, and will not be available as a recording.
Join the P.R.I.D.E. Program for a thought-provoking conversation focused on Cultivating Genius Within Black Children. Dr. Gholdy Muhammad, author of Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy, will deliver the keynote address.
Dr. Muhammad's keynote will provide interactive and foundational experiences of culturally and historically responsive education to teachers and leaders. The talk will blend history, theory, and practical/engaging approaches for understanding and implementing CHRE instructional practices. Dr. Muhammad will demonstrate researched-based equity practices and offer pedagogical examples of the lesson and unit plans.
The keynote will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by P.R.I.D.E. Director Dr. Aisha White and featuring Dr. Muhammad and Bekezela Mguni, a queer Trinidadian artist, radical librarian, and educator with more than 15 years of community organizing experience in the Reproductive Justice movement.
Learn more about P.R.I.DE. (Positive Racial Identity Development in Early Education) at racepride.pitt.edu.
2020-2021 CMU Library Speaker Series
Reclaiming Cultural Stewardship and Decolonizing the Archives. Thursday, February 25th, 2021. 7:00 p.m. Online Event.
What does it mean to approach the practice of archiving through a justice-centered lens? Archivists play a critical role in the preservation of our history, how we interpret the current moment, and what evidence is left behind in order to help us understand and shape our future. Whose story is deemed valuable? Whose life is seen as important enough to be remembered? What cultural lenses will we use to look at our experiences? In this talk, Bekezela Mguni examines how archives can be both sites of powerful memory keeping as well as oppression and violence.
Bekezela Mguni is a queer Trinidadian artist, librarian, and educator. She has over 15 years of community organizing experience in the Reproductive Justice movement and holds an MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh. She was a 2015-2016 member of the Penn Ave Creative Accelerator Program with the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater and launched the Black Unicorn Library and Archive Project, a Black feminist community library and archive. She is currently an artist-in-residence at Artist Image Resource and the librarian-in-residence at the Pittsburgh International Airport.