Award winning author and publisher will speak at groundbreaking of community arts project
Dr. Haki Madhubuti, an architect of the legendary Black Arts Movement and founder of Third World Press, will be in Cleveland this weekend to help launch a new global community arts project that will be co-anchored in Cleveland. Madhubuti will deliver a keynote address for the project’s launch this Saturday, December 10, from 2p-4:30p at the Bop Stop, 2920 Detroit Ave [44113].
The event will kick off the Youth Resiliency Institute (YRI) Community Arts Project, which is designed to foster the restoration of African cultural heritage among black people in the United States. The project aims to use the universal power of art to unite participants in distressed communities across political borders and beyond the confines of geopolitical lines.
It has been conceived as a cross-generational community effort to provide space and opportunity for black youth artists to navigate the terrain of their emerging self-worth, identity, and citizenship in an American society that is often indifferent — when not downright hostile — to their development.
Madhubuti, a leader and seminal figure in the African American cultural arts world that found new expression in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, is both an inspired and natural choice to help launch the project.
In 1967 he founded Third World Press, which became the largest independent black owned press in the United States. He co-founded Black Books Bulletin, a key literary journal from 1970-1994.
“Art matters, and the best of our culture is defined by its artists,” says Madhubuti.
Madhubuti is expected to discuss the legendary Black Arts Movement, Third World Press and the history of the Western Museum as a purveyor of white supremacy. The event will include an opening musical libation by legendary Cleveland vibraphonist Cecil Rucker, Jr & Good Vibes.
Initial activities of the project, which has been dubbed “Mountain Movers” [MMP], will take place in the three cities where YRI currently operates: Cleveland, East Cleveland, and Baltimore, Maryland. YRI will implement the MMP in Ohio in partnership with the National Rites of Passage Institute.
The New York Times has revealed that a report commissioned by President Macron of France determined that up to 95 percent of Africa’s cultural heritage is held outside Africa by major museums. Now across the globe, many European nations are engaging in the process of returning stolen objects to their respective countries. In October 2021, President Emmanuel Macron of France began the formal transfer of 26 objects to the West African nation of Benin.
“The Mountain Movers project provides a unique way for black families living through intersecting forms of oppressions to connect with local, national and international black art networks while learning about the centrality of the restitution of African cultural heritage as a critical intervention inextricably tied to the wellbeing of black youth,” said native East Clevelander and YRI co-founder and executive director Fanon Hill.
MMP will function as a hub and resource center providing information, training, programming, and intentional conversations on the role of culturally responsive community based and locally led arts programming in elevating youth centered perspectives, tactics and strategies focused on the restitution of African cultural heritage.
Through a series of community-based workshops inspired and led by teaching artists from the African continent and throughout the African diaspora, project participants ages 13-24 will use paintings, statues, photography, dance, short digital films and other media to probe the cultural, political, economic and social implications of the restitution of African cultural heritage.
A goal of the workshops will be the curation of neighborhood-based exhibitions that celebrate the functionality of African arts and culture. These exhibits will be co-curated in partnership with elder black artists and cultural activists ages 60 and up. The process contemplates the creation a generational pipeline that will support and nourish young artists participating in MMP programming.
Additionally, project participants will explore the role of international law in the looting and auctioning of African art while interrogating current imbalances of power perpetuated by “mainstream museums” and cultural institutions through art-funding and engagement practices that do not responsibly, inclusively, and equitably serve high-poverty black communities.
“Culturally responsive community-based arts engagement disrupts exclusionary practices by immediately focusing on the community as a site of resistance, and subsequently, provides a rich setting for a return to the functionality of African art to redeem and restore,” said Hill.
MMP has partnered with The Black Child Journal on a special edition dedicated to the restitution of African cultural heritage through a cross-generational lens. MMP youth participants will travel to West Africa to learn first-hand about how African institutions are breaking with the Western model of museums.
“The Black Child Journal looks forward to the partnership with the Mountain Movers project; and the variety of activities for increasing the participants’ capacity to imagine and actualize what is necessary for creating a bright, limitless and culturally competent future through their African heritage and ARTS,” said Black Child Journal publisher Useni Perkins.
The project launch is a free event but registration is required due to limited space. Register by email here at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Doors will open at 1:30p.
For more information, visit: www.mountainmoversproject.com.
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