A first-hand account from mother and archivist Tracy Drake on the challenges of caring for Black children and the conversations she recently had with her daughter, as part of a series of testimonies by Black trans, Black women and girls, Black femme, and Black non-binary artists and cultural workers.
This month we’re highlighting events that uplift and fight for Black Lives and celebrate Black Queer Lives because the fight for Black Lives is the fight for Black artists, our Black Trans family, our Black Queer family, and the many branches of these communities.
The Chicago Archives + Artists Project (CA+AP) is an initiative that highlights Chicago archives and special collections that give space to voices on the margins of history. Led by Chicago-based writers and artists, the project explores archives across the city via online features, a series of public programs and new commissioned artwork by Chicago artists. For 2018, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation has funded a series of pilot projects pairing three artists with three archives around the city: Media Burn + Ivan Lozano, the Leather Archives & Museum + Aay Preston-Myint, and the Newberry Library’s Chicago Protest Collection + H. Melt. This series of articles will profile these featured archives and artists over the course of their collaboration, exploring the vital role of the archive in preserving and interpreting the stories of our city as well as the ways in which they can be a resource for creatives in the community. The CA+AP Festival will take place at Read/Write Library on July 13-14. For this installment, we sat down with Mel Leverich, the archivist …
In this archivist tête-à-tête, Stacie Williams and Analú López discuss why artists and activists should be the authors of their own stories.