Raven Stubbs: A day late and a dollar short
Assembly Gallery Activation:
Winter 2019
In January 2017, Recess launched the Assembly program to expand upon our mission to connect artists and public. Assembly is an artist-led diversion program for court-involved youth that offers long-term, paid pathway to careers in the arts. A guest artist joins each new cohort of the program and collaborates with youth on a project in our public storefront gallery.
Public Programs
February 2, 2pm: Class Intersection: Identity Expression
February 16, 2pm: Class Intersection: Assets
February 21, 7pm: Class Intersection: Socialization
February 7, 7pm: Recess Winter Reception
March 7, 6pm: Culminating Reception
Raven Stubbs
From January 10 – March 16, Raven Stubbs will present A day late and a dollar short a workshop series and ethnodramaturgical project exploring the role of class within contemporary Black life and community. Over the course of four public sessions on education, identity expression (gender,etc.), assets, and socialization, Stubbs will work with Recess Assembly participants and invited facilitators to foster dialogue and inquiry around the complex intersections of Blackness and class. Do systems of racial exclusion offer class equity within black communities? Does educational advancement offer Black individuals true access to resources or merely bring them adjacent to privileged others? Is class status an overdetermination of access to gender expression and identity? When can spaces of Black self-determination undo generations of racist targeting by housing and financial institutions? And when do prescribed modes of Black socialization, presentability, and excellence become complicit in pathologizing Black life rather than inspiring Black uplift? As Black Americans aspire and indeed achieve the spoils of upward social mobility, educational advancement, and middle-class security they simultaneously navigate a reality in which capitalism continues to excacerbate systemic violence, economic stratification, and the cultural denigration of Black communities and loved ones. Stubbs’s project gives space for Black folks to question how, if at all, they can participate in the market without selling themselves.
Drawing upon the language that emerges during the four public workshops, Stubbs’s project will culminate in the creation of an ethnodramatic reading presented at the conclusion of the project. In addition to her work on A day late and a dollar short in the Assembly gallery space, Stubbs will participate as a guest artist during the Assembly diversion program. She will collaborate with the program’s Lead Educator to incorporate material from her project into the program’s curriculum.
Banner Image: Untitled, Courtesy of the Artist
Open to the public
Tuesday – Saturday, 12-6pm
About the Artist
Born and raised in Detroit, MI, Raven Stubbs is an artist, educator, writer, and organizer who views each of those roles as overlapping and intersectional. She holds a BA in Theatre Studies with research in Ethnodramatic practices from Illinois Wesleyan University and an Ed.M. in Education and Public Policy from Harvard Graduate School of Education. Coming from a predominantly Black city, Raven uses ethnography and Theater of the Oppressed to address access to education and interrogate racism, gender, and class within the Black community. Using art to curate and produce space for folks of color, Raven’s art both increases literacy skills in school-aged black and latinx children and reimagines spaces for learning and creative expression. Her research and experiences led her to create performance-based Anti-Oppression workshops as a tool for community building, organizing, and art making. Raven’s passion for advocating for social change and human rights lead her to form many partnerships and spearhead projects with organizations including A.R.T (Cambridge, MA), H.G.S.E., Western Avenue Community Center (Bloomington, IL), Delta Dental Health Theatre (St.Louis, MO), Illinois Shakespeare Festival (Bloomington,IL), and Mosaic Youth Theatre (Detroit, MI), CYI Detroit (Detroit, MI), Global Campaign for Education-US Chapter (D.C.), Lawndale Christian Legal Center (Chicago, IL), Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (Chicago, IL), Teachers for Social Justice (Chicago, IL), Avodah (Chicago, New York, D.C., New Orleans), The Goodman Theatre (Chicago, IL), Harvard Defenders (Cambridge,MA).
Major funding for Assembly is provided by The Horace Goldsmith Foundation, The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, The Salomon Foundation, and The Stavros Niarchos Foundation.
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