The Heritage Arts Institute is a national program that engages historically marginalized Afro-Descendant young people in robust Black music, performing arts and visual arts education that centers their stories, their values and their people through cultural traditions of African Diaspora and Africa. Our goal is to achieve racial equity in music and arts education by employing culturally responsive pedagogy for Afro-descendant students. This is a program of Themba Arts and Culture, Inc, based on the ethnomusicological field research of Executive Director Maya Cunningham on culturally responsive pedagogical music/arts education models in the Volta Region of Ghana, Baroda in the Gujarat province of India, Gaborone, Botswana, Johannesburg, South Africa, African America (Washington DC) and Salvador, Bahia in Brazil.
The Heritage Arts Institute is the first of its kind in the United States, and works with partner schools and after school programs in the Washington DC area and the New England region to engage Afro-descendant students in culture-bearer led artist residencies, as well as cultural arts workshops for African American communities. The Heritage Arts Institute also includes The Drinking Gourd Festival, an artistic and musical celebration based on the history of the song Follow the Drinking Gourd, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists, and the Underground Railroad. The festival features an art exhibition and performance by students from Washington DC area and New England Region public schools. Click here to learn more about The Drinking Gourd Festival.
The program also seeks to correct the egregious lack of representation of African Americans as performers and leaders in their traditional heritage music forms like jazz – a situation that has developed over the last thirty years due to racial bias, marginalization in US music education, lack of sequential instrumental education in public schools, and exclusion from extra-curricular jazz education. We aim to direct young Afro-descendants students to become industry leaders as performers, music business professionals, educators and scholars in their heritage musics like jazz, blues and other forms through in-school/after school community jazz programs, music business and arts administration internship opportunities, college preparation for undergraduate music conservatory programs and robust mentoring.
More information coming soon!
The Heritage Arts Institute is the first of its kind in the United States, and works with partner schools and after school programs in the Washington DC area and the New England region to engage Afro-descendant students in culture-bearer led artist residencies, as well as cultural arts workshops for African American communities. The Heritage Arts Institute also includes The Drinking Gourd Festival, an artistic and musical celebration based on the history of the song Follow the Drinking Gourd, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists, and the Underground Railroad. The festival features an art exhibition and performance by students from Washington DC area and New England Region public schools. Click here to learn more about The Drinking Gourd Festival.
The program also seeks to correct the egregious lack of representation of African Americans as performers and leaders in their traditional heritage music forms like jazz – a situation that has developed over the last thirty years due to racial bias, marginalization in US music education, lack of sequential instrumental education in public schools, and exclusion from extra-curricular jazz education. We aim to direct young Afro-descendants students to become industry leaders as performers, music business professionals, educators and scholars in their heritage musics like jazz, blues and other forms through in-school/after school community jazz programs, music business and arts administration internship opportunities, college preparation for undergraduate music conservatory programs and robust mentoring.
More information coming soon!
