TSAL March 2022 Mixtape: Locating Home(s) by ThirdSpace Action Lab

March 2022

TSAL Monthly Newsletter

MORE SOUL FOOD Artist: Toyin Ojih Odutola

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LOCATING HOMES MOTHERLANDS & MOTHER TONGUES

MARCH 2022

TSAL Monthly Newsletter

MORE SOUL FOOD Read | Watch | Listen

CONTENTS 17 VIBES + STUFF 25 MIND 26 CONNECTION 27 SPIRIT 28 BACK COVER

Activating Space. Activating People. 3rdspaceactionlab.co

TSAL Monthly Newsletter

MARCH 2022

LOCATING HOMES

Artist: Toyin Ojih Odutola

Dear Comrade, “Who are the artists that form your creative lineage?” In February, we posed that question to ThirdSpace Action Lab’ co-founder and creative director, Mordecai Cargill. This simple question functioned like a thread to a larger tapestry that wove together this month’s theme. Lineage assembles and unravels the threads — both loosely and tightly woven — that can form and shape the tapestry of what constitutes our homes. This March, in light of Women’s History Month, ThirdSpace Action Lab is inviting everyone to reflect and celebrate the ceaseless pursuit of searching for, and making sense of our lineages, motherlands and mother tongues with the concept of locating home(s). In reference to how we relate and decipher our place in this world, the FrenchMartinican writer, poet, philosopher, and literary critic, Édouard Glissant offers this provocation: “We must become conscious of this: our place is irreplaceable. We aren’t just floating around in the air. It’s absurd to believe that I leave, that I don’t have a place. It’s unavoidable […] As a result, the place is the relation, for me, between here and elsewhere, between the inside and outside…”

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TSAL Monthly Newsletter

MARCH 2022

LOCATING HOMES

Artist: Toyin Ojih Odutola

The act of locating home is generative and reflective. Locating home honors the constellations—mapped and unmapped—of our lived experiences. It reckons with the collective memories in relation to ourselves, our loved ones, and our ancestors in the here and elsewhere: amid different lands, time zones, geographies, and across diasporic waters. Our cover art and artist feature of the month is Toyin Ojih Odutola, a Nigerian visual artist and columnist based in New York who explores “the malleability of meaning, memory and power” through visual storytelling. In the project of creating homes and places that reflect our collective memory and placemaking, we reject the notion of a tabula rasa: the idea that we are blank slates bereft of lineage in relation to land, memory, sea, language, and to each other. While we are being transformed by the plenitude of history-making moments and movements that are holding our attention now, we are also transforming, shaping, and regenerating what we inherited from the past to sustain the futures perceptible on our horizons. Wishing you a safe return home, TSAL TEAM

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3 words to encapsulate your vision for a Black loving world

SOUL CHECK SOUL CHECK DR. MARTHA MS. TINA WhatHope, history-making momentPeaceful, intent, (at any scale) is holding yourpure, & & courage attention right now? amazing

EVELYN

Joy, thrive, & soul Toyin Ojih Odutola JENINA

MAURA

Justice, expansive, & liberatory

Joyful, bold, & beautiful AMBER

The history making moment holding my attention currently is Ketanji Brown Jackson as Biden's nominee to be the first Black woman to sit BRANDON on the Supreme Court. MAICA

Subversive, celebratory, & melenated

Ubiquitous, tangible, justice

BENJAMIN BENJAMIN Radical,

SHAMMAS

Bright, prosperous, The rise of Environmental, Social + Governance conscious investing. The smiling, & ways in which individuals move their money at systems scale toward & innovative calm failing companies making progress toward racial equity (or companies to make a difference) is one of the most impactful ways to create a more inclusive economy. I'm looking forward to seeing how the trend Charles Henry Alston, The Family, 1955 develops and how ThirdSpace can contribute to the movement.

TRISTEN

Nurturing, restorative, & uplifting

AMBER

Love, restorative, & warm

TREVOR Beautiful, bold, & liberated

BRANDON

TSAL INVITES YOU TO IMAGINE A BLACK I'm reckoning with LOVING colonialismWORLD as an on-going that has laid the WITHprocess US THROUGH SOUND foundation (an as BY a result the framework) for the degradation and ADDING TO OUR MIXTAPE OR SCANNING oppression of Black andQR indigenous communities across the world. THE CODE BELOW. Specifically, I’m reckoning with the severance of genealogy and cultural

MIXTAPE history, Black diasporic migration (domestic + international), and the

redlining of our neighborhoods all has resulted in the loss of material resources, political power and the splintering of communal compassion + trust. My attention is honed in on how our capacity for imagination is the solution to the endurance of systemic violence of colonial settlerism (i.e. climate justice, gender violence, ableism, racism + xenophobia).

PLAYLIST LINK HERE

thirdspace ACTION LAB

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3 words to encapsulate your vision for a Black loving world

SOUL CHECK SOUL CHECK DR. MARTHA MS. TINA WhatHope, history-making momentPeaceful, intent, (at any scale) is holding yourpure, & & courage attention right now? amazing

EVELYN

Joy, thrive, & soul Toyin Ojih Odutola JENINA

MAURA

Justice, expansive, & liberatory

Joyful, bold, & beautiful

EVELYN

Potential world war

BRANDON

MAICA

Subversive, celebratory, & melenated JENINA

Ubiquitous, tangible, justice

The Philippine elections to be held this May is holding my attention closely. On national and local scales, this election will determine the next 6 years in the archipelago. When geography shapes destiny, its fragmented, archipelagic composition hints at the primordialism of the Philippines: all politics are local.

DR. MARTHA

The war in Ukraine; the European response to embracing "white" refugees of war; the speed of the opposition to Russian aggression.

MAURA

I'm outraged by legislative actions against transgender youth and their families in Texas and around the country, but I'm also hopeful about the possibility that collective outrage leads to narrative, legal, and cultural change regarding perceptions surrounding (and embracing the humanity of) the trans community, specifically trans youth of color.

MORDECAI

PLAYLIST LINK HERE

The Resistance to Anti-“Critical Race Theory” hype—there is a lot of important work being done by Black, Latinx + BIPOC cultural workers + institutions to preserve the living histories of racialized communities in the US. They’re creating new monuments, archives, educational models + institutions to re-revise history…Feels like an underground cultural counterrevolution! ACTION LAB

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6 7

3 words to encapsulate your vision for a Black loving world

SOUL CHECK SOUL CHECK DR. MARTHA MS. TINA WhatHope, history-making momentPeaceful, intent, (at any scale) is holding yourpure, & & courage attention right now? amazing

EVELYN

Joy, thrive, & soul Toyin Ojih Odutola JENINA

MAURA

Justice, expansive, & liberatory

Joyful, bold, & beautiful

SETH

The founding of ACT UP 35 years ago (March 12, 1987). With the 35th anniversary of the founding of ACT UP this month, I'm sitting with the legacy BRANDON of AIDS activism and what lessons it has to offer for the COVID era ... as well MAICA as the critical roles women played in that work, even if we don't lift that up Subversive, Ubiquitous, enough.

celebratory, & melenated

tangible, justice

SHAMMAS

Like many folks, I've been closely following the war in Ukraine. Watching this tragedy unfold over Twitter is a strange phenomenon, and probably not very healthy, but it's also beautiful to see the solidarity that is being shown all across the world. The situation brings up a lot of heavy questions - like what this means for the future of peace and democracy throughout the world, and also why the collective response to this war is so different from other conflicts, like in Syria and Yemen.

MS. TINA

President Biden's selection of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as a Supreme Court nominee...his selection takes me back to the moments when Barack Obama first ran for his Presidency and then a few years later when Kamala Harris accepted Joe Biden's VP offer...I immediately asked myself, "wow, could this actually happen?"..history was made both times for President Obama + VP Harris and I hope history will repeat itself with Justice Jackson!

TREVOR The nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the narratives swirling around her and the court. Her nomination prompts us to confront the fact that 108 of 115 total Supreme Court justices in our country's history have been white men, and ask why that is and what it implies for our justice system and governance even today.

TRISTEN

PLAYLIST LINK HERE

Fannie Lou Hamer's development of the Freedom Farm Collective. I believe our liberation is tied to how we engage and nurture the land and the ability to grow and distribute food is key to sustaining life. Creating a collective movement to educate and practice agricultural justice feels like something that should be priortized in our resistance today.

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SOUL CHECK MIXTAPE DR. MARTHA

DEAR SCIENCE AND Hope, intent, OTHER STORIES & courage BY KATHERINE MCKITTRICK MAURA

3 words to encapsulate your vision for a Black loving world

MS. TINA Peaceful, pure, & amazing

EVELYN

Joy, thrive, & soul

JENINA

Joyful, bold, connection with the & beautiful

In theme "locating homes", Katherine McKittrick's Dear Science "is a book about Black livingness and ways of knowing" (p. 3). As a collection of stories, McKittrick explores a shared experience of using narrative as resistance and world building against a backdrop of definitive tropes. The accompanying playlist pulls together songs mentioned in the text that signify how stories relate to the significance of spatial location and how music often materializes emotion. As "home" is a complex phenomenon, this playlist invites us to reflect how "reading across our curiosities, the story and imagination are testimonies grounded in the material expression of black life. The story has physiological components. And stories make place" (p. 9).

thirdspace LISTEN TO THE PLAYLIST HERE ACTION LAB

TSAL Monthly Newsletter

MARCH 2022

WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH

BLACK WOMEN CREATIVES

LaSaundra Robinson | Cleveland

Amirah Cunningham | Cleveland

Amanda D. King | Cleveland

Sydney Nicole Kay | Cleveland

FIG Exhibition: Women Who Print | Cleveland

Erykah Townsend | Milk Crate Studio | Cleveland

Jae Jarrell Cleveland

Aja Joi | Cleveland

Nwaka Onwusa | Cleveland 10

MARCH 2022

TSAL Monthly Newsletter

WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH

BLACK WOMEN CREATIVES

Gwendolyn Garth | Cleveland

Karen Williams | Cleveland

Kamron Khan | Cleveland

Amber N. Ford | Cleveland

Yvette Nicole Brown | East Cleveland

Tracy Chapman | Cleveland

Phoebe Robinson | Cleveland

Julie Patton | Cleveland

MARCH 2022

TSAL Monthly Newsletter

WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH

BLACK WOMEN CREATIVES

Ramat Wiley | Adun Spice Co | Shaker Heights

Shani Richards | Akron

Shemariah J. Arki | Kent

Tonika Lewis Johnson | Chicago

Rachel Cargle | Akron

Bronlynn Thurman | Akron

Macy Gray | Canton

Barbara Jones-Hogu | Chicago, IL 12

TSAL Monthly Newsletter

MARCH 2022

WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH

BLACK WOMEN CREATIVES

Naomi Chambers | Pittsburg, PA

Alisha B. Wormley | Sewickley, PA

Vanessa German | Pittsburg, PA

Robin Thede | Spencer, IA

Celia DW | NYC

Deanna Van Buren | Designing Justice + Designing Spaces | Oakland, CA

Amy Sherald | Greater New York City Area

Ariana Brown | San Antonio, TX 13

TEAM MEMBER FEATURE DR. MARTHA POTTS BUILDING AWARENESS MANAGER Our 2022 Social Media Intern, Tristen Hall sits with Dr. Martha Potts, TSAL Building Awareness Manager on her journey and work within and outside of TSAL.

Q: WHO ARE YOU OUTSIDE OF TSAL? I worked at RTA for 25 years, quit the job, went into a Ph. D. program, and worked for a short period of time before I retired. I got a PhD because I really felt like there was something inside of me that I hadn't tapped into. And I felt like it was kind of like my midlife crisis. I ended up being accepted into the program at Case (Case Western Reserve University) and I went to Africa, which never was on my radar. Simultaneously, while I was in the Ph. D. program, I was introduced to the Gestalt Institute. At the same time, I was heavily involved in a practice of Buddhism. So all these things kind of converged at the same time on my journey, and I just decided to, you know, bet on me. Who I am outside of ThirdSpace, I'm still trying to figure out. I went to the convergence of Buddhism and Gestalt and the PhD, which kind of unveiled the purpose for me, having gone through the journey to even get there. The struggles and the adversity that I experienced from birth to that point, were important pieces of data for me. They were important experiences that kind of helped to inform where I ended up, which is a passion for supporting Black and Brown youth between the ages of 18 and 30. And I'm still grappling with, how do I look at my life's journey and the way that the different — I guess I'll call them tools, or philosophies or mechanisms — kind of came together to help reveal something for me?

Q: TELL ME ABOUT THE PROGRAM YOU ARE DESIGNING. It is a concept for a program using Gestalt at the center of the program. And it would envision existing programs like workforce development, parenting, and education. We're talking about young, African Americans, Black and brown youth, who have been unable to manifest their potential due to drugs or trauma. The programs in existence are directed towards our workforce development, parenting, and education to get a GED and enter into a training program. Don't get me wrong, the programs do great, and they do good. They support the individual in staying alive and maintaining, but they don't offer opportunities for the individual to explore the internal landscape. The internal landscape, I believe, as from my personal experience, is an untapped reservoir of knowledge and potential. That's what's in the Black youth in our country that the existing programs don't offer them opportunities to see themselves on a deeper level. 14

Q: WHAT INSPIRED YOUR JOURNEY IN DEVELOPING CONCEPTS AND ENGAGING WITH RESEARCH?

I relate to that demographic. Because of the experiences I had, you know, growing up there's been a lot of reflection, since I've been at ThirdSpace about history, and, the 60s and 70s, and what types of things were happening in society during those time periods, and as I reflect on some of the things that are going on, in my life. I could very easily not be here because of the activities I was engaged in living in the projects, and being in gangs and doing drugs, and just a variety of different things that were not necessarily healthy behaviors, and always gravitating towards groups that were radical in a sense and trying to make change, but also radical in terms of being anti-social. It was the convergence of several things that help me make the decision to change the direction of my life. I really feel like it's not up to me to change the direction of this, the lives of the folks that I'm talking about. It's really to provide space and opportunities for them to be able to experience themselves differently, if one chooses to make a course correction or change the course of their lives. So this demographic, because I relate. This is my group. These are my folks.

Q: WHAT DO YOU FEEL IS TRANSFORMATIVE ABOUT YOUR WORK?

What I feel is transformative is to provide this because brothers and sisters are out there every day in survival mode. They feel stressed out. I gotta feed kids, I got to numb it down, I got to drink, I got to do this, I got to do that. There's no opportunity in any of their daily activities or their lives, or even in those programs. The programs I'm talking about don't offer that workforce development program, but develop and create a core that supports the individual. And, beginning to peel away some of the layers and add a space in which he or she can begin to do that, to begin to turn the lens inside to to become familiar. Because, you know, that's a luxury, right? That's a luxury that they don't have in other programs that are supporting them in that way, not as a whole human being.

SPACE REFRESH

PHASE ONE

The TSAL team is excited to release the photos and footage from our Phase One Space Refresh! We would like to thank Celia DW and Sean Clark for making the magic happen, and our readers for following the journey. This is only Phase One of the Space Refresh. Stay tuned through our future newsletters for updates on the upcoming phases!

WATCH THE SPACE REFRESH: PHASE ONE IN ACTION HERE 16

TSAL READING ROOM INTRODUCING THE TEAM BOOKSHELVES

Toyin Ojih Odutola

On our December 2021 newsletter, we introduced the ThirdSpace Reading Room — a digital repository of articles, videos, podcasts, and other resources which showcase how current-day racial equity discourse is impacting industries, politics, and hot societal issues. This March 2022, TSAL is excited to introduce our team's bookshelves: a collection of what each team member is reading, listening to, watching, seeing, visiting, and consuming through a variety of mediums.

VISIT THE TSAL TEAM'S BOOKSHELVES HERE

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VIBES + STUFF

Picturing Motherhood October 16, 2021 - March 13, 2022 LEARN MORE HERE

Las Talaveritas, 2015. Aliza Nisenbaum

Flint is Family Act I: Shea Cobb with Her Mother Ms. Renee and Her Daughter Zion at Nephratiti’s Wedding Reception, Standing Outside the Social Network Banquet Hall, Flint, Michigan, 2016–17. LaToya Ruby Frazier

Still You Bloom in This Land of No Gardens, 2021. Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Responding to our time, Picturing Motherhood Now brings together works by a diverse range of contemporary artists who reimagine the possibilities for representing motherhood. Drawing on a range of feminisms, it challenges familiar archetypes of motherhood, construing motherhood as a multivalent term. The artists in Picturing Motherhood Now use motherhood as a lens through which to examine contemporary social issues — the changing definitions of family and gender, the histories and afterlives of slavery, the legacies of migration, and the preservation of matrilineal Indigenous cultures.

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VIBES + STUFF

Cleveland State University LGBTQ+ Mentorship Program

Cleveland State University’s LGBT Student Center recruit mentors for their LGBTQ+ Mentorship Program. Their program will start in the beginning of Fall ’22 Semester and will end around May 2023. The goal of this program is to pair LGBT CSU students with LGBT Working professional to learn valuable professional development skills. The following are the mentor requirements: Must have a Degree (Associate’s or Bachelor’s at least) Employed or Retired (able to speak on work experiences) Meet with mentee once a month (about 10 meetings via Zoom/Inperson/hybrid) Complete mentor training and Safe Space Workshop by CSU Currently students have an interest in journalism, communication, film, humanities, theatre arts, fine arts, psychology, urban studies If you are interested, fill out the interest form here If you have questions, reach out to lgbtq@csuohio.edu 19

VIBES + STUFF

JOIN THE TEAM AT THE CITY OF CLEVELAND CITY HALL!

MEET THE LEADERS We are so excited to see many of our long-time comrades answering the call to public service. Read more below about these dynamic leaders + opportunities for public service.

CHIEF OF INTEGRATED DEVELOPMENT JEFF EPSTEIN

READ "Jeff Epstein brings experience, connections to Mayor Bibb’s cabinet"

DIRECTOR OF CITY PLANNING JOYCE P. HUANG

READ "Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb taps Joyce Huang of MidTown Cleveland Inc. to become new city planning director, Ricardo León as strategist for equity"

JUNIOR TO INTERMEDIATE POSITIONS AVAILABLE HERE 20

VIBES + STUFF

THE COLLEGE NOW MENTORING PROGRAM

YOU are needed to change the life of a local college student! College Now is seeking mentors for college scholarship recipients. Matches to start in summer 2022. The College Now Mentoring Program works with hundreds of area college students each year from high-financial need backgrounds. Most students are also first in their families to attend college. College Now provides students a renewable scholarship and connects them to a mentor for guidance during their college careers – and that’s where you come in! You can help a local college student reach his or her full potential and graduate from college by sharing your experience and expertise! The program is also mutually beneficial. Says a mentor in her second year with her student, “students are excited, as they make that transition from high school to college, and most are eager to gain insights from others. Also, their excitement is contagious. . . . I've been energized by [my student’s] journey thus far and am grateful to think that I've provided some support.” For questions, visit their website or contact Madeline Rife at mrife@collegenowgc.org.

APPLY HERE BY APRIL 1

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VIBES + STUFF

Currents and Constellations: Black Art in Focus Sun, 02/20/2022 to Sun, 06/26/2022

Cleveland Museum of Art | Julia and Larry Pollock Focus Gallery | Gallery 010

Currents and Constellations: Black Art in Focus puts art from the CMA’s permanent collection in conversation with a vanguard of emerging and mid-career Black artists, as each explores the fundaments of art making, embracing and challenging art history. The connections between the artworks and the themes in this exhibition are best described both as currents, which are more predictable and easier to trace, and as constellations, which are less predictable and more difficult to follow. Intimate in scale, yet broad in scope, Currents and Constellations illuminates singular works created by Black artists working in the United States to broaden visitors’ sense of Black artistic production.

LEARN MORE HERE

thirdspace ACTION LAB

VIBES + STUFF

Writers & Readers: Misty Copeland Saturday, March 19, 2022 CLEVELAND PUBLIC LIBRARY | 12PM-1PM ET Misty Copeland leapt over barriers in the dance world with grace and style from the age of 13 when she discovered ballet through a class at her local Boys and Girls Club. Her talent and potential were quickly apparent, steering her toward a professional dance career on a difficult path strewn with family conflict and struggles for control. As the first African American woman to be named as a soloist for the American Ballet Theater and, later, as the first Black principal dancer at a major international dance company, she has changed the face of ballet and made it possible for others to dare to dream of a life in professional, classical dance. Copeland has since expanded her professional career with modeling, acting, television, product endorsements, and the design of her own active/dancewear line of clothing. She is the author of a memoir Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina, along with a children's picture book, Firebird, and a health and fitness guide, Ballerina Body.

thirdspace ACTION LAB

VIBES + STUFF

YWCA GREATER CLEVELAND: STAND AGAINST RACISM CHALLENGE

#YWCASARChallenge

Stand Against Racism Challenge is designed to create dedicated time and space to build more effective social justice habits, particularly those dealing with issues of race, power, privilege, and leadership. During the month of April, participants will have the opportunity to learn and engage with challenges about racial inequity within the following topics: Critical Race Theory Reproductive Justice Living Wage Film and Television

LEARN MORE HERE

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MIND

The Intellectual Work

READ For Indigenous communities, protecting traditional knowledge means reimagining how it is preserved Claire Elise Thompson, Grist

“Because intergenerational transmission of language has been so fragmented in most Indigenous communities, we are literally living in a time where we are witnessing the very last generation of elders that can share traditional knowledge, with impeccable command, in their respective languages."

Lubaina Himid

Toyin Ojih Odutola

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

READ The Instagram Giving Great Women Artists Their Dues Sleek Mag

"@thegreatwomenartists shines a light on art's brightest female talents. Here, curator Katy Hessel shares her favourite women portraitists working today." 25

CONNECTION The Community Work

CONSULT The Legacy Perspective Leah D. Hudnall | Instagram

"A civic consulting firm that that assists families, community leaders and organizations in building the legacies they desire, and deserve. I’m a native Clevelander, with deep roots on the city’s southeast side. My family purchased a home in the Lee/Miles neighborhood in 1969, where my family still lives today. Too often, outcomes for people in neighborhoods similar to my family’s are shaped by systemic factors beyond their individual control. Their fates are sealed. Legacies, pre-determined. I love Cleveland, but more importantly, I care about its residents. I formed The Legacy Perspective to assist families, community leaders and organizations in building the legacies they desire, and deserve."

READ In our language the word for the sea means the ‘spirit that returns’ Adjao Armah

“What would it take to map these sites? Really map for time and movement? Map for relationships? Map for hopes, dreams, and possibility? Map for different registers of knowledge and modes of knowing? Map for the things that live under the ground we walk on?” 26

SPIRIT The Soul Work

LISTEN Ep021: #GoodAncestor Blair Imani on Making Our Way Home Layla F. Saad

"A podcast series with change-makers & culture-shapers who are exploring what it means to be a #goodancestor."

READ Wandering the shoreline with Édouard Glissant Aragorn Eloff, New Frame

“The past is drowned and all that remains are fragments; with no possible return across the endless sea a thinking from the shoreline, at the place of arrival, thus becomes necessary. However, deep roots cannot take hold in the loose sand and so the thought that emerges is fragmented, a bricolage of different elements that does not form any fixed system or linear continuity.” 27

"Wall of Ambassadors (2017)" Artist: Toyin Ojih Odutola

PEACE. Read | Watch | Listen

Follow ThirdSpace Action Lab for mo' Soul Food! Twitter: @3rdSpaceCLE | IG: @3rdspacecle

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