Ringling College Awarded Grants

October 1, 2021 – Sarasota

Ringling College of Art and Design today announced the award of two grants totaling $25,000 from the Community Foundation of Sarasota County to support the Center for Diversity and Inclusion (CDI) at Ringling College of Art and Design and production of CDI’s Narrative Collective Project. The Community Impact and Equity and Access grants reflect the Community Foundation’s commitment to enhance programs that care for underrepresented and geographically underserved populations. 

Specifically, the CDI’s Narrative Collective Project is a multidisciplinary, intergenerational, and multimedia framework that brings awareness to social justice issues while elevating, celebrating, and raising the voices of marginalized stories that need to be told in the intentional spirit of advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion through the arts, education, and dialogue.

“We are grateful for the support of the Community Foundation of Sarasota County,” said Yoleidy Rosario-Hernandez, Associate Dean of Students for Diversity and Inclusion and Director of the Center for Diversity and Inclusion at Ringling College. “Current events have put into stark contrast how through oppression and marginalization certain communities are made invisible. The Community Foundation’s investment in CDI and our programming shows what a valuable role community support and Ringling College can play in helping to bring recognition to, and celebration of, stories that need to be told.”

The Center for Diversity and Inclusion (CDI) at Ringling College received an initial $10,000 grant from the McCauley-Brown Fund of the Community Foundation to support the CDI’sNarrative Collective Project, a documentary film series initiated by the CDI in 2019. Violet Stripes is the first film featured as part of the project, which brought together an intergenerational LGBTQ group comprised of Ringling College students and local residents to share stories of their individual journeys. The grant supported the completion of post-production for Violet Stripes and upcoming film screenings, gallery events, and discussion programs. The Violet Stripes trailer is viewable at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8SAhLESwHw. 

The $15,000 Equity and Access grant supported the second documentary film undertaking in the CDI’s Narrative Collective Project – Warriors of Sarasota: Powerful Women of Color in Sarasota – a multi-part documentary and gallery project featuring the powerful stories of women of color in Sarasota who are working in service of bettering our community and shifting systemic oppression and other social injustices within our Sarasota-Manatee communities.

Through the project, the CDI, in collaboration with Arts and consulting organization Mosaic Movements, is hosting Intergenerational intergroup dialogues, writing curricula that will be accessible for free to educators and community organizations, creating content for its YouTube channel, and intends to produce and screen an original film each year.

“Violet Stripes and Warriors of Sarasota: Powerful Women of Color in Sarasota are CDI projects that cement our voices and let them be heard and included as part of our bigger community,” Yoleidy concluded. “We want to be valued, acknowledged, respected, and to be treated with love, kindness, and humanity. Thus, by highlighting these kinds of stories, we are showcasing consciousness and creating visibility for many stories that have been ignored or erased from our collective education and history.”

Stay tuned to the CDI Collective Narrative Project by subscribing to the CDI Newsletter at this LINK. (https://www.subscribepage.com/a1h2m0)