Anti-bigotry ethics & practices

 

As an organization committed to the essential place that art-making holds in our world, Khecari is committed to ethical rigorousness in our behavior and policies, which includes working against all forms of bigotry, and to supporting the personal activism and anti-bigotry efforts of those individuals who comprise Khecari. We are also asking, how can we take regular action now but also consider these questions not finished, so that we don’t shelve them as “solved”? What follows is offered in this vein: a plan of action to follow, which we also hope to improve upon as we move forward.

Historic Redress

In 2021 we started allotting 10% of our yearly budget to address the histories and ongoing conditions that are seminal to how businesses operate in the U.S.
– The Unites States’ genocide, ethnic cleansing, and land theft of the many Indigenous American Indian tribes
– The structure of economic wealth in the United States that was built upon slavery and upon ongoing institutionalized racism
– The invisible appropriated labor of women both in and out of the dance field
– Exploitation of fossil fuels and an economic structure premised on disposability and pollution

We allot 10% of our yearly budget to make ethical redress a line item of our regular business overhead:
– 2% towards support of American Indians
– 2% towards anti-racism
– 2% towards undoing patriarchy
– 2% towards redress of environmental harm
– and 2% towards educating and training Khecari in these areas

See our past redress recipients here. 

Prioritizing Action

We are committed to supporting our artists and staff in their personal initiatives. While commitment to office hours, rehearsals, and performances are critical to our functioning, we understand when there are personal, family, or health emergencies that mean an otherwise responsible collaborator may have to cancel, even last minute, and that in this same vein, we should understand when an action like attending a demonstration may be an emergency of equal importance.

Decentering Whiteness

We are asking how we have unconsciously contributed to white supremacy and how can we do better. In what locales of the city have we held auditions and performances; are we excluding BIPOC people with these choices? Have choices around marketing and branding, images or language felt exclusive of BIPOC people? We are committed to regularly seeking feedback, reviewing our organizational practices, and effecting changes where they are needed.

Attending to Decenter

We’re all too busy. We can’t attend a quarter of the shows we want to see. So when we do make it out, it can easily mean only going to friends’ shows. We recognize this insularity can perpetuate privilege and center whiteness.
But we want to always be aware of who’s out there making work, and what kind of work they’re making. We want to show up especially for BIPOC artists, for artists new in the field trying to find their footing, and for any artists who find themselves marginalized for whatever reasons. And we want to expand our network of colleagues and friends and forge new relationships with people and communities we haven’t yet connected with.
So we’re creating a conscious practice of Attendance. In addition to whatever shows we might normally see for whatever reasons, each of us at Khecari will choose 2 events per year – a performance, a community event, a workshop – led by an artist or arts organization outside our known circle, prioritizing marginalized communities and BIPOC artists and arts organizations. We want to do this in a way that doesn’t feel like paternalism or cultural tourism. But we do find ourselves in a subset of the dance world that is particularly white. We want to find ways to decenter and would rather start by going out and seeing the shows of demographics underrepresented in our niche of the dance world before looking at why folks may not be coming to our shows.

Internship

We’ve had an internship program for years that offers intensive one-on-one mentoring and practical experience in the many aspects of administration and production required to make Khecari run. We’ve long felt that having it operate as work-trade rather than be a paid position could discriminate against some interested people and cater to financial privilege. In the past we’ve been unable to convince funders to back a program that has few recipients, though we believe strongly in the power of a direct mentorship model. We’ve taken steps to ensure that we only offer this program when we are in a position to pay an intern for their work. In 2021 we brought on an intern at Khecari’s equal pay rate, currently at $17/hour.

Resource Share Residency at Khecari

As Chicago Park District Arts Partners in Residence, Khecari trades public programming for studio use. Between January’s intense end-of-year admin tasks and our yearly break in February we typically have a chunk of time where we’re not using the studio at Indian Boundary Cultural Center and we would love to share our resources with BIPOC/ALAANA* artists in our community every year during this time. In 2022 we offered our inaugural year to Chih-Hsien Lin, an artist that identifies as an Asian Immigrant that has worked with Khecari for almost a decade. We invited them as our first resident so we could work through the details on how this residency will be administered and supported and get feedback from her on her experience. We are now trying a simple application process open to the public to then choose the 2023 resident by lottery. We plan on using this method again in the future if it goes smoothly or will develop a different selection process that feels best for sharing this resource with others. This residency offers a free, no-tech, studio practice space with a residency stipend equal to Khecari’s equal-pay-for-all hourly rate, currently $17/hr and a no-tech work-in-progress showing at the end.

*We understand that the BIPOC/ALAANA nomenclature can be insufficient and welcome your comments on how we can better represent this. Our intention is to let it continually evolve based on the desires from the community.

Commute Stipend

We also recognize that our location on the far north side can create geographic and therefore financial barriers. We’re creating a need-based fund so that interested dancers or other artistic collaborators, administrative staff or interns, could be compensated for their commute, in situations where the time and cost of travel disallowed participation.

This is a work in progress guideline for our current business practices. Part of the work of getting better is through conversation, and we welcome feedback that will help us improve our practices and support our commitment to our mission and presence as artmakers in our community.