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. We are in a practice of asking ourselves, how can we take regular action now but also consider these questions not finished, so that we don’t shelve them as “solved”. Current anti-bigotry practices include:
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 United 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.
Resource Share Residency at Khecari
As Chicago Park District Arts Partners in Residence, Khecari trades public programming for studio use. We dedicate a month of our studio time at Indian Boundary Cultural Center to share this resource with BIPOC/ALAANA* artists in our community. The residency offers a free, no-tech, studio practice space with a residency stipend equal to Khecari’s equal-pay-for-all hourly rate, currently $20/hr, and a no-tech work-in-progress showing at the end. We use a simple application process open to the public to choose recipients by lottery.
*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.
Access for Caregivers and Children
We are an organization that actively welcomes people of all ages to our events and spaces. This brings the invisibilized labor of caregiving into the light and creates an environment where the needs of developing bodies are not viewed as a nuisance to art-making and presenting. We believe strongly that this impacts women and people with uteri in a positive way and helps to keep people who want to attend performances, classes and rehearsals able to do so as they are going through the times in their lives when they are working as a caregiver.
