• HOME
• SIGHTS
• LIVE
• SOUNDS
• COMMUNITY
• PHOTOS
• ABOUT

Stereotypes and associations that people have about black males are extremely negative, according to Fanon Hill, the co-director of the Black Male Identity Project (also called BMI), and the typical reactions people have when discussing issues such as education, justice, health, fatherhood, and families are bleak. This narrative unfairly distorts the image of black men and creates a barrier, Hill and Sam Holmes, his co-director, decided, so they resolved to start this project to create a counter-narrative to those negative imagery and stereotypes. The website title, morethan28days, refers to Black History Month but the Black Male Initiative founders are going way beyond complaints about Black History Month to attempting to a complete change in the perception of black males in Baltimore. Peter Bruun, the project coordinator, explained that the project is attempting to change the current narrative by “drawing upon an African-American legacy of shared cultural activity and responsibility” through any art form. Hill’s vision of the Black Male Identity project provides a frame of positive images and narratives of the black male identity, and then community members, artists, and anyone else can use their artistic talents to both illuminate and develop images that raise up the black male identity. As Hill articulated, “BMI provides a rallying point for privileged and marginalized community members, artists, groups and initiatives to lend their talents, images, ideas and stories of black male identity to developing and illuminating celebratory images of black male identity.”

A unique aspect of the Black Male Identity project is the communal aspect; art is represented as a collective expression, with all ownership given to and shared with the community. The project leaders are not actually determining the content of the project; Bruun explained that the organizers “provide a frame …but community provides the content.” Everyone who participates is considered part of the project, whether they are artists, writers, or even mere observers who come to events, because they are involved in “shaping both the image and ongoing dialogue of the project.”

In fact, said Nora Howell, project assistant, the organizers are actually eager for and welcoming art submissions the entire Baltimore community, both those who consider themselves artists and those who have never even thought about art before; the Black Male Identity project is looking for “meaningful input from a cross-section of community members from the outset.” She added that even if people aren’t contributing art but want to be involved in the community project, they have opportunities to blog, participate in online or in-person conversation about the artwork, attend public events, or volunteer to help run the project. All of the founders stressed that this project is entirely community-run and all Baltimoreans are encouraged to take part. At the very beginning stages, Peter said, “we formed a 40+ member Advisory Group made up of faith-based leaders, artists, youth, public officials, social activists, and cultural leaders. We met and solicited input on key decisions shaping the project’s directions and strategies (for example, our entire line-up of public programs– from the Reginald F. Lewis celebration on June twenty sixth, to the Summer Performance Series to the idea of “Youth Provocateurs” and on to the sites of exhibitions– were ALL determined by input from Advisory Group members). At the most basic and initial level, we asked and listened to community.”

The different expressions of art will be exhibited in multiple ways throughout the project. Currently, art is exhibited mostly through a website that is disappointingly difficult to navigate, but in an email, Bruun promised that the site is in the process of being revamped and that it should be a much stronger and viewer-friendly site in the next few weeks. However, the project will not limited to the site; the site will soon be expanded to include all of the public programming– including public exhibitions of submitted art, performances of visual art, and other events taking place between June 2011 and January 2012. Art workshops at various Baltimore sites have already begun, holding sessions at the Center for Urban Families, Urban Leadership Institute, Baltimore BORN and Baltimore City Correctional Center.

Outside of their own initiatives, Bruun explained that the project organizers also are encouraging groups to run independent enterprises to be part of the project in other community-led initiatives. Bruun even phrased it as the groups “owning their own piece of the project,” explicitly referring to the sense of ownership the project leaders want community members to hold. On the website, BMI has a downloadable Educators Package that can serve as a guide for teachers and community leaders to facilitate their own art-making workshops, and they have a gathering on May seventeenth, specifically geared to bring both artists and cultural programmers to create “Affiliate Activities,” programming run by other parties and partners that will align with the goals of the BMI project.

Hill, Holmes and the other coordinators are working especially hard at getting Baltimore youth involved in the initiative. There is a team of “youth provocateurs,” specially trained youth community leaders, who essential do outreach in youth communities, advertising the program and encouraging their peers to get involved. Youth populations in Baltimore BORN and Urban Leadership Institute have both specifically been targeted to find ways to get the youth more involved. The project leaders have also been in close contact with local college students from Maryland Institution College of Art, Coppin, Morgan State University and Johns Hopkins University, some of whom are acting as youth provocateurs. Of course, children and young adults have also been participating as artists, and Bruun hopes they continue to do so and that even more do– as he said, “everyone’s an artist- even youth!” Of course, this statement falls in line with the overall message of BMI, as defined by Bruun, that “this is a movement more than an art project, with art functioning as a rallying point for people of all kinds.” In practice, it’s simply not true that everyone is an equally talented artist; an apt analogy would be to compare me as an athlete on par with Derrick Rose, who was just crowned MVP of the NBA, because I know how to dribble a basketball. But the point is well-taken. The art in this project is only important as it relates to community-driven portrayal of black men; its inherent artistic value is simply not the goal.

BMI is just getting underway, but the project leaders hope the palpable energy spreads across the country; Howell hopes that, once the program takes off, “other cities will be able to adapt the BMI model and implement a similar project.” Bruun is passionate as well, and hopeful that promoting black male achievement and promise through “a broad band of coalition partners and allies to collectively create, share, and promote black male identity from within, as a positive, and as a means to highlight individual success, resilience, and reality, and as a means to build awareness among those invested in black male achievement of one another,” will spread outside of Baltimore and have an indelible impact on American society.

Black Male Identity Project
morethan28days.com

About Contact

© 2009 Radar REDUX