In 2018, the Collective held programs at AAACC and SomArts and installed a visual arts exhibition expressing the themes of resilience and healing at the San Francisco Human Rights Commission’s Office. The Collective organized a New Orleans style procession through the South of Market neighborhood featuring dancers and musicians. In 2020, COVID caused our 2020 offerings to be exclusively held on-line, to conform to the City’s prohibition of public gatheringsThe Collective’s fall 2021 core programs will provide opportunities for the region’s Black women dancers, musicians, filmmakers and writers working in African-derived arts forms to collaborate and to expand the audiences for their work. We will present 2 dance events at SomArts featuring live music that will explore new ways to employ African symbolism and traditional African dance to express spiritual healing through expressions of grief and ritual.

In 2021, in addition to dance and music presentations, the Collective will also organize a film program that will feature the work of the region’s emerging and established Black women filmmakers. Another presentation will present some of the region’s well-known Black women writers to read excerpts from their work.

The 2021 BWIG project will re-connect multidisciplinary Black women artists to African culture. All four of these 2021 presentations will assist BWIG to pursue our community-building and advocacy goals. The events will attract Black women artists working in the dance, music, film and literary disciplines and will encourage them to join our network. The larger the number of artists participating in our network, the greater impact we can assume our advocacy efforts will have; the same relationship between our programs and our advocacy efforts will be amplified in 2022.