Big names on cultural roster
For the third year in a row, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts has released a list of 100 carefully chosen cultural changemakers — from a Syrian humanitarian organization, the creator of “Transparent” and the musician Björk. And again, the center is making sure the list is more than just a reading assignment by bringing several of the honorees together for a public summit.
“We believe that we can offer to our community a unique environment to come together,” says Deborah Cullinan, the center’s CEO. “The summit and the list end up being a framework” for tackling some heady issues. Among those are equity, freedom and public imagination.
This year, the summit is just as diverse as the list, featuring a keynote by Jill Soloway, the creator of “Transparent,” and “instigations” by Jose Antonio Vargas, a former Washington Post journalist who went on to found an organization that tells the story of immigrants, and Malkia Cyril, director of the Center for Media Justice. There are also performances by spoken word poet Staceyann Chin and comedian Zahra Noorbakhsh.
“You should expect to be immersed in a conversation that intertwines artistic expression with inquiry,” Cullinan says. “We’ve asked these list makers to share with us the questions that are keeping them up at night.”
The idea of creating a list of cultural changemakers was formulated five years ago. The idea was that by pulling together a list of 100 people or organizations actively involved in using culture to change the world, staff would also get to share with one another the things that inspired them.
“The list was so awesome and the process was so awesome that we realized it needed to be a public thing,” Cullinan says, adding that this year, the list feels particularly urgent. “I think of the role of lists in what feels like a leaderless moment for us. This list reminds us that we are not leaderless.”