J U M P By Cate Fox
One of my middle son’s recent tactics to delay bedtime is to ask me for a story, one from when I was growing up. Recently I told him a story about learning how to swim. Well, to be more precise, it was a story about jumping off of (a very low) diving board. Standing on the edge of the bouncing light blue plank I could see to the very bottom of the pool. It was only nine-and-a-half-feet-deep but my six-year-old self had no sense of depth and was paralyzed with fear. It was the 80s so I was not equipped with a floatation device just in case I struggled to swim. In the water, my instructor reached out her arms as I stared down at her from the wavering board. There was no way I was jumping. I would get to the edge, look down, and turn right back around and head to the ladder. I did this for weeks.
Then one day I gathered up my courage and jumped; all the parents watching from the YMCA’s viewing deck clapped. Each time I did it I was scared but I did it anyway.
In the Spring of 2020, after almost eight years as a Senior Program Officer focused primarily on the arts in Chicago, I wrote a note to my colleagues at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation about how the health pandemic exposed fragile and flawed (physical, political, social) infrastructure that demanded change. We could continue to spend time and money trying to make our current systems more just and accessible but we also needed to invest in new systems, ones that center Black, Indigenous, Latino/a/x, Asian, and other historically marginalized populations. Before posting the note, I had a feeling not unlike standing at the end of the diving board. I had already experienced a number of these dizzying moments at the Foundation, but there was something that felt different this time.
The note was sent out. Publicly inviting my colleagues to change and remake systems was as much for them as it was for me, an invitation to myself to do more.
Shortly after that was written George Floyd was murdered. The Foundation’s racial justice grantmaking we did in response to the many injustices made more visible is some of the most important work that I have ever done. And, for me, it was not enough.
So, in November 2021 I joined the Center for Cultural Innovation (CCI) as Ambitio US Director . Drawn to its unconventional approaches, commitment to systems change, and deep centering of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color populations, I was hungry for new ways of being. The video calls I am on these days feel like literal masterclasses in how we can do things differently in ways that are better for all of us.
The news and social media feeds are full of stories that illustrate and sometimes even glorify our fragmentation, our separateness. The grantees of Ambitio US act as a balm to those messages. The movement leaders are weaving communities back together, preserving and highlighting a fuller spectrum of cultural identities that better reflect this country, and creating models that embrace our interdependence both with each other and with our natural environment. These leaders talk about not only shifting resources but power to those directly harmed by current systems. It is hard and beautiful work.
Even in this urgent moment many people will continue to climb up the proverbial ladder, walk to the edge of the board, and decide there is too much at stake to jump, too many uncertainties, they might lose too much. But my heart is on fire for the people that are guiding us to that edge, showing us that it is not only possible but desirable.
Cate Fox is the Director of Ambitio US , a national initiative of the Center for Cultural Innovation, that is focused on strategically shifting economic power and opportunities to BIPOC communities and artists.
This article was originally published on Medium. Read it on Medium →