Shakti Foundation for Arts and Culture Shakti Foundation for Arts and Culture is a cultural arts advocacy organization based in Washington, DC with a mission to use the arts to create greater understanding and reduced bias between cultural groups in corporate and community settings. The organization currently serves the Washington, DC metropolitan region and New York City through cultural event programming to develop linkages between the cultural arts and diversity and inclusion causes.
Though only in existence since 2016, they have already made strides in creating a greater market in the USA for cultural arts events from around the world, with a unique vision of producing events that bring cultures together rather than divide them. Its inaugural show "Sufi Music Around the World," which translates Sufi music and poetry from around the world, has managed to sell out venues in Washington, DC(Capital Fringe), New York(Center at West Park, DROM), and San Francisco(SF Live Arts at Cyprian's). Furthermore, its newest initiative, Unity in Diversity: The Culture Project, is a monthly cultural event that encourages
diverse members of the community to share aspects of their culture with their broader communities and collaborate on new projects.
The desired impact of the organization is to a. create platforms for self-expression and sharing of cultural arts and values, fostering a new mindset of seeing diversity as an asset to communities, b. mobilize and enable local artists to implement real, actionable ideas and solutions to community issues of discrimination and c. stimulate collaboration between cultural subcommunities to increase diversity and inclusion in their larger communities.
Through the cultural diversity and inclusion events organized in 2016-2017, as well as surveys administered, the organization has seen the unmet demand for American arts patrons to be exposed to more cultural events from different regions of the world. The Sufi Music Around the World event sold out event venues in 3 different cities with minimal marketing and advertising and received excellent feedback. At this time, there is also a demand and need for audiences to understand the Islamic world and build bridges between Muslim and non-Muslim communities. By spreading the messages of peace in Islam through arts, audiences have gained a better understanding of this devotional tradition. 75% of survey responders stated that they wished there were more diversity in cultural arts in the Maryland/DC area.
Shakti has an ambitious yet practical vision of spreading the project to parts of the US with little access in order to help change mindsets around diversity and inclusion in these communities. Thus, in 2018, they are scheduled to tour venues in various cities of the USA, big and small, including: Lincoln, NE; Parkersburg, WV; Lewes, DE, and Midvale, UT. They are also exploring developing an app/digital platform for virtual events around the globe.
America’s greatest asset is the diversity of cultures, values, and beliefs it contains, and yet, many of these cultural groups remain siloed to their own communities due to language, values, and belief differences. Particularly, immigrant populations face a greater challenge in integrating within the larger community and have thus developed subcommunities for their cultural interests. Racism and discrimination are arguably bigger problems now in our
society than ever before, alienating and segregating minority groups into their own subcommunities, and thereby damaging the individual and collective psyche of a region. These silos can result in prejudice and resentment developing between cultural groups, as we have seen in recent national events. Fear and resentment of the "other" in our country stem largely from inadequate exposure and communication between cultural groups. Shakti Foundation aims to bring these different cultural communities together to share and discover avenues of greater collaboration and diversity.
What Shakti Foundation really provides its stakeholders is the opportunity to delve into a world completely different from one’s own and understand the perspective of another life. Understanding diverse perspectives and where they came from is vital to opening eyes to the world's problems, because in order to solve these problems we must first become aware of them, and that can only happen through communication. Visit
https://www.shaktiarts.org/