This commentary is by Shanta Lee Gander, a multidisciplinary artist based in Brattleboro who helped develop and facilitate the CreateVT Action Plan. This commentary, one of three about the plan’s three vision statements, describes the vision: “Creative enterprises succeed in a diverse, equitable, connected, and collaborative environment.”
Vermont is the place that created more space for me to grow into exploring my creative abilities as a photographer, performing belly dance, and taking a chance on making my writing — especially my poetry — public.
When I arrived in 2009 and eventually moved here, I saw all the ways that Vermont opened me to a becoming that I’d explored in only small ways living in Connecticut.
It is also the place where I’ve discovered the master class on race I never expected to encounter.
Vermont is unarguably white. However, if you explore deeper, there are many stories and histories that paint a different picture of the diversity within Vermont’s DNA. The Indigenous history and present remain the soul of this land. That spirit coexists with the legacy of storyteller and poet Daisy Turner (1883-1988), who preserved her family’s history by retelling their stories to others, including her father’s story, Alexander Turner, who successfully took his freedom.
Diversity is imprinted upon Vermont, from the southern to north regions. It’s in the story of Abijah Prince (c. 1706-94), who served in the French and Indian War, and it’s in the story of Lucy Terry Prince (c. 1730-1821), the first known African American poet in the United States who documented the 1746 raid in Deerfield, Mass., in her poem “Bars Fight.” Both were early landowners who continually fought against harassment using the law.
With this awareness, now is the time for Vermont’s creative sector to shift, to undergo an expansion and restructuring that invites a new way of fully seeing and supporting all those who create, make, and do in Vermont.
And this shift includes acknowledging this reality: For many among us, living the values of accountability while engaging with equity and connection is at the center of all creating and doing. This is not new. It is something that many in our state across rich diversities do as a matter of course as we create and bring possibility into being in each moment of our work. We do it because we must.
Living creativity happens across a range of ethnicities, classes and within a range of bodies and voices not always featured in the front and center of our state. The talk of equity, inclusion and connection is language is already being lived by the often invisible, especially among those who already live, breathe, embody and support the creative sector.
Sometimes they are the ones who keep the books. Sometimes they manage the events that create the very space for everything, from the dancing to the visual to the textile to the music to everything in between.
The creative sector moves forward in Vermont by taking a page out of the books of the individuals who have written it already. We move forward by placing diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility at the center of everything we do. We create and maintain relationships that are authentic — not ones that are in a mad dash to “get it right” when it comes to diversity. Building these relationships thoughtfully and carefully are the authentic bridges to connection alongside the resources, money and time.
If the creative sector can learn anything from the ones who have already been involved in the doing as it relates to creating Vermont within their daily practice, we also know that engagement isn’t a proposition of being half-in. We know that for those who are living and breathing the arts and humanities, doing the work within the creative sector is not an add-on.
The creatives in our state aren’t even the icing on the cake because we are the cake, the whole buffet of all the sweetness, and the table that holds it all.
Vermont’s many creative individuals are change-makers in their communities. Within the center of their solar system, they craft galaxies of being. For this world-making and building to work, the right financial support and forward-thinking policies must be in place.
We must ensure that Vermont’s creatives and the creatives-to-be thrive because they are held and seen. That means organizations provide opportunities like training and grants in ways that are accessible. It means a supportive infrastructure, from state and local governments, annual budget line items that don’t require endless debate, and affordable, sustainable living in ways that don’t feed the cliché of the starving artist. Creatives should not have to struggle in financial, emotional, and physical ways in order to give all that they do to our communities.
Support an artist and all of the talents they bring, and you support a whole community. Support the creative sector as key to our future, just as is having well-maintained roads. The whole state and all of those who are drawn to our state will be nourished.
Learn more at vermontcreativenetwork.org.
