Photo courtesy of Ringling College Center for Diversity and Inclusion

The award of two grants totaling $25,000 from the Community Foundation of Sarasota County was recently given to support the Center for Diversity and Inclusion (CDI) at Ringling College of Art and Design and production of CDI’s Narrative Collective Project. The Community Impact and Equity and Access grants reflect the Community Foundation's commitment to enhance programs that care for underrepresented and geographically underserved populations. Specifically, the CDI’s Narrative Collective Project is a multidisciplinary, intergenerational and multimedia framework that brings awareness to social justice issues in advancing diversity, equity and inclusion through the arts, education and dialogue. 

“Current events have put into stark contrast how through oppression and marginalization certain communities are made invisible," Yoleidy Rosario-Hernandez, Associate Dean of Students for Diversity and Inclusion and Director of the Center for Diversity and Inclusion at Ringling College. "The Community Foundation’s investment in CDI and our programming shows what a valuable role community support and Ringling College can play in helping to bring recognition to, and celebration of, stories that need to be told.”

The CDI at Ringling College received an initial $10,000 grant from the McCauley-Brown Fund of the Community Foundation to support the CDI’s Narrative Collective Project, a documentary film series initiated by the CDI in 2019. Violet Stripes is the first film featured as part of the project, which brought together an intergenerational LGBTQ group comprised of Ringling College students and local residents to share stories of their individual journeys. The Violet Stripes trailer is viewable at youtube.com/watch?v=y8SAhLESwHw. The $15,000 Equity and Access grant supported the second documentary film undertaking in the CDI's Narrative Collective Project – Warriors of Sarasota: Powerful Women of Color in Sarasota – a multi-part documentary and gallery project featuring the powerful stories of women of color in Sarasota who are working in service of bettering our community and shifting systemic oppression and other social injustices within our Sarasota-Manatee communities. 

“Violet Stripes and Warriors of Sarasota: Powerful Women of Color in Sarasota are CDI projects that cement our voices and let them be heard and included as part of our bigger community,” Yoleidy concluded. “We want to be valued, acknowledged, respected, and to be treated with love, kindness and humanity. Thus, by highlighting these kinds of stories, we are showcasing consciousness and creating visibility for many stories that have been ignored or erased from our collective education and history.”

Photo courtesy of Ringling College Center for Diversity and Inclusion