Daily Archives: September 22, 2022

Kit Ingui, Jacob G. Padrn.

Across the United States, regional theatres have a great responsibility to our communities.

We are creative incubators, civic institutions, educational hubs, gathering places, artistic playgrounds, safe havens, and much more.

But among all of these important roles theatres have played, many of us have missed the most crucial point along the way: We have failed to reach all peoplesometimes through our very design, location, or programmatic choices.

Why should amazing, transformative theatre be confined to just one space or location? Great theatre can be everywherefor everyone.

If regional theatres are truly going to live up to the immense responsibility of being pillars of our communities, and being a public good (a designation as a 501c3), we must rethink our models so that everyone has access to the work we make. We must build deep, authentic, reciprocal relationships with all who call the theatre their artistic home.

In New Haven, thats what were trying to manifest with Long Wharf Theatres path forward.

Earlier this year, we came to a decision that was years in the making: to leave our current home of 57 years and venture out across our city and region as an itinerant theatre company that will partner with local organizations and venues to bring productions closer to all people.

While we made this decision in part because we recognized the need to rethink our business model amid a shift of revenue and the pandemics impacts, we more importantly made it because we felt a significant portion of our community was being left out.

Long Wharf Theatre is currently located in a food terminal in an industrial part of New Haven, away from transit and in the outskirts of the city.

As we just announced our new 2022-23 seasonthe first to begin the transition to our new modelweve already felt the change in energy as we explore our citys neighborhoods and invite audiences and community members to participate.

We made our season announcement in Dixwell, a neighborhood with deep ties to jazz music, that for decades has received an inequitable lack of investment.

Now, with this model, artists will have the autonomy to curate their own venue or location in the city that speaks most authentically to themes or subject matter of their work. We now ask artists: Whats the right container for the story you want to tell?

A concert reading like Jellys Last Jam, which came to Long Wharf Theatre in August, took on new meaning in its celebration of jazz because we were able to partner with Dixwells Stetson Branch Library and experience the music through the lens of Dixwells jazz history.

Or The Crucible, the first show to ever be produced on our stage 57 years ago, will be performed next spring by a star-studded cast at the Lyman Center, creating a special evening to celebrate this full circle moment.

But this model doesnt have to be just for New Haven.

Theatres across the country need to consider who might be excluded or unrepresented in our current models. The pandemic gave us an opportunity to think about new ways of engaging our current audiences while also finding new communities to build relationships with.By forcing all of us to shutter our doors for months on end, leaving our spaces vacant without the revenue from ticket sales to help pay our rent or mortgages, we all went virtual, or set up shop outdoors in imaginative, unconventional venues to keep our communities safe.

And we learned that theatre doesnt have to be confined to a conventional stage with blazing lights and four walls. In fact, these new ways were exhilarating, providing artists with a more intentional, inventive way to produce work and audiences with even more ways to experience it more authentically.

Theatre is not just about a physical space. Its about the staff and artists; its about the people and connections; its about the memories and lessons. And maybe most importantly, its about celebrating our shared humanity through the stories we share.

Its about investing not just in a piece of real estate but in artistic innovation, radical inclusion, and kaleidoscopic partnerships.

Regional theatres across the country have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reimagine what our responsibility to our regions is.

Lets usher in a new era for the American regional theatre together.

Kit Ingui is the managing director, and Jacob G. Padrn the artistic director, of Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Ct.

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A More Intentional Era for American Regional Theatre - American Theatre

In the digital healthcare space, there can be so much information that it can be hard for patients to know what to trust. Better representing patients through diversity in healthcare education has been shown to help cut through that skepticism and improve health literacy.

According to the National Library of Medicine, there are some 80 million U.S. adults with low health literacy, and the U.S. Department of Educations Health Literacy Report found that 65% of those come from Black, Hispanic, or other underrepresented communities.

Simply providing health education to patients doesnt solve this issue of inequality of health literacy. Educational materials whether printed or multimedia need to be created with an intentional effort toward health diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I). Materials that reflect a broad range of patients and patient experiences including races/ethnicities, ages, genders, sexual orientations, family structures, abilities, and socioeconomic statuses have been shown to:

One simple way to think of DE&I is to use the metaphor of a party. With the patient as your potential party guest, each layer of intentional representation and involvement takes them further from outsider to warmly welcomed center of attention:

Think of this step as being invited to the party and seeing people you recognize already there. Some patients have never seen anyone who looks like them in healthcare educational resources. We can start by celebrating our patient populations differences and representing as broad and varied a sampling of them as possible.

Next, we have to make space for our guests to enjoy themselves however they wish at the party providing opportunities for people to dance, play games, and quiet space to talk, depending on their preferences. It isnt enough to have diverse representation in your content, you need to deliver that content effectively to all patients and consumers regardless of potential limitations to access they may encounter.

In the final phase, your guest has to be given a chance to express themselves; for example, selecting their own songs for the party playlist. Educational materials need to be personalized and actionable enough to be practical and actually used by patients.

As part of the design team behind Wolters Kluwers Emmi patient engagement solutions, Ive experienced first-hand the challenges of creating more diverse representation in patient-facing materials. Our EmmiEducate patient education offering features more than 8,000 leaflets and nearly 300 videos to help consumers understand anatomy, medications, procedures, and conditions. It would be impossible to customize that much material to precisely reflect the wide variety of experiences of all the patients and members who might use them.

The best answer we have found is to consciously work toward the broadest variety of experiences and perspectives so that the materials do not become repetitive visually and the storytelling is richer and more medically accurate.

The ways we do this include:

In order to create greater equity among patients, we always say we need to make healthcare education more accessible. That is a two-prong effort:

Modern healthcare education is largely delivered in digital formats, which creates a variety of ways to improve experiences and equity across patient populations:

The philosophy is not just to make content access better for those with varying abilities, but to simplify and improve the patient education experience for the entire patient population overall.

The same applies to how the content is designed to be consumed and understood. Following Agency for Healthcare and Research Quality guidelines helps serve as a roadmap to make complex clinical information clearer for patients and members. To improve health literacy, best practices include:

Patients and members tend to feel more empowered to take an active role in making their healthcare decisions when they feel engaged and included. Patient education can play a large role in helping them see themselves in the decision-making process by broadening inclusive representation. For example:

Patient depictions in artwork can be non-gender-specific when warranted by using silhouettes or partial figures. This would be appropriate when discussing cervical cancer. For example, instead of showing a womans figure, use a partial figure in order to be inclusive of transgender or non-binary audiences who are also affected by the disease.

Patient education often recommends exercise or movement. Depicting that as a young or fit person running around the block doesnt recognize the varying physical abilities of many patients. The materials should also offer tips and options of different levels of activity, so patients can self-select what they are comfortable with.

Healthcare educational materials should offer practical advice and be sensitive to the range of economic realities patients or members may face. For example, instead of simply instructing members to set up a telehealth appointment, materials might first remind them to connect to Wi-Fi to avoid data usage costs.

Ultimately the content within patient education needs to not only make people feel represented but give them clear actions they can take as the next steps in their health journey.

Learn more about EmmiEducatemultimedia patient education solution.

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Amplifying patient education through intentional diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) - Wolters Kluwer

That hasnt been for lack of effort. Just lack of political capital. Citizens advocating for a polluter pays model have as their enemy some of the most powerful lobbying groups in the region, including the Ohio Farm Bureau, whose spending reaches into the hundreds of thousands of dollars per election cycle, and multinational oil companies with fracking interests in the state.

Likewise, the slow-moving administrative state has stymied local activists again and again. The Clean Water Act is a clunky instrument for addressing diffuse pollution. It took a federal lawsuit for the EPA to designate Lake Erie as impaired. The resulting assessment, even as it concludes that Lake Erie is over-polluted, will not have teeth to enforce any nutrient reductions until policymakers say so.

So in 2019, the city of Toledo pulled a hail mary: they made Lake Erie into a legal person and proposed to protect her with irrevocable rights to exist, flourish and naturally evolve, reads the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, known among its supporters as LEBOR (LEE-bore).

Markie Miller, the main organizer behind the bill, began the effort after the 2014 water crisis. In the wake of the emergency, citizen panic had turned to anger and urgency.

We thought, Wait a minute, the citys been monitoring the situation? Why are people hearing about it for the first time? Miller said. It felt unlikely that we were going to succeed going though systems that had already been in place. [The crisis] happened on their watch. We needed something different.

LEBOR was always a long shot. On paper, LEBOR was intended to give rights to Lake Erie. But as a legal document, it would have shifted leverage to protect those rights to individual citizens. Ordinarily, individual citizens have no legal standing to sue unless they can causally link a direct injury to a single polluter. LEBOR was engineered as a response to this collective action problem.

While previous efforts to give legal personhood to natural resources have sprung up around the world, from Bangladesh to Bolivia, so-called rights of nature laws are few and far between in the U.S., and they have largely failed outside of tribal courts. Even its community champions knew that.

Nonetheless, when the LEBOR special election was held in February 2019, 60 percent of Toledons voted their approval despite an opposition campaign backed by the Texas-based oil company, BP North America. The victory was short-lived. A farm operation successfully sued to stop LEBORs enforcement the day after the election.

The whole point was to be challenging. It was our way of confronting those laws and those systems. That was very intentional, because we want things done differently, Miller said.

It came as little surprise when, in 2020, the bill was struck down in federal court for being overly vague. The bills standards may trap the innocent by not providing fair warning, the decision read, and invite arbitrary enforcement by prosecutors, judges and juries.

As a material game-changer, LEBOR was a failure. But it represented the hope and frustration of a community for whom all other means of advocacy had failed. For Miller and LEBOR supporters, it was a meaningful, if utterly fleeting, moment of empowerment.

It had major legal issues, but conceptually it was a good idea, said Schroeck, the environmental lawyer. Its the kind of creative thinking needed to solve the problem.

Indeed, with LEBOR long gone, that is the question once again facing the people on the front lines of the algae blooms: how to flip the leverage back to citizens. The question has less to do with the environment, and more to do with political power, and its bearing on the age-old question of who pays the cost of pollution. Having experienced the damages on the front lines, the two Smith women believe that a solution must start with giving frontline communities a seat at the table.

The majority can no longer be the majority of individuals who have a voice. It has to be the majority for what is fair, just, and doable, says Alicia Smith. That is what the Lake Erie Bill of Rights was asking for: a just engagement for all people.

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Lake Erie's Failed Algae Strategy Hurts Poor Communities the Most - Circle of Blue

Growing up, Jesi Gutierrez found refuge in books. Gutierrez would disappear into stories to escape the reality of being homeless, couch surfing and sometimes sleeping in a car with family.

Today, Gutierrez is still surrounded by books, not to get away, but to provide a similar refuge for others. Though modest and indiscreet in appearance, Liblula Books & Co., the bookstore Gutierrez co-owns with their partner, Celi Hernandez, in Barrio Logan, is having a big impact on the community.

The one-year-old bookstore located on South 26th Street inside a century-old building has not only become a hub for literacy and arts education thats diverse and intersectional.

Gutierrez and Hernandez never imagined that their quaint little book shop would rapidly become a popular community hangout, but it has. On any given day of the week, people walk in and out of the shop. Young kids in the LGBTQ community have turned to the bookstore as a safe space, and on some occasions, their parents, too.

Weve had kids come in here and feel comfortable and be themselves, Hernandez said. Weve had kids come out to us here in this space, and weve had parents seeking answers about their children coming out and wanting to know more through books.

I wish I had a space like this growing up, Hernandez added.

Liblula is filled with publications one would be hard pressed to find anywhere else in the city. The maze of shelves that line the shops walls from top to bottom are overflowing with texts that cover an eclectic array of topics such as art, poetry, LGBTQ literature, graphic novels, feminism, grassroots organizing, and social justice-driven nonfiction works. Gutierrez and Hernandez have done their best to curate an inventory within the shop of various publications that feature an emphasis on Indigenous, Black, and Chicano history and narratives.

Diez Costa, who runs a book club at Liblula, said the ability for visitors to see themselves reflected in the books on the shelves and the people who run the space is significant. Costa is the co-leader of the San Diego LGBTQ Latine Coalition, a volunteer program of San Diego Pride that organizes events and performs outreach specifically to the Latine LGBTQ community.

When youre going to explore topics of your sexuality I think its very warming and welcoming to have someone of a similar identity greet you at the door, Costa said.

Liblula is intersectional in a variety of other ways, particularly given its location in the historically Mexican-American neighborhood of Barrio Logan. The staff is bilingual and the shop is stocked with both Spanish and English titles for both bilingual and monolingual speakers alike.

A lot of Latino book stores oftentimes only speak Spanish and theyre losing a whole demographic because a lot of people are Latino identifying but may not speak Spanish, Costa said.

Gutierrez said the fact that the bookstore serves more as a community resource is not lost on them. The pair built a little free library at the shop where anyone can grab a free book, use free Wi-Fi and a communal laptop that neighborhood residents can use, and host peer tutoring at the shop.

Im so proud of all the parents, they come in really seeking information to better understand and how to show up for their kiddos that are maybe having questions about themselves, gender expression and about different aspects of their identity, Gutierrez said.

Although owning a bookstore that also doubles as a community space wasnt something that the co-owners set out to do originally, the pair decided to go for it and since then have organically responded to what best serves the needs of the community.

Were very intentional on serving the community, Hernandez said, Were in Barrio Logan right down the street from Chicano Park, and here in the community you see Black and Brown people. We make sure we serve our community with subjects and titles on our shelves that are important and relevant.

Since opening last summer, Liblula Books & Co. has hosted a variety of artist spotlights, author talks, poetry readings, class visits, small music shows, workshops and teach-ins. Its not unusual to see both local and out-of-town authors, poets, and artists make surprise visits to the shop; guests have included authors and poets such as Beatrice Zamora, Bob Dominguez, Polaris Castillo, Matt Sedillo, among others.

Vianney Harelly, an artist and self-published author originally from Tijuana, who now resides in San Francisco, recently showcased her second book, The Plants Are Burning, at Liblula.

Harelly reached out to Liblula in hopes that the shop would carry her book and said she was immediately greeted with kindness and enthusiasm.

It is so important to be able to find safe spaces where one can be vulnerable and creative in a society that encourages the opposite, Harelly said. It is especially important for any members of marginalized communities who are estranged from their families or mainstream society to find groups and places that remind them of how much they are loved, seen and heard. I have always said I write for myself but also for people like me. Bookstores have been my safe space and haven since I was a little girl.

Originally posted here:

How a Small Bookstore Created a Big Space for Community, LGBTQ Youth - Voice of San Diego

Representation matters, which is why the Hispanic Alliance of Southeastern Connecticut staff reflects the community.

NEW LONDON, Conn. FOX61 sat down with one organization in New London, Hispanic Alliance of Southeastern Connecticut, to learn how it's made significant waves in the Hispanic community for over two decades. in the Hispanic community for over two decades.

It's a vision that came to fruition to advance Hispanic contributions in the nutmeg state by bringing communities together through various initiatives, events, and more.

"We aim for a thriving community where the well-being and their voice and representation are heard, validated, and implemented at all levels," explained Maria Amparo Cruz-Saco, secretary of the Hispanic Alliance of Southeastern Connecticut.

Cruz-Saco's late husband, Alejandro Melendez-Cooper, had the vision to create a support network for immigrants in the greater New London area and address the needs of the Hispanic community head-on. It was then that the Hispanic Alliance of Southeastern Connecticut was created.

"We have very structured and very specific clearly identified well, designed intentional programs with certain goals," said Cruz-Saco.

Cruz-Saco said the organization is also meant for people to feel like they belong.

"It's something that fills us with a lot of pride because that's what we like to transmit," said Cruz-Saco. "You do belong. There's no membership fee to be paid. This is an open space."

Cruz-Saco stressed that representation matters, which is why the Hispanic Alliance of Southeastern Connecticut staff reflects the community.

On top of having bilingual staff, she said the space also provides access and opportunity for those in the Hispanic community. From initiatives and scholarships to networking, economic support, and health advocacy, Cruz-Saco said there's so much the organization does for the community.

"The community here has grown in an unbelievable way," explained Lina Agudelo, Executive Director.

Agudelo said as the Hispanic population grows in the New London area, so does the organization's reach and mission.

"There are many different groups from many different countries that we would love to welcome to our organization, and we also want to continue developing our current projects, which will empower every single part of our generations," said Agudelo.

Raquel Harrington is the race and culture reporter at FOX61 News. She can be reached atrharrington@fox61.com. Follow her onFacebook,TwitterandInstagram.

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Hispanic Alliance of Southeastern Connecticut provides an open space for community members - FOX61 Hartford

$65 billion - the biggest federal investment in connectivity since 1956 and the Interstate Highway System - is ready to be spent on broadband. States are gearing up to dole it outand bring high-speed internet access to over 24 millionAmericans without it or unable to afford available services. Broadband access in unserved and underserved communities has the potential to spur innovation, create jobs and develop more equitable and prosperous communities. It may be our only chance to close the digital dividebefore it gets too big to handle. We need to get it right.

Everyone in the business of broadband, from private companies to municipalities and even non-profits, must make sure it can operate, generate revenue and be profitable enough to sustain the industry without another government donation. We have the money to build out broadband, but this is only the first step. Now, we have to make intentional decisions about how we spend it to yield the benefits we want it to bring, not just for us but for generations to come. Then, we implement the best solutions to take us there.

We need to consider more than just the cost behind broadband buildouts and think about what we hope to accomplish with such a historic investment and what comes next. We need skilled peopleto design mechanisms that fix, maintain and innovate broadband networks and ensure they are built to scale as communities grow. Remote work is already drawing businesses and individualsto smaller towns and cities offering incentivesand a more affordable life. Broadband can level the rural/urban playing field of opportunities, but as the industry becomes more competitive, speedwill be what determines long-term success. Population growth and competitive speeds will drive innovation and economic benefitsfor more communities and future-proof their success.

Various grounded and wireless technologies will be critical to supporting future visions of ubiquitous connectivity and the benefits it will bring, including fiber. Business and public leaders are uniting around the supremacy of fiberto future-proof the growth of 5G and successor wireless technologies that will allow AI, automation and robotics to revolutionize industries. For small carriers, bringing mobile and industrial 5G to less populated areas would be financially prohibitive, and larger providers prioritize bringing service into areas that can generate profit. But with an underground fiber infrastructure, smaller companies have more capabilities to tap into it as a backhaulto extend strong wireless signals to more of those places.

Depending on the community, broadband spending solutions will be different. For some regions, it will make sense to disable the legacy infrastructure (and in a way that avoids harming the environment), like cities where raceways of old cable, telephone and electrical wiresclutter up the underground. Smaller towns and unconnected regions that have no need to consider this expense can spend those funds in other ways that better suit their community.

We need to leverage existing coverage mapsfrom public and private sources to know which communities need what to identify where we can connect to nearby networks and where we need to build something new. Smaller areas with less population density can work together to bring broadband to their communities through creative partnershipswith neighboring providers, local leaders and experts in the industry, even without having to build out networks themselves. Working with local businesses, co-ops and other group initiatives can result in innovative solutions from the ground upthat best serve their communitys needs.

As universal broadband closes the digital divide and revitalizes rural communities, we need to take steps to sustain those benefits for the next 50 years with the healthy evolution of broadband industries - this implies fierce competition. Competitionkeeps prices affordable for consumers, expands product ranges and innovation, increases wages and improves working conditions for employees, resulting in a snowball effect on the greater economy. Competition drives investments and improvements so that broadband continues to be what we want long into the future.

The broadband industry needs competition to sustain itself into a future that no longer needs federal financial injections. Without the threat of losing customers, companies can stagnate, no longer improve in what they deliver, and the subscriber experience will suffer. Without competition driving the industry, broadband opportunities in underserved areas will decline, compounding existing problems instead of solving them. For communities with less-dense populations that are most dependent on government funds to get off the ground and running, competition will be key.

This investment is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and our first chance will likely be our only one. Even though weve made mistakes in the past, now is the chance to learn from them. Just like the initiative to bring electricityto all American homes, this historic investment can transform our society into what we want broadband to be. To do this, we need to carefully consider not only capital expenditures but operational expenditures required to sustain that transformation long into the future.

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How to Future-Proof a $65 Billion Broadband Investment Featured - The Fast Mode