Written by Anita Gosevska, Class of 2023 and Director of Research at NADIA
As we’re all aware, things have changed a lot in the past several months. This year hasn’t been the greatest for most of us, but good things can happen in response to times of strife. For me, and for many others, that good thing has been the formation of the National Arts Diversity Integration Association, or NADIA. NADIA’s name has been popping up here and there in the MGSA community for the past few weeks, so I would like to formally introduce the organization to you all and share who we are, what we do, my personal journey with NADIA, and most importantly, how this relates to each and every one of you!
Who is NADIA?
NADIA is a non-profit organization based in NYC dedicated to coordinating the research, development, and implementation of industry-wide anti-discriminatory practices. NADIA supports a diverse group of project leaders and artists who are looking to think critically and discover new ways to produce culturally conscious art in order to develop practices that are equitable, inclusive, and sustainable. NADIA represents everybody who works towards the vision of a community that empowers and supports the creativity of underrepresented artists. NADIA will achieve this vision through normalizing, integrating, and advancing the values of equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging in the arts.
What do we do?
NADIA’s current action toward its vision is implemented through writing articles and sharing interviews to inform and encourage conversation, organizing and streaming events to empower the arts community, and seeking out and featuring initiatives to empower and support their work. Our current initiative is the Amplified Currents Festival of the Arts, and current members of our network are Opus Illuminate, Literary Music Series, CIM BSU, and The Artist Ascending.
My Journey with NADIA
Before there was even any talk of forming an organization, our team’s experience began with a nightly open online space for discussions surrounding the rekindling of the Black Lives Matter movement in early June of this year. These discussions happened each night for two weeks, and started with upwards of forty participants, which led to insightful discourse. Eventually, the same dozen or so people were showing up nightly, which led to brainstorms of finding ways to create meaningful and lasting change in the arts community. It was a powerful moment for me and for the rest of us, as most of us had never even met before these online meetings, and yet now we were starting to think of tangible ways to change the world! A culture had been formed on the basis of mutual respect, personal integrity, and an openness to discovery, and that culture allowed us to quickly shift from thinking to doing.
We started by hosting interviews that brought leaders into this new space in order to expand our understanding of the issues we wished to address. Through the insight we gained from these exchanges, our vision expanded, and we combined our wide range of artistic areas, backgrounds, and personalities to form a unity around shared values, effectively embodying our mission and leading to the work we do today. We all fell into our respective responsibilities at NADIA during our initial interview phase, taking up roles that fit us naturally and that we enjoyed doing. My contributions began through researching our guests prior to the interviews in order to allow my teammates to develop relevant questions for them, and this work landed me into the position of Director of Research at NADIA. It was intimidating; I had never been in this sort of position, nor in a long-term organizational environment before. Now, I contribute to NADIA’s development of solutions-based content through leading the Research Team, providing sources and research for the Writing Team’s articles for the Mosaic, and performing research for every facet of the organization that has project leads, questions, or a need for information. In the span of a few months of collaboration with my teammates, I have grown out of the mindset of being “just a student” and into the mindset of being a leader, and that is exactly what NADIA aims to help each and every artist do: be a leader.
What can you do?
Do what you’re here at Rutgers for! If you’re studying music performance, perform! If you’re studying education, teach! If you’re a visual artist, make some art! If you’re a dancer, dance! Get together with people who want to empower and support the creativity of underrepresented artists and make art together that is relevant to the values of equity, diversity, and inclusion. Perform music by underrepresented composers, foster a multicultural curriculum in your lesson plans, read about the experiences of underrepresented artists, have conversations with each other about equity, diversity, and inclusion in the arts; in short, take what you do best and apply to it the values of EDIB. Don’t just think, do! Doing can be scary, and sometimes we don’t know where to start, who to guide us, how to achieve our goals, and more, and that is what NADIA is here for. NADIA can guide personal, project, and organizational endeavors in the realm of equity, diversity, and inclusion in order to elicit the leader in each of you, connect you with other leaders to learn from each other, share resources, help you achieve your goals, and share your work with the rest of the NADIA network! Change happens with the individual; NADIA is just here to support each individual (or project, or organization) in their quest for change.
On the surface, this may seem like idealism, but change has already been underway. NADIA just concluded hosting a new festival, the Amplified Currents Festival of the Arts, aimed at curating intimate performances and conversations with a particular focus on interdisciplinary collaboration, the creative process, and community engagement. NADIA is also supporting a project in our network called Opus Illuminate, which is an online concert series dedicated to programming and performing chamber music works by composers of historically underrepresented communities. Both of these projects are examples of the kind of work NADIA supports, and we would love for you to join us in supporting these projects as well.* We are eager to support new endeavors, so if you have any projects underway, ideas, questions, or would simply like to meet to chat with me and/or with NADIA, reach out to me! My contact information is below. Furthermore, if you’d like to join me in helping conduct research for NADIA, we’d love to have you! Thank you for taking the time to learn about the National Arts Diversity Integration Association, and please check out the links below to sign up for our newsletter and learn more!
Resources
*These events are great options for music assembly observations! Footage of Amplified Currents is coming soon to the website.
NADIA Website: https://www.nadiaconnects.org/
Newsletter: https://www.nadiaconnects.org/contact
Facebook: National Arts Diversity Integration Association | https://www.facebook.com/nadiaconnects.org/
Instagram: @nadiaconnects
NADIA Email: nadiaconnectsinfo@gmail.com
My Email: anita.bflatmajor@gmail.com
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