How did the two of you come together? Can you recount the founding of Love As A Kind Of Cure?
Magogodi & Cleyvis:
We’re excited and honored to continue engaging our growing community in meaningful conversation and activation toward social transformation through our festivals. We're also working to offer self-paced online workshops, so folks can dive deeply into the issues we tackle, between festivals. We shared a taste of our first workshop on Anti-Racism at our Freedom Festival and we’re hard at work preparing to launch a fuller iteration in late Fall, 2020.
Also this fall, we’re offering BLACK TO SCHOOL, SEP26-27 – a celebration of The Bluest Eye’s 50th anniversary. The story of Pecola was Nobel laureate Toni Morrison’s debut novel. This festival is produced by our sister brand, The Toni Morrison Festival. Folks should still expect the same delicious curation of art, activation, and creativity around issues of class and caste.
As for a five-year plan, LoL! We don’t think like that. Instead, we think about our lifelong commitment to doing what Congressman John Lewis inspired in us – making good trouble. We’re committed to our generation’s fight for gender, racial, and class equality.
And we’re committed to doing that work through a love-rooted revolution, because you cannot combat hate or violence with anything but Love. And we’re not talking about a cheap or romantic love. This love is not satisfied by a box of chocolates or charming platitudes. This is a radical and muscular love. The kind of love that has the power to heal deep hurt and redress centuries-old wounds. A demanding love that requires so much more of us than the quick satisfaction of cancel culture or the pretense that better policy will fix racism and restore class equality. We think about our work in light of this love, as a conduit of its power. How can we plant that love inside our bellies? How can we ignite that love in even just one soul who shows up to our community? If we reach just one more heart with this truth – that Love IS A Kind of Cure, then our five-year plan is already fulfilled.
Also this fall, we’re offering BLACK TO SCHOOL, SEP26-27 – a celebration of The Bluest Eye’s 50th anniversary. The story of Pecola was Nobel laureate Toni Morrison’s debut novel. This festival is produced by our sister brand, The Toni Morrison Festival. Folks should still expect the same delicious curation of art, activation, and creativity around issues of class and caste.
As for a five-year plan, LoL! We don’t think like that. Instead, we think about our lifelong commitment to doing what Congressman John Lewis inspired in us – making good trouble. We’re committed to our generation’s fight for gender, racial, and class equality.
And we’re committed to doing that work through a love-rooted revolution, because you cannot combat hate or violence with anything but Love. And we’re not talking about a cheap or romantic love. This love is not satisfied by a box of chocolates or charming platitudes. This is a radical and muscular love. The kind of love that has the power to heal deep hurt and redress centuries-old wounds. A demanding love that requires so much more of us than the quick satisfaction of cancel culture or the pretense that better policy will fix racism and restore class equality. We think about our work in light of this love, as a conduit of its power. How can we plant that love inside our bellies? How can we ignite that love in even just one soul who shows up to our community? If we reach just one more heart with this truth – that Love IS A Kind of Cure, then our five-year plan is already fulfilled.