Episode 43, ACT 1: Kwame Scruggs - Tears on the Drum

This episode begins with a brief conversation with returning guest Quanice Floyd, who you may remember from our episode "Shaking Foundations for a New Paradigm." This time around, she's back to talk about her brand new podcast, "Black Arts Admin Bitch," a title she came to in order to embrace the b-word, reclaim it, turn it into a positive and be purely unapologetic about her viewpoints. Her podcast is meant to shed light on stories from arts administrators who are black, indigenous and people of color and to be a liberating space that offers calls to action. The second half of the episode begins by asking simply: How're you doing? What is your artistry? Those are the small questions that launch a truly complex discussion between Courtney and Kwame Scruggs, who aims to create and inspire through poignant metaphor and quotation. Kwame is the founder and director of Alchemy, a non-profit organization that uses storytelling—primarily myth and fairy tales—and the djembe drum to work with male youth in order to promote personal development and growth, teaching life lessons through objective means. In their conversation, Courtney and Kwame talk about the need for the arts as a tool to connect with young people, especially during a pandemic, and how patience is key to making and keeping those connections. The big questions that are born out of this conversation are: Are we doing enough? What is the intersection between education, art-making and kids' lived experiences, and are we doing enough to meet in the middle?