Long Center presents #CreateInPlace
EQ Austin is partnering with the Long Center in its commitment to uplift our community as a place of gathering whether it’s in person or virtually. The Long Center make it their mission to showcase, inspire, and nurture the best in professional creative expression. Until the facility can physically gather patrons again, Create In Place is the new online program to virtually connect the city and bring people together around artists and performances happening online.
The Long Center is taking this time to uplift Black businesses, restaurants, organizations, performing arts groups, and provide resources for those who would like to do more.
This is a time for continued action and accountability. Together we must listen, learn, and educate. thelongcenter.org.
Health Alliance for Austin Musicians (HAAM)
The Health Alliance for Austin Musicians (HAAM) is excited about the work that EQ Austin is doing for the Austin music and creative community and we recognize the importance of their work towards fostering cultural and economic opportunity for our creative sector through the lens of equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Research shows that systemic discrimination and racial bias contributes to the inequalities that have left people of color with unbelievable health disparities and worse overall health outcomes in the United States.
HAAM is committed to health equity for all Austin musicians and we recognize that availability and access to care is an ongoing issue for musicians of color. HAAM is taking specific, proactive and inclusive steps to ensure that our services are equally accessible to musicians of every genre, race and identity. myhaam.org.
Red River Cultural District
The Red River Cultural District (RRCD) was originally a historic black neighborhood before Austin’s redlining, and since the 1930s has fostered Black, Hispanic and Queer musicians and live music venues—spaces where truly all are welcome. Music places can be safe spaces and, when at their best, they transcend racism, homophobia and otherness, allowing for freedom of identity, expression and being.
In that spirit—and understanding that the mechanics of institutional racism and individual bias support an explicit and implicit exclusion or preference of non-whites in this country—here, in our live music community, we began partnering with EQ Austin in 2019 to better implement best-recommended EDI (Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) policies that would assertively support and maintain our Red River inclusive spirit in actions more than ideals.
These EDI policies include, but are not limited to:
EDI recommendations in hiring practices for musicians and live music venue staff
Commitment to continued intentionality in genre diversity in programming of live music venues
Focus on talent development for emerging musicians from communities of color
Best practices for developing more diverse audiences
Commitment to partner with those promoters & marketers who can best reach and develop these audiences
We understood that, though we have a centuries-long tradition of welcoming everyone in Red River, without intentional reprogramming of our automatic biases we are still subject to our prevailing and insidious racist social conditioning. Our ongoing partnership with EQ Austin has allowed for community progress in this serious and difficult work to transform not only our business practices, but also ourselves and our greater cultural community. redriverculturaldistrict.org.
School of Rock
EQ Austin supports School of Rock, the world leader in performance-based music education. The organization is taking a hard look at their curriculum to ensure that groundbreaking work of black artists is studied, recognized and celebrated. To this end, School of Rock has begun working on the REDI initiative: Rock Equity Diversity and Inclusion. The goal of the initiative is to make sure that students understand that rock and roll music would not exist without the artistry of black musicians and to make sure that our repertoire reflects these monumental contributions.
The initiative is being led by Rick Carney, School of Rock Manager of Music Education and Chair of the Austin Music Commission. "It is not only our responsibility, it is our duty to point out that black artists created rock music, period, end of story," said Carney. "As with jazz and blues, rock and roll is a true American artform that is revered the world over. It's time that we not only recognize these contributions, but that we make sure that our students understand the depth and context of these contributions."
Event Production Services (EPS)
Event Production Services supports EQ Austin as a partner in producing the One Road Austin concerts, which showcase Austin's up-and-coming and veteran local music artists. To support more awareness and diversity in booking concerts and events in Austin, founder Jeff Miller partnered with EQ Austin's Alex Vallejo to launch EPS Presents in 2018. In the past 15 years, Event Service Productions has worked with top names like the Austin City Limits Music Festival, Austin's Official New Year's Celebration, ACL Radio presents Blues On The Green, The Rolling Stones, and many more top-notch event and festival management, corporate event production, talent buying, planning, production and staffing services. epstx.net.