Exploring Art Media by Barbara Shannon Table of Contents 2nd Edition
Dr. Barbara Shannon-Bannister is president and CEO of Grand Blueprint Inc., a nonprofit organization she founded in 1984 to preserve cultural and musical traditions of African-Americans in Aurora. What began as a dance grouping performing in retirement homes now hosts an array of arts opportunities for its surrounding community. Grand Design has classes for both children and adults in art, music, dance and theater, and hosts performances that showcase the positive results of its programs. It is still one of the just Black performing arts companies in Aurora, and it's always evolving.
Grand Design is now sharing the fruits of its latest creative endeavor: filmmaking. Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges is a twelve-episode, non-fiction narrative that was produced in collaboration with Denver Open Media and directed by several local filmmakers. The docuseries explores Black titans of the music globe, such as Aretha Franklin and James Brown, aslope their local Colorado contemporaries and successors. Grand Design will host the premiere of the first ii episodes with a free public outcome at the People's Building on Fri, February 11, but the evening is designed to exist much more than than just a screening.
"This is a remembrance for us, an opportunity for us to practice something new. It's also to heighten our awareness," says Shannon-Bannister. "I hope people will exit with a heightened awareness that 'maybe I should acquire [about Black history].' As well often things like this slide by the states; people are busy doing other things."
Breaking Barriers is in a more complex position than similar films. Aurora has remained an epicenter of the Black Lives Affair movement since the 2022 decease of Elijah McClain at the hands of the Aurora police, which ended in a $xv million payment to McClain'south family. A year before, Shannon-Bannister had retired from her thirty-year tenure every bit the principal of community relations for the city. She still serves on the Civil Service Committee, helping sort through candidates for positions on police and firefighting forces.
The year she retired, Grand Blueprint sought out film as a new, unique venture. The docuseries was conceptualized past Erica Papillion Posey, a volunteer who was advising Grand Design on the performing arts scene in Aurora (she is also a trained mezzo soprano vocaliser). Posey provided a dozen musical touchstones for the organization to explore; each episode is structured effectually a unlike facet of Black musical civilization in America, including children's music, classical, hip-hop, gospel, blues and dance.
John Reid and Dr. Barbara Shannon-Bannister hash out Grand Blueprint Inc.'s legacy.
Thousand Design, Inc.
The abundance of documentaries virtually Black musicians grow with each passing year. Titles like What Happened, Miss Simone?, Amazing Grace and Summer of Soul crowd streaming platforms. Grand Design knew that to stand out, it would take to go across highlighting known icons and dive deep into the customs. Shannon-Bannister says that many of the locals the docuseries showcases were found through churches.
"Our churches in the Black community were places where we congregated, sought condolement, had dinners, helped people. Pastors were the people we leaned toward; therefore churches were where nosotros went to discover all kinds of talents," she explains.
The second episode traces the roots of gospel music from spirituals, songs created and sung by enslaved Africans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. M. Roger Holland Two, an assistant professor of music and organized religion at the Lamont School of Music at the University of Denver, is a central figure in the episode. Holland directs the university's Spirituals Project, a community choir initiative to maintain the functioning of Black spirituals. Holland refers to these songs as "the mother from which all the other branches and leaves extend for Black music."
Christiana Danae, Deidra Walker, Stephanie Hancock and Soup d'Jour are amongst the other promising local talents who appear throughout the series. Discovering these voices, even decades after founding Grand Design for just such purposes, still surprises Shannon-Bannister.
"I was amazed at the amount of talent that we have effectually usa that we don't even wait at or know near," she says. "That'south the sad function."
M. Roger Holland II leads a Spirituals Project rehearsal at the Academy of Denver.
Grand Blueprint, Inc.
Through highlighting talent and tracing the roots of Black music, Breaking Barriers aims to exist a positive reflection of its community. Friday's event will double as a premiere and a workshop for the serial. Audition members are invited to give their thoughts in a postal service-screening Q&A setting, and Shannon-Bannister hopes her community embraces the testify and sees itself represented in a genuine, authentic light.
The evening will also feature a cherry carpeting, refreshments, and perhaps even a choral operation by Grand Blueprint. There is currently no set program for distribution of the series, but Shannon-Bannister promises to "button all the buttons" and take Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges air on television 1 day. Most important, she hopes to host more public screenings to further harvest interest and fine-tune the show.
Shannon-Bannister is counting on this event to foster community non only through the series, but through authentic, spontaneous discussions. She's been in the Aurora customs for the improve part of 50 years and knows she wouldn't ever want to be anywhere else.
"I want to meet the relationship betwixt the community and the police get better," Bannister declares. "I'll be there raising my hand and saying, 'I desire to help. Who'll help me?' It doesn't matter who you are, where y'all are, what you lot feel; if you dear Aurora, what are you going to practice to make Aurora the best place to live?"
Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges premieres at 7 p.m. Friday, February 11, at the People's Building, 9995 East Colfax Avenue in Aurora. Reserve free tickets on Eventbrite. Acquire more almost G Pattern Inc. on its website.
Source: https://www.westword.com/arts/breaking-barriers-building-bridges-aurora-black-performing-arts-company-debuts-docuseries-13365619
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