Black Lives Matter

Black lives matter.

The STUDIO community has been weighing how best to express our sympathy, our outrage, and our support for the Black Lives Matter movement and others protesting systemic police violence and institutionalized racism. We are looking further inward to see where we need to educate ourselves, where we need to express care, and where our shortcomings still exist. Empowerment, safety, and validation are absolutely core to our mission—and we recognize how much more work needs to be done to amplify the voices and concerns of our students, our faculty and staff, our collaborators, and the greater community. We recognize the need to move beyond simple statements of solidarity—we recognize that action speaks louder than words in effecting structural change. As we commit ourselves to that action, we still want to state three essential words:

Black lives matter.

— Golan Levin, Director, Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry
June 4, 2020