NMAEA Equity, Excellence, and Inclusion Committee
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The purpose of the ED&I committee is to help members better create safe environments and serve their students and support their colleagues—including those who are often marginalized, due to their race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and more. The committee will work in concert with the Board of Directors and members to respond to previously unaddressed and newly emerging issues, and to advance NAEA ED&I priorities. (Adapted from NAEA ED&I Commission Purpose)
Priorities:
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In step with the NAEA, follow with decisive actions aimed at dismantling structural and institutional inequities within our national association and beginning a long overdue cultural shift that centers upon greater equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility;
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Serve as a catalyst for the work of NMAEA, arts education partners, and individual members in prioritizing, brainstorming, and enacting sustainable structures and systems for infusing greater equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility into their local workplaces, arts institutions, and communities of creative practice.
Why we do this is best articulated by Dr. James Haywood Rolling, Jr. in the 2020 ED&I Commision Report:
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Diversity matters. It expands our social networks and resources. It’s the perfect growth strategy—aim to diversify and welcome in life experiences unlike your own, and you’ll be the one who is en- riched. Expand the stories your organization or institution can authentically tell, and NAEA will be strengthened as a whole. I invite you to keep doing the right thing there in your corner of the nation. Open your eyes for those around you who are being excluded. Open your heart to invite them into your conversation, your circle of friends, and the center of your best intentions.