Press
For Immediate Release – June 10, 2020
There’s a new kind of school opening in Charlotte, North Carolina, this Summer and Fall called The School of Good Citizenship. An initiative of artist duo LigoranoReese, The School of Good Citizenship is part art project and part community effort to bring people together to reflect on and address an urgent moment affecting society and country.
Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese first worked in Charlotte in 2012 with Morning In America, a public art installation in Fourth Ward Park during the Democratic convention. Planning a return for RNC2020, they felt it was imperative to rethink their approach. Ensuring that The School of Good Citizenship was meaningful to Charlotte was critical at the onset of the project.
LigoranoReese founded a local Advisory Board, hired Charlotte-based curator and arts advocate Jonell Logan as Project Manager, and partnered with Charlotte organizations including the Community Building Initiative, Johnson C. Smith University, International House, Latin American Coalition, League of Women Voters, Levine Museum of the New South, The Light Factory, University of North Carolina-Charlotte, Working Films.
Through these partnerships The School of Good Citizenship brings together citizens and stakeholders, artists, poets, and writers in a series of public art works and public forums about how our actions in society can make things better perhaps more equitable for all.
For over a decade, LigoranoReese, as the Brooklyn-based artist-duo is known, have installed temporary public artworks at the political conventions, beginning in 2008 in Denver and Saint Paul with massive melting sculptures carved in ice of the word Democracy. The series continued in 2012 with the Middle Class and 2016 with The American Dream. The artists had begun looking to North Carolina in Fall 2018, not only because Charlotte was the site for the Republican Convention but as a model for a new kind of public artwork based on community and building partnerships.
Turning to Charlotte in 2020, they realized that what’s going on in North Carolina was not just about representation and voting rights: it was part of a bigger story reflecting the aspirations and hopes of the city’s residents for a more just future. For almost an entire year, LigoranoReese met artists, art curators, public interest groups, and city historians in an attempt to get a sense of the cultural landscape of the city.
“From the get go,” according to Ligorano, “our goal was to reach out and to bring in, to think of, to speak to, and to listen with diverse audiences and communities. For us, the key issues here in Charlotte are also the key issues across the country. The way they are articulated in North Carolina has profound impact everywhere.”
Though the artists originally intended for the School to bookend the Republican Convention, the Coronavirus has forced them to revisit their plans. The School of Good Citizenship occurs online (and possibly in person depending on health guidelines) to revolve around 5 key events in Charlotte.
The Seeing Voices: Community (Un)Heard Workshops in July at The Light Factory consist of three workshops over 7 weekends on the use of photography and personal diary to reflect on what is happening around us. Local photographers and artists Hector Vaca, Julio Gonalez, de’Angelo Dia and Renee Green are instructors.
On August 20, Counting UP! What Does Your Ballot Look Like opens at the Levine Museum of the New South. This North Carolina statewide open-call exhibition focuses on voting rights and will be on exhibit until November.
From August 24-27, LigoranoReese are organizing I Once Was Lost, a series of virtual concerts of songs of redemption that takes place every evening while the Republican Convention convenes. Participants are local Choirs and Zoom viewers. Internet performances will be captured and ultimately be edited into a film installation for Fall 2020.
The School of Good Citizenship continues in the first two weekends in October with a Drive In of film programs on immigration and climate justice organized by Wilmington, NC-based Working Films and concludes with a Civic Saturday sermon in conjunction with Citizen University at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. “The School of Good Citizenship’s vision,” noted Levine Museum Chief Operating Officer Kama Pierce, “has the capacity for enacting social change in our community during a critical time, hosting the RNC, and beyond.”
Participating organizations include Community Building Initiative, Johnson C. Smith University, International House, Latin American Coalition, League of Women Voters, Levine Museum of the New South, The Light Factory, University of North Carolina-Charlotte, Working Films
For more information:
press@schoolofgoodcitizenship.org.
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