MANIFESTO
URBAN BUSH WOMEN IS TELLING BLACK WOMEN’S STORIES WITH INTENTION AND KINDNESS.
Hitting it hard like Betty Davis and Tina Turner. Staying in discomfort to get us to the next space of our brilliance. Telling Black women’s stories, words don’t do it justice. The English language is faulty for the Black experience. The metaphors applied to us must be abundant and continuous. Language does not amount to the experience, it doesn’t have the nuance of our tone. The experience of UBW is that tone.
WE ARE SANKOFIC.
Not holding onto the past: going back and restoring. Thinking past tomorrow. We are Blackness as an asset. Blackness as an expansive idea. Not easily boiled down - so fierce, the power. Calls people to their charge. Creatively organized chaos, validating the complexity and intersectionality of our experiences. Raw doesn’t have enough intention. We had to go to the Holy Ghost. This is how we push the culture forward.
OUR CRAFT IS BUILT WITH RIGOR
AND CURIOSITY.
Not just choreographing: channeling. A commitment to constant evolution. Moving in a direction we know as forward, mind and body as a holistic integral system, things we cannot describe. Our feet are not in concrete. They’re jubilant. UBW: Artisans of the body in a community of women. Black Radicals. Beyond Dancers. Experts at beyond dancing. Using African aesthetics to speak about the experiences of Black folk.
PEOPLE STEP INTO THIS CIRCLE AND THEY’RE LIFTED UP, BLOWN AWAY.
Brought to a higher and more grounded self. Returned to an authenticity of self. Someone told me it’s hard to be a Black woman. The story is in our bodies. UBW translates it all through the body. We have to heal. We have to gather in spaces where we don’t feel left alone on an island. Grieving allows us to heal from trauma. How we use our bodies dictates how we move in the world. UBW looks for social justice work in the body. It may not be pretty but you’re going to feel it.
UBW IS ROLLING DEEP AND NO ONE LOOKS THE SAME.
UBW is very diasporic. UBW is very Brooklyn. UBW is checkers and spades, food on the grill. Prayerful, gut-centered, mind-blowing. A community BBQ. Inspired and led by Black women to offer Black Women+ the platform to grow. My prayer is that our daughters enter this circle. Truth, authenticity, integrity: the Holy Trinity. UBW is experiential. Jive-talking in a space filled with love.
WE SEE YOUR BRILLIANCE.
We are Medicine Women performing soul-artist work. We practice community in even the smallest of groups. We are looking at the humanity of people and together we rise to the next peak of greatness. We disrupt the idea that movement is unavailable unless you are trained. We disrupt the separation of art and community from activism. We disrupt Western social understanding. We are willing to have uncomfortable conversations. Truth-telling is always the intention behind what we do. BlackFemme: Unafraid to center our stories.
ART IS INTEGRAL TO EVERYTHING WE DO.
Art that raises visibility for our movement. Deeply mindful organizing work with culture at the core. We are going back to lineage. Continuing the Honoring Wheel, creating the next generation of arts organizers. UBW is actively intergenerational, the babies are welcomed into the space. What does it look like to raise up ourselves and our people? Unselfish. Deliberate. Making people whole who have been injured. Filling the void, making sure we’re sturdy. Uplifting the humanity of a person through the arts.
THIS ENVIRONMENT IS ROOTED IN BLACK FEMINIST
PRINCIPLES.
We are activating antiracism in the tradition of Ella Baker, unapologetic in the tradition of the AACM. White people must come willingly. White people must come ready to do the work. The vision is always expanding. Not a cerebral knowing: an inhabitance of one’s self. A deeper connection that comes back to movement, that connection with Black Women+. A spectrum of excellence, a power cord with undetachable fibers.
BECOME PART OF UBW TO FLOURISH.
To not be afraid of centering your story and body. Engage with the transformational aspect of purpose. You belong here for the purpose of your liberation and joy. Thinking from a different part of your brain, leaning into your complexity in a way that works for you. A space where all folk can see themselves reflected, a safe space with multiple truths. Not always a comfortable place. But we stay in it.
I’m wrapped in something,
a growth that can happen.
A hope I didn’t know I had until I was experiencing it. UBW opened up a whole ‘nother part of me. No one will give me back my humanity. I can find humanity in myself and others. That is the work of antiracism at UBW. This utopia of Black people, there are multiple dope humans in that choir. No precedent for it. UBW sheds light on how we are operating in an oppressive society, how we have normalized a culture of inhumanity. At UBW we are reminded that that is not OK.
I had been terrorized about my body.
I arrived like a beat-up little bird, UBW still saw a light in me. Clearly this is where I was meant to be. I needed a place to find myself. A home where I can use the gifts I’ve dreamed about, face the things I needed to be free of: the inner critic, the negative self-talk. I was finally where I belonged with UBW. I didn’t anticipate the depth of community-building and family. I didn’t expect to feel so validated, so appreciated.
My body is enough.
UBW excavates the stories and shares them with the body. Storytelling = the Deep Practice. UBW is the activist community, disrupting white supremacist separation of body and mind. Making movement accessible to all people on their journeys and talking very intentionally about Blackness. We are becoming aware of the oppression against us. This is both challenging and necessary. We all have value. We all dance. We all move our bodies.
UBW changed the course of my life.
Not a straight line, a continuum. Moving from intimidation to understanding my value. I didn’t have a model for what UBW was. UBW is a foundational notion, a creative community rooted in Black feminist principles. UBW is my family, and those relationships go deep. You feel so validated, so beautiful. Just come and decide for yourself. OMG girl wait let me tell you. Being in a space that is antiracist. You just have to come.
I’ve seen a change in energy.
The Sirens of the Bush gathered to bring us here, beside bodies of various sizes and experiences in motion. You often leave these corporate institutions beaten and scarred. At UBW you see people go from blue to beautiful brown. You are seen, humanized, and heard. The emphasis on shared meals, the integration of spirit. The assets of the people in the room. You come into a family, an extension of you. You’ll get your people. You’ll be able to breathe.
Imagine going to a place where you are not the minority.
Demonstrating leadership that models critical thinking, fearlessly articulating the lessons. Would you like to get the professional development you always wished you’d had? Leadership training from a Black feminist perspective? The hurdles you’ll transcend, the lessons you’ll learn. Training that dispels the myth of what a leader looks like. Everyone is a leader.
UBW is different in how they walk
into the room.
Demonstrating leadership that models critical thinking, fearlessly articulating the lessons. Would you like to get the professional development you always wished you’d had? Leadership training from a Black feminist perspective? The hurdles you’ll transcend, the lessons you’ll learn. Training that dispels the myth of what a leader looks like. Everyone is a leader.
Are you willing to understand your power?
You are inherently noble. You can decide how you’re going to be. There is a praxis, a methodology, for eliciting leadership. Everyone has the ability to find their greatness. Use all parts of your body and get out of your head. You are a leader so get to work. You still have dance in you. You were leadership then and you are leadership now.
UBW is a saving grace for the long-term happiness of Black Women+.
Radiant containers and sub-containers of collective support, re-energizing the body at fatigue. Embracing the beauty and selfhood behind each person. Holding the container but allowing it to mold and shift, letting the story in your body be centered. The core practice is to be in motion. How do we move together? How do we get through this together? Come ready to be challenged and changed. The transformations are out of love.
I’ve seen a change in energy.
Not a race-based concept: a spectrum of excellence. A centering of voices that don’t often get centered. Our pledge is to Black institutional representation. In the U.S., only institutions have the ability to archive the future. UBW has stepped into that role. Ever-present and shifting, still rooted in core values, we keep evolving, always sitting in question. There is no other single group that does this.
WE BELONG TO THE LINEAGE OF BLACK EXPERIMENTAL ARTISTS.
We create our own music. We color way outside the lines. A Black theater ensemble. A dancer’s physicality through a community organizer’s analysis. This is risk. A generative way of creating, always evolving and striving to be better. Making work that exceeds expectations. Partying as hard as we work: Hard work and hard play are part of the restorative practice.
WE CAN AND WE WILL
AND ALL WILL BE DOPE.
At 60 or 70, UBW will still be doing this. Lineage is the legacy. We value the experience before the written word. The book is to be continued and its chapters are always being written. The commitment is to the evolving process. Warriors think systemically. Revolutionaries think systemically. This legion of warriors is going to help us dream institutionally. This legion of revolutionaries is going to help us materialize liberation.
The UBW MANIFESTO is composed of 63 three-line stanzas called THE TRIPTYCHS – a series of poetic declarations about who and what Urban Bush Woman is, its unique character and sense of purpose, and its relationship to community. These insights, remixed from singular voices inside that experience, are shared as a statement of values, an invitation, and a course of action.
THE UBW MANIFESTO AND THE TRIPTYCHS
Developed by Tate Strategy
In collaboration with Urban Bush Women
UBW Focus Group Participants
Tahnia Belle
Michelle Coe
Lizzy Cooper-Davis
Izzy Dow
Yasmine Falk
Marjani Forte-Saunders
Marguerite Hemmings
Chanon Judson
Christine King
Kieta Mutepfa
Kendra Ross
Jonathan D. Secor
Gaynell Sherrod
Mame Diarra Speis
Amara Tabor-Smith
Makeda Smith
Vincent Thomas
Jawole Willa Jo Zollar
Project Management
Makeda Smith | Marketing Manager, UBW
Photography
Woosler Delisfort for Live Arts Miami
Hayim Heron
Design
Instrumental