Funk, God, Jazz, and Medicine: Black Radical Brooklyn

Creative Time

Funding Received: 2013
Brooklyn, NY
$275,000
Funding Period: 1 year and 5 months
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December 24, 2013

Students from P.S. 243 ‘The Weeksville School’ mark the completion of the museum’s Education and Cultural Arts building during a ribbon-cutting ceremony

Brooklyn, NY (December 11, 2013) – Creative Time was thrilled to join the leadership and staff of Weeksville Heritage Center (WHC), as well as Brooklyn Borough President Mary Markowitz, Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate D. Levin, and other government officials, community leaders, leading figures in the arts, and local school children for a a ceremonial ribbon cutting to mark the completion of Weeksville’s new 23,000 square-foot Education and Cultural Arts Building.

The striking, award-winning, and sustainable gateway to the grounds of the original 19th century community of free African Americans will enable WHC to significantly expand its education, programming, and research capabilities and elevate its standing as one of the nation’s leading centers of African American history and culture.

When the Education and Cultural Arts Center opens to the public in the spring of 2014, WHC will become the first African American historic site to operate a contemporary arts center for the “Study of Freedom and Self determination” and generating knowledge about freedom and 19th and 20th century African American, Caribbean and African history. The new center will give the community unprecedented access to archival research, contemporary exhibitions, and performance art programs—and will provide a superb complement to the Creative Time-Weeksville Heritage Center collaboration. Together, this project and the Education and Cultural Arts Building promise a significant and momentous year of programs and events that will build upon Weeksville’s powerful historical narratives and rich activist history.