December 28, 2024 • 20 mins
We have no shortage of talent here in the Greater Boston area, and for more than a decade, an organization called "Castle of our Skins" has been working to ensure the voices and stories of Black artists, performers, and musicians in our neighborhood are uplifted and appreciated. Recently, they were able to work with the city of Boston to secure a brand new home in Lower Roxbury, on Columbus Avenue. Co-Founder Ashleigh Gordon talks with Nichole about the group's history, mission, and plans for their new space, "Gold Hall".
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
From WBZ News Radio in Boston. This is New England Weekend,
where each and every week right here we come together
we talk about all the topics important to you and
the place where you live. It is great to be
with you again this week for the final show of
twenty twenty four. I'm Nicole Davis. Whether you're talking about music, dance, poetry, theater,
or anything else the greater Boston area, we certainly have
(00:29):
no shortage of artistic talent. A local nonprofit called Castle
of Our Skins has been working for more than a
decade to make sure the talent, voices, and stories of
Boston's black artists are heard and appreciated.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Too.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Recently, Castle of Our Skins was able to work with
the City of Boston to secure a brand new home.
It's on Columbus Avenue in Lower Roxbury in the South End.
Once all the necessary renovations are done, this new venue,
which was renamed Gold Hall, is going to be the
home of all sorts of activities, artist residencies, events for
the community, educational workshops, performances, and so much more. Let's
(01:05):
find out more about Castle of Our Skins and their
work and this new home. Co founder Ashley Gordon is
here and Ashley, let's begin by learning a bit more
about your nonprofit and how it all became a reality.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
So Cassel her Skins is an organization that I co
founded with Anthony R. Green, who is a black composer,
pianist and ultimately was a classmate of mine at New
England Conservatory. We were both doing our masters. I say
we're alphabetical buddies. Ashley Gordon Anthony Green sat next to
each other in graduation and very much were positioned to
be colleagues and had a love of contemporary music, a
(01:42):
love of chamber of music, and would perform together. We
quite bonded easily over our shared interest in music making
and also at a time pre black student unions are
black student associations affinity groups now that are seemingly at
most academic institutions, found a bond through both being black, right,
(02:05):
So we wanted to after a two year master's program,
find other ways that we can stay in community, stay
in friendship, and ultimately stay as supporters for one another's work.
And despite living on different sides of the country and
the eventually different sides of the Atlantic, we were able
to come together around what ultimately brought us together, which
(02:27):
is culture and music. So Castle of Our Skins started
as a way as friends to be able to support
one another and have certainly grown to include many other
friends from the Afaghandia spora over the span of many
time periods as well past president future and in a
way ultimately to keep community alive. So it's been a
(02:50):
beautiful journey since then.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Oh I believe it. And Castle of Our Skins that
is a very intriguing name to me. Tell me a
little bit about the background. I know it's from a
Nikki Giovanni poem if I remember correctly.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yes, yes, So the late unfortunately Niki Giovanni, who recently
just passed with Castle of Our Skins as an organization,
really wanted to think about culture and the celebration so blackness, pride, joy, community, love,
affirmation being part of the same sentence, which depending on
(03:24):
which area you're looking in or even with part of
the country now you're looking in, aren't in the same sentence.
And turning to Nikki Giovanni's work, specifically, this work poem
for Nina is in Nina Simone really did encapsulate so
much about what we wanted to try to do through
this organization, And to paraphrase the poem, it says, we're
all in prison in the castle of our skins. And
(03:45):
if that's the case, so be it. My skin will
be a palace. I'll I'll love it and adorn it
with beautiful things and be proud ultimately to live in
the skin that I live in. So again, the idea
of celebration, pride, joy was and still is baked into
all of our programming, and the idea as Grio's or
(04:08):
African storytellers who use music and movement and visual arts
and community participation in order to share and keep history
alive was also really important. So it didn't seem far
fetched for us as musicians to tap into different mediums
such as poetry. And from our very very first concert
(04:31):
ever that we programmed, we had music and spoken word
and were into disciplinary and have stayed into disciplinary ever since.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
I love that such an affirming message, and I think
you've really been able to bring that through all these years,
almost twelve years. I believe that you've been around now
since we were first founded. Tell me about the process
of getting to where you are today. What was it
like putting Castle of our skins together and building it
up to where you're at.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Oddly, I would say fun. And I know in the
nonprofit world there's stress and there's you know, especially in Boston,
a lot of competition as we have the highest number
of nonprofits for capita in this city, all vying for
shared pools of funding. But ultimately it was it was
(05:15):
fun and for me starting out wearing multiple hats. So
my current titles artistic director, but I served as the
executive director and handle the marketing and was the producer
and also the the oldists. So I've I've had multiple
hats over the years, oftentimes simultaneously those hats I would wear.
(05:37):
So there was definitely a lot of stress wrapped into it,
but ultimately joy and uh, fun and curiosity and exploration.
So for me that the work of Kesselovarskins allows myself
to grow and learn and connect with new people, be
(05:59):
in new spaces, is try to teach myself more nuanced
and what would I say, meaningful reflections of how history
relates to me and how I can be a activator
of history, how I can be a community minded citizen artist. Right,
(06:23):
So there was always aspects of growth in learning as well.
As the sort of pains and growing pains of a
nonprofit organization. But I think I would use joy ultimately
as the way it would encapsulate the time.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Well, that's a blessing because, like you said, a lot
of nonprofit work is anything but joyous. But I'm grateful
that you've been able to embrace that and bring that
into your work in the community. I mean, you're working
with all sorts of different people around Boston. You've got
black musicians, composers, singers, other artists. Tell us a little
bit about the work that you're doing. Now that you've
(06:59):
got Castle of our Skins, you're up and running, you
have been for some time. What are some of the
specific things that you're doing in the community to highlight
black artistry.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Sure? So, Kesselovererskins is a concert and education series. I
say that any space, including this one, is an educational space,
but concerts and people's minds are often the performative side
of what we do. Again, multi disciplinary, So we'll do
programming at Hibernian Hall with dancers and musicians and have
(07:31):
multimedia and share films about James Baldwin as we share
music around black masculinity. Or we'll do programming, most recently
from our season with a South African composer building indigenous
instruments and pairing those indigenous instruments with Western instruments in
(07:51):
a audience participatory way to engage with activating archival, activating
archival sounds we have in terms of our sort of
concert side of things, A Shirley Graham du bois creative
in residence and are excited to work with a poet
all season to be able to engage with us again
(08:13):
as multidisciplinary work is part of our part of our core.
We also on the mentorship side and education side are
engaging with Black College and Conservatory undergrad master's students at
the various schools in town so New England Conservatory are
(08:34):
alma mater, my co founder and myself, Laundry School of Music,
Boston University, Berkeley, Boston Conservatory, as well as Northeastern this
year to come together for fellowship, to come together for
professional development, to create together. And a beautiful thing about
that particular program is that we now have this cohort
(08:55):
over four years of students who like Anthony and myself
for students at those same institutions who have direct connection
with the musical black composer with an organization that can
support them, that can provide professional performing opportunities, that can
commission them if they're a composer, that can literally bring
(09:17):
them into what we call the Cruse crew, bring them
into the fold. And then in a sort of younger side,
we are doing all kinds of partnerships, one of which
is here in Boston with the Boston Public Schools to
commission sixteen black composers over a dozen schools here in Boston,
(09:38):
to create pieces specifically for those schools, for the school choir,
for the school when ensemble, or for the school string orchestra,
develop curriculum and then publish all of those for national distribution.
So curriculum development K through twelve education as it relates
to blackness, black history, of black cultural, black arts, certainly
(09:58):
at a time when that be potentially harder for people
to access with various things that are going on in
this country. But wanting to make sure that we have
from as young to as old as possible, everyone being
curious about black culture and history and the artistry.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
You are getting a lot of work done, clearly, and
we're going to talk about your new head here in
just a minute. But what's really curious to me is
you are making all these strides right, and you're doing
all this incredible work. Where have you been working though
and getting all this done? And why did you realize, Okay,
it's probably time for us to find a new space
because you have a beautiful new home we're going to
(10:37):
chat about in a minute. But what led up to
that part of it?
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Yeah? So Kesselo our Skins, Like other passion projects turned organizations,
founder led and sort of steered. It started in my
living room many months ago, right and kitchen conversations, meeting
in cafes and doing a ton of research at various
libraries just wherever I could find internet. Ultimately, in our
(11:05):
history we as an organization were able to be a
music ensemble and residence the second I believe music ensemble
and residence at the Boston set of for the Arts,
which gave us the first office space office slash rehearsal
space and access to what a physical not my not
(11:26):
my living room or a cafe could could be. And
to have a music library, to have administrative staff who
could come in and even think about what that could
look like, to have interns coming into a space and
being able to develop and build together, to be able
to see our own organizational history plastered on the walls,
(11:48):
you know, being able to display our programs and having
some kind of living memory of the work that we've
done a place of gathering so that that gave a
first taste for it. And then when that residency and
we moved to South Boston with the Boston Children's Course
and shared space with them, which has been a beautiful
(12:08):
way to connect deeply with another organization that is still
very friendly and one that we love to collaborate with
and support the work that they're doing. Gentrification and additional
condo sales, and just the unfortunate aspect of being in
an area where the arts wasn't necessarily prized and valued
(12:31):
as much as we prized and valued it. We both
were kicked out of our building, and that building is
I don't even know what now at this point. So
Castile of our skins then moved into a shared black
woman led co working space of sorts called well The
building is run by the Wellness Collaborative in Nubian Square
(12:53):
in Roxbury, and so we have as a co working
relationship here to be able to to do our work
with a growing team. We have about six people on
our team at this point, and we'll see Roxburgh Cultural District,
who is also in this space, like in the Wellness
Collaborative that's in this space, other organizations that are mission driven,
(13:14):
driven and culturally specific in their work occupying this space.
But this is also one that that we have outgrown
and still need to sort of outsource our rehearsals and
and there's no walls, so when we're trying to have
a meeting, it's a little hard sometimes. In any case,
our minor detail are our new space is at the
(13:39):
quite historic former site of the High Hat Jazz Club
as well as the former Harriet tub In House in
the lower Roxbury South End area, and it will be
ours ultimately, we will be the owners of and the
basically outfitting it to fit our needs and then shouldn't
at some point we have it in perpetuity, but should
(14:01):
in some point that space no longer serve us in
the sense that we may have grown, we would be
required to make sure that that particular site, which is
about twenty five hundred square feet, stays occupied, owned and
occupied by a nonprofit cultural organization. So very excited for
(14:21):
us as a nonprofit organization, as a culturally specific, Black
specific organization, to have ownership so much about this area
where we currently occupy in Ubian Square had a sort
of thriving, booming black entrepreneur scene, and ultimately because people
(14:43):
didn't own their spaces, among a variety of other reasons,
of course, but having ownership does sort of set a
stake in the ground for legacy building, of course, and
is just a huge as a black arts organization, a
huge point of celebration for us in this journey.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
And that site itself being the former Harriet Tubman House,
being the former side of that jazz club, that must
be poignant and important to you as well, carrying on
that legacy of uplifting people, I suppose to help get
them into a better space to be themselves and create
the life they desire.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Absolutely. Absolutely. The process for that particular space was very
heavily involved with the city as being part of a
city bid. So being part of a city bid, there's
a lot of public proposals, and in my public proposal
and I still stand by that, I had shared that
it's more than just a condo sale for us, but
really a preservation of history absolutely, and knowing what is
(15:44):
on that site and our work, which we've demonstrated for
more than a decade, is around history, is around preservation,
is around community building, is around blackness. So it feels
divine in a lot of ways. It feels carefully placed
and sculpted and crafted by hands that are not mine
(16:06):
and that are not ours. So I very much do
acknowledge the ancestral lineage of that space and what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yeah, and that's a very powerful connection and a very
powerful link. And you know, as you move into that space,
what are your plans? You said twenty five hundred square feet.
That is a decent amount of space. I'm assuming walls
from meetings, from what you just told me, they're probably.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Here. Yeah. So we're envisioning a hybrid space of office
for our growing team, so being able to come together
as an administrated team to continue to do and to
put forward the work, as well as having a performance
hall that we're calling Gold Hall, and knowing that it
was the former side of the Harriet tubb In House,
(16:53):
inspired by a quote from Harriet Tubban when she crossed
into Canada across the line to freedom, it felt like
for her gold coming through trees. So this sort of
beautiful realization of what freedom and liberation could feel like.
So in honor of Harriet Tubman, we're calling it gold Hall.
And in that space, we as an arts organization, as
(17:15):
a both again concert and education organization, want to continue
our education workshops what we call edutainment, so educational and entertaining,
family friendly, free programming. Want to be able to do
our own programming. So I had referenced to our Black
Student Union Fellows fellowship that we have being able to
invite our community, our creuse crew of sorts, so our fellows,
(17:38):
and our artists which are multidisciplinary into this space, being
able to have collaborative design. So as an artistic director,
I have my own sort of vision, but I would
love to have a movement director to be able to
curate movement in this space, and a visual art director
to curate visual art installations as well as dance workshops
(18:00):
and things like this. So to be able to invite,
like in other hands, to shape what that space could
look like, and then being able to invite other organizations
with their mission aligned organizations to do a variety of
community building. I don't know how many times I've used
the word community, but it's really important for us this
(18:23):
Yeah nexus of sorts. So to do it not selfishly,
but to do it in community with as many Yeah
bridge building people and organizations as we can is ultimately
what we hope that's that street corner Massive and Columbus
can be.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
What's the timeline here?
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Sure, so we're going to be doing fundraising and in
some sense it's it's a little backwards. You fundraise and
then you get the space, and we got the space,
but in any case, we'll we'll we'll do it all
so fundraising and ultimately once we're able to have enough
(19:05):
as an initial investment for our design team in the
contractors and all of the equipment that's needed to actually build.
We have basically right now just a white box as
they call it, so the actually outfitting of this space
would be the second aspect of that, and then hoping
(19:26):
to move in and be operational in twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
You mentioned fundraising. If people want to find out more
about the work you're doing about the move, where can
they find out more about you?
Speaker 2 (19:38):
So our website is probably the best one stop shop
for all it information and it's Castleskins dot org.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
You'll see that there's a page that we have dedicated
to the space that has all the information, how you
can join a mailing list to stay on board, how
you can contribute financially, how you can just be involved.
We'll do community listening sessions because again we want people's
input and how we can best make use of this
really beautiful opportunity to build from ground up something that
(20:09):
could be really powerful and meaningful. So castleskins dot org
you'll see a tab at the top that says gold
Hall that takes you to that page. If not, find
us on social media at castleskin so Facebook and Instagram,
reach out, send us a message. We're very friendly people.
Send us an email infu at castleskins dot org and
(20:30):
we will make sure that you are in the now.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Thank you so much Ashley for your time Castle of
our skinscastleskins dot org. Congratulations on your new space and
may it lead to a decade more of incredible work
in our community.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Thank you appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Have a safe and healthy weekend, and please join me
again next week for another edition of the show, the
first of twenty twenty five. I'm Nicole Davis from WBZ
News radio on iHeartRadio,
From WBZ News Radio in Boston. This is New England Weekend,
where each and every week right here we come together
we talk about all the topics important to you and
the place where you live. It is great to be
with you again this week for the final show of
twenty twenty four. I'm Nicole Davis. Whether you're talking about music, dance, poetry, theater,
or anything else the greater Boston area, we certainly have
(00:29):
no shortage of artistic talent. A local nonprofit called Castle
of Our Skins has been working for more than a
decade to make sure the talent, voices, and stories of
Boston's black artists are heard and appreciated.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Too.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Recently, Castle of Our Skins was able to work with
the City of Boston to secure a brand new home.
It's on Columbus Avenue in Lower Roxbury in the South End.
Once all the necessary renovations are done, this new venue,
which was renamed Gold Hall, is going to be the
home of all sorts of activities, artist residencies, events for
the community, educational workshops, performances, and so much more. Let's
(01:05):
find out more about Castle of Our Skins and their
work and this new home. Co founder Ashley Gordon is
here and Ashley, let's begin by learning a bit more
about your nonprofit and how it all became a reality.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
So Cassel her Skins is an organization that I co
founded with Anthony R. Green, who is a black composer,
pianist and ultimately was a classmate of mine at New
England Conservatory. We were both doing our masters. I say
we're alphabetical buddies. Ashley Gordon Anthony Green sat next to
each other in graduation and very much were positioned to
be colleagues and had a love of contemporary music, a
(01:42):
love of chamber of music, and would perform together. We
quite bonded easily over our shared interest in music making
and also at a time pre black student unions are
black student associations affinity groups now that are seemingly at
most academic institutions, found a bond through both being black, right,
(02:05):
So we wanted to after a two year master's program,
find other ways that we can stay in community, stay
in friendship, and ultimately stay as supporters for one another's work.
And despite living on different sides of the country and
the eventually different sides of the Atlantic, we were able
to come together around what ultimately brought us together, which
(02:27):
is culture and music. So Castle of Our Skins started
as a way as friends to be able to support
one another and have certainly grown to include many other
friends from the Afaghandia spora over the span of many
time periods as well past president future and in a
way ultimately to keep community alive. So it's been a
(02:50):
beautiful journey since then.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Oh I believe it. And Castle of Our Skins that
is a very intriguing name to me. Tell me a
little bit about the background. I know it's from a
Nikki Giovanni poem if I remember correctly.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yes, yes, So the late unfortunately Niki Giovanni, who recently
just passed with Castle of Our Skins as an organization,
really wanted to think about culture and the celebration so blackness, pride, joy, community, love,
affirmation being part of the same sentence, which depending on
(03:24):
which area you're looking in or even with part of
the country now you're looking in, aren't in the same sentence.
And turning to Nikki Giovanni's work, specifically, this work poem
for Nina is in Nina Simone really did encapsulate so
much about what we wanted to try to do through
this organization, And to paraphrase the poem, it says, we're
all in prison in the castle of our skins. And
(03:45):
if that's the case, so be it. My skin will
be a palace. I'll I'll love it and adorn it
with beautiful things and be proud ultimately to live in
the skin that I live in. So again, the idea
of celebration, pride, joy was and still is baked into
all of our programming, and the idea as Grio's or
(04:08):
African storytellers who use music and movement and visual arts
and community participation in order to share and keep history
alive was also really important. So it didn't seem far
fetched for us as musicians to tap into different mediums
such as poetry. And from our very very first concert
(04:31):
ever that we programmed, we had music and spoken word
and were into disciplinary and have stayed into disciplinary ever since.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
I love that such an affirming message, and I think
you've really been able to bring that through all these years,
almost twelve years. I believe that you've been around now
since we were first founded. Tell me about the process
of getting to where you are today. What was it
like putting Castle of our skins together and building it
up to where you're at.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Oddly, I would say fun. And I know in the
nonprofit world there's stress and there's you know, especially in Boston,
a lot of competition as we have the highest number
of nonprofits for capita in this city, all vying for
shared pools of funding. But ultimately it was it was
(05:15):
fun and for me starting out wearing multiple hats. So
my current titles artistic director, but I served as the
executive director and handle the marketing and was the producer
and also the the oldists. So I've I've had multiple
hats over the years, oftentimes simultaneously those hats I would wear.
(05:37):
So there was definitely a lot of stress wrapped into it,
but ultimately joy and uh, fun and curiosity and exploration.
So for me that the work of Kesselovarskins allows myself
to grow and learn and connect with new people, be
(05:59):
in new spaces, is try to teach myself more nuanced
and what would I say, meaningful reflections of how history
relates to me and how I can be a activator
of history, how I can be a community minded citizen artist. Right,
(06:23):
So there was always aspects of growth in learning as well.
As the sort of pains and growing pains of a
nonprofit organization. But I think I would use joy ultimately
as the way it would encapsulate the time.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Well, that's a blessing because, like you said, a lot
of nonprofit work is anything but joyous. But I'm grateful
that you've been able to embrace that and bring that
into your work in the community. I mean, you're working
with all sorts of different people around Boston. You've got
black musicians, composers, singers, other artists. Tell us a little
bit about the work that you're doing. Now that you've
(06:59):
got Castle of our Skins, you're up and running, you
have been for some time. What are some of the
specific things that you're doing in the community to highlight
black artistry.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Sure? So, Kesselovererskins is a concert and education series. I
say that any space, including this one, is an educational space,
but concerts and people's minds are often the performative side
of what we do. Again, multi disciplinary, So we'll do
programming at Hibernian Hall with dancers and musicians and have
(07:31):
multimedia and share films about James Baldwin as we share
music around black masculinity. Or we'll do programming, most recently
from our season with a South African composer building indigenous
instruments and pairing those indigenous instruments with Western instruments in
(07:51):
a audience participatory way to engage with activating archival, activating
archival sounds we have in terms of our sort of
concert side of things, A Shirley Graham du bois creative
in residence and are excited to work with a poet
all season to be able to engage with us again
(08:13):
as multidisciplinary work is part of our part of our core.
We also on the mentorship side and education side are
engaging with Black College and Conservatory undergrad master's students at
the various schools in town so New England Conservatory are
(08:34):
alma mater, my co founder and myself, Laundry School of Music,
Boston University, Berkeley, Boston Conservatory, as well as Northeastern this
year to come together for fellowship, to come together for
professional development, to create together. And a beautiful thing about
that particular program is that we now have this cohort
(08:55):
over four years of students who like Anthony and myself
for students at those same institutions who have direct connection
with the musical black composer with an organization that can
support them, that can provide professional performing opportunities, that can
commission them if they're a composer, that can literally bring
(09:17):
them into what we call the Cruse crew, bring them
into the fold. And then in a sort of younger side,
we are doing all kinds of partnerships, one of which
is here in Boston with the Boston Public Schools to
commission sixteen black composers over a dozen schools here in Boston,
(09:38):
to create pieces specifically for those schools, for the school choir,
for the school when ensemble, or for the school string orchestra,
develop curriculum and then publish all of those for national distribution.
So curriculum development K through twelve education as it relates
to blackness, black history, of black cultural, black arts, certainly
(09:58):
at a time when that be potentially harder for people
to access with various things that are going on in
this country. But wanting to make sure that we have
from as young to as old as possible, everyone being
curious about black culture and history and the artistry.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
You are getting a lot of work done, clearly, and
we're going to talk about your new head here in
just a minute. But what's really curious to me is
you are making all these strides right, and you're doing
all this incredible work. Where have you been working though
and getting all this done? And why did you realize, Okay,
it's probably time for us to find a new space
because you have a beautiful new home we're going to
(10:37):
chat about in a minute. But what led up to
that part of it?
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Yeah? So Kesselo our Skins, Like other passion projects turned organizations,
founder led and sort of steered. It started in my
living room many months ago, right and kitchen conversations, meeting
in cafes and doing a ton of research at various
libraries just wherever I could find internet. Ultimately, in our
(11:05):
history we as an organization were able to be a
music ensemble and residence the second I believe music ensemble
and residence at the Boston set of for the Arts,
which gave us the first office space office slash rehearsal
space and access to what a physical not my not
(11:26):
my living room or a cafe could could be. And
to have a music library, to have administrative staff who
could come in and even think about what that could
look like, to have interns coming into a space and
being able to develop and build together, to be able
to see our own organizational history plastered on the walls,
(11:48):
you know, being able to display our programs and having
some kind of living memory of the work that we've
done a place of gathering so that that gave a
first taste for it. And then when that residency and
we moved to South Boston with the Boston Children's Course
and shared space with them, which has been a beautiful
(12:08):
way to connect deeply with another organization that is still
very friendly and one that we love to collaborate with
and support the work that they're doing. Gentrification and additional
condo sales, and just the unfortunate aspect of being in
an area where the arts wasn't necessarily prized and valued
(12:31):
as much as we prized and valued it. We both
were kicked out of our building, and that building is
I don't even know what now at this point. So
Castile of our skins then moved into a shared black
woman led co working space of sorts called well The
building is run by the Wellness Collaborative in Nubian Square
(12:53):
in Roxbury, and so we have as a co working
relationship here to be able to to do our work
with a growing team. We have about six people on
our team at this point, and we'll see Roxburgh Cultural District,
who is also in this space, like in the Wellness
Collaborative that's in this space, other organizations that are mission driven,
(13:14):
driven and culturally specific in their work occupying this space.
But this is also one that that we have outgrown
and still need to sort of outsource our rehearsals and
and there's no walls, so when we're trying to have
a meeting, it's a little hard sometimes. In any case,
our minor detail are our new space is at the
(13:39):
quite historic former site of the High Hat Jazz Club
as well as the former Harriet tub In House in
the lower Roxbury South End area, and it will be
ours ultimately, we will be the owners of and the
basically outfitting it to fit our needs and then shouldn't
at some point we have it in perpetuity, but should
(14:01):
in some point that space no longer serve us in
the sense that we may have grown, we would be
required to make sure that that particular site, which is
about twenty five hundred square feet, stays occupied, owned and
occupied by a nonprofit cultural organization. So very excited for
(14:21):
us as a nonprofit organization, as a culturally specific, Black
specific organization, to have ownership so much about this area
where we currently occupy in Ubian Square had a sort
of thriving, booming black entrepreneur scene, and ultimately because people
(14:43):
didn't own their spaces, among a variety of other reasons,
of course, but having ownership does sort of set a
stake in the ground for legacy building, of course, and
is just a huge as a black arts organization, a
huge point of celebration for us in this journey.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
And that site itself being the former Harriet Tubman House,
being the former side of that jazz club, that must
be poignant and important to you as well, carrying on
that legacy of uplifting people, I suppose to help get
them into a better space to be themselves and create
the life they desire.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Absolutely. Absolutely. The process for that particular space was very
heavily involved with the city as being part of a
city bid. So being part of a city bid, there's
a lot of public proposals, and in my public proposal
and I still stand by that, I had shared that
it's more than just a condo sale for us, but
really a preservation of history absolutely, and knowing what is
(15:44):
on that site and our work, which we've demonstrated for
more than a decade, is around history, is around preservation,
is around community building, is around blackness. So it feels
divine in a lot of ways. It feels carefully placed
and sculpted and crafted by hands that are not mine
(16:06):
and that are not ours. So I very much do
acknowledge the ancestral lineage of that space and what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yeah, and that's a very powerful connection and a very
powerful link. And you know, as you move into that space,
what are your plans? You said twenty five hundred square feet.
That is a decent amount of space. I'm assuming walls
from meetings, from what you just told me, they're probably.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Here. Yeah. So we're envisioning a hybrid space of office
for our growing team, so being able to come together
as an administrated team to continue to do and to
put forward the work, as well as having a performance
hall that we're calling Gold Hall, and knowing that it
was the former side of the Harriet tubb In House,
(16:53):
inspired by a quote from Harriet Tubban when she crossed
into Canada across the line to freedom, it felt like
for her gold coming through trees. So this sort of
beautiful realization of what freedom and liberation could feel like.
So in honor of Harriet Tubman, we're calling it gold Hall.
And in that space, we as an arts organization, as
(17:15):
a both again concert and education organization, want to continue
our education workshops what we call edutainment, so educational and entertaining,
family friendly, free programming. Want to be able to do
our own programming. So I had referenced to our Black
Student Union Fellows fellowship that we have being able to
invite our community, our creuse crew of sorts, so our fellows,
(17:38):
and our artists which are multidisciplinary into this space, being
able to have collaborative design. So as an artistic director,
I have my own sort of vision, but I would
love to have a movement director to be able to
curate movement in this space, and a visual art director
to curate visual art installations as well as dance workshops
(18:00):
and things like this. So to be able to invite,
like in other hands, to shape what that space could
look like, and then being able to invite other organizations
with their mission aligned organizations to do a variety of
community building. I don't know how many times I've used
the word community, but it's really important for us this
(18:23):
Yeah nexus of sorts. So to do it not selfishly,
but to do it in community with as many Yeah
bridge building people and organizations as we can is ultimately
what we hope that's that street corner Massive and Columbus
can be.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
What's the timeline here?
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Sure, so we're going to be doing fundraising and in
some sense it's it's a little backwards. You fundraise and
then you get the space, and we got the space,
but in any case, we'll we'll we'll do it all
so fundraising and ultimately once we're able to have enough
(19:05):
as an initial investment for our design team in the
contractors and all of the equipment that's needed to actually build.
We have basically right now just a white box as
they call it, so the actually outfitting of this space
would be the second aspect of that, and then hoping
(19:26):
to move in and be operational in twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
You mentioned fundraising. If people want to find out more
about the work you're doing about the move, where can
they find out more about you?
Speaker 2 (19:38):
So our website is probably the best one stop shop
for all it information and it's Castleskins dot org.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
You'll see that there's a page that we have dedicated
to the space that has all the information, how you
can join a mailing list to stay on board, how
you can contribute financially, how you can just be involved.
We'll do community listening sessions because again we want people's
input and how we can best make use of this
really beautiful opportunity to build from ground up something that
(20:09):
could be really powerful and meaningful. So castleskins dot org
you'll see a tab at the top that says gold
Hall that takes you to that page. If not, find
us on social media at castleskin so Facebook and Instagram,
reach out, send us a message. We're very friendly people.
Send us an email infu at castleskins dot org and
(20:30):
we will make sure that you are in the now.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Thank you so much Ashley for your time Castle of
our skinscastleskins dot org. Congratulations on your new space and
may it lead to a decade more of incredible work
in our community.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Thank you appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Have a safe and healthy weekend, and please join me
again next week for another edition of the show, the
first of twenty twenty five. I'm Nicole Davis from WBZ
News radio on iHeartRadio,
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