Community Conversations
Join the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan and CultureSource on July 27 at 1 p.m. for the first Community Conversation about Inclusion in the Arts. During this conversation we will be hearing from some of southeast Michigan’s arts and culture leaders who have been implementing efforts to embed inclusion into their programming.
This series of conversations will seek to inform the grantmaking strategy of the funds which the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation has provided to support southeast Michigan’s arts and culture sector for years to come. By bringing people together and learning alongside partners in the field, we are building capacity for adaptable and inclusive arts organizations.
Guest Panelists
Richard Reeves
Richard Reeves is Director of Arts and Culture of Hannan Center in Detroit. He oversees Hannan’s Ellen Kayrod Gallery and curates its exhibitions and programs; he also is responsible for Beyond U, Hannan’s lifelong learning program, and the Center’s Volunteer Services. Richard is former associate director and a continuing advisor of Arts Extended Gallery, one of Detroit’s oldest teaching galleries, having curated, catered, promoted and hosted many exhibitions and programs there. Richard has a significant background in filmmaking. He has conceived, produced and directed short and feature films ranging from abstract to wide-release drama to documentary. He also has trained, mentored and directed youth in all aspects of film production. As a visual artist he has a unique style and today paints almost exclusively in water-base pastels on board.
His pastel portraits hang in many private collections. Richard is an accomplished still photographer and includes stunning aerial landscapes with his Autel X-Star among his many exhibited works. He resides in Lathrup Village with his husband, the writer Michael Madigan, and a pond of goldfish.
Emily Chase
Emily Chase is an artist, arts educator, facilitator and administrator with over 15 years of experience witnessing the life-changing power of the arts for individuals and communities. Throughout her career, she has focused on increasing access to the arts for those who have been historically denied, and for those whose access to creative expression holds urgent potential for themselves and society.
Emily began her career as a middle school special education teacher of art and other subjects to students with emotional impairments, Autism, and learning disabilities in New York City public schools as a New York City Teaching Fellow. This was where she first saw the inextricable link between artistic creation and a human’s sense of self. For 9 years Emily managed
creative arts programming for adults and teens with disabilities, mental health diagnoses, and other barriers to employment at a vocational rehabilitation organization in Lansing, MI, where she leveraged the potential of artistic expression to create and strengthen relationships between individuals and across communities. Emily currently works for the Prison Creative Arts Project at the University of Michigan, where she is in charge of the Annual Exhibition of Artists in Michigan Prisons, the largest exhibition of art made by incarcerated people in the world.
Cara Graninger
Cara Graninger, lead artist for DanceAbility Detroit, is a dancer and arts educator specializing in dance improvisation. She grew up in Liberia, Saudi Arabia, Fiji and Costa Rica as well as the United States, learning Spanish and French along the way, and has made Detroit home since 1993. Passionate about contact improvisation, which she has studied and taught avidly for over 20 years, Cara also practices authentic movement and enjoys many other forms of movement and music too. Cara is a certified DanceAbility instructor, trained to facilitate dance classes, workshops and performances including movers with disabilities. She taught dance improvisation lessons to youth with disabilities at Kennedy School from 2018-21, and has also offered movement improvisation
programs at Freedom House, Alternatives for Girls, ACCESS and Southwest Mental Health in Detroit. Cara has managed and directed community arts education programs in Detroit since 1993, serving as executive director of Living Arts from 2008 until 2017 when she joined UMS in Ann Arbor for several years to help manage their K-12 education programs. In 2022, Cara was an artist-in-residence at Oberlin College for 6 months, immersing herself in advanced study of contact improvisation with a dozen peers from around the world.
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