Sipp Culture: Combining Story and Food Sustainability

The new monthly series “Art at the Intersection” will explore the ways the arts are helping to shape and inspire work being done in many areas of society, for example, in healthcare, city planning, infrastructure design, public spaces. The list is long, varied and sometimes unexpected. The Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture)  is a case in point. Co-founded by artist, researcher, and organizer Carlton Turner in 2016 in his hometown of Utica, Mississippi, Sipp Culture uses story to address food insecurity and to support community, cultural, and economic development. In fact, its motto is “Telling our story. Growing our future.”  In this podcast, Carlton talks about the connection between story and food, the dinner table as focus for story-telling and sharing history, gathering stories about Utica from community-members and using that information to help create infrastructures that support the community’s needs, creating a farm and apprenticeship programs, creating an artist residency program for rural artists in a five state region, their research program Equitable Food Futures-- a collaboration with Imagining America, and programming for the long-term around work that can take a generation to realize. Turner also talks about creating purposeful art in, with, and for community, his growing up in Utica where his family goes back eight generations, and what Sipp Culture’s success in Utica will look like. Follow us on Apple Podcasts!  And let us know what you think, drop us an email at artworkspod@arts.gov