LGBTQ+ Stories: The Creative Process: Gender, Equality, Gay, Lesbian, Queer, Bisexual, Homosexual, Trans Creatives Talk LGBTQ Rights

Fury Young and BL Shirelle are the powerhouse team behind Die Jim Crow Records, the first non-profit record label in United States history for currently and formerly incarcerated musicians. DJC Records’ mission is to dismantle stereotypes around race and prison in America by amplifying the voices of our artists.  As a pair, Fury Young and BL Shirelle form a perhaps unlikely, but unstoppable duo.  Young is a Jewish New Yorker who has not experienced incarceration. Shirelle is a queer, Black woman from Philadelphia who has been heavily impacted by police violence and incarceration. The two formed an inseparable bond. As friends, musical collaborators and now Co-Executive Directors of Die Jim Crow Records, their leadership and commitment to values of representation, fairness, passion for the cause, and a love for art, are at the core of DJC."So when you go into parole, like when you're on your way, your friends will tell you, the ones who have been there, "Don't let them like upset you. Don't let them get you out of your character." And I remember the first time I went up to parole, I survived a police-involved shooting. So I was shot multiple times. And it was my time to go down there and talk about this situation. And I was wondering if I wanted to tell the truth, or if I wanted to say what they want you to say because if you go in there with the truth, it's called "not taking responsibility.” You have to say exactly whatever is on that police report. So that was gonna be hard for me because they was basically trying to make it seem like I knew that these guys were cops, and I just shot this guy because he was a cop. That wasn't true. And I went in there and when I got to them asking me those questions, because they start tearing you down, they start saying, you're a horrible mom. Look what you did. Look, you left your kid. Now your kid is all f***ed up. They go in, they call you all kind of...despicable, worthless, bad mom, you know, horrible person, whatever you are and whatever your thing is, what they attack. And I remember them telling me that I was not taking responsibility. I still had came this far, and I still was choosing to lie and X, Y, and Z. And I remember my eyes started to well up, and I was like, I'm not going to let 'em do it because even crying to them is like manipulation. You can't cry while they're attacking you. Can't talk back, you just kind of have to take it. So I remember just kind of self-absorbing it. And when I walked out, and my eyes was like to the brim, the guard was like, "You did great." She was like, “You're going to get parole. You did a wonderful job."www.diejimcrow.comhttp://www.blshirelle.comhttp://www.furyyoung.comwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.org

"I think that what is really important on this journey is to understand when we talk about gender and intersectional equity - and yes, gender is that element that is the most universal across different geographies. So for organizations that are present across many different countries and many different continents, there will be one backbone which will be gender, the binary definition, to which they will be adding other aspects of the broader diversity spectrum based on the specificities of the countries of operations. For example, L'Oréal in the U.S., they look at the intersection between gender, race, and ethnicity. We have organizations in Europe that are very often looking at the intersection between age, gender, and sexual orientation. In Southeast Asia, sexual orientation and working with a disability are definitely emerging topics.So allowing ourselves this flexibility in saying we have a solid backbone - which is the one that can be legally measured and tracked across all geographies - which is the gender binary. And on this, we will be building this intersectional view with other beautiful characteristics that compose us as individuals. Having this flexibility allowed organizations such as L'Oréal, but then also some other institutions that we are working with within the UN system or international finance institutions, such as the IMF or the World Bank, to add different intersectional lenses to their gender binary approach."Aniela Unguresan is Co-founder of EDGE Certification, the leading global assessment methodology and business certification standard for gender equality. Launched at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in 2011, EDGE Certification measures where organizations stand in terms of gender balance across their pipeline, pay equity, and effectiveness of policies and practices to ensure equitable career flows, as well as the inclusiveness of their culture. EDGE Certification has been designed to help companies not only to create an optimal workplace for women and men, but also to benefit from it. EDGE stands for Economic Dividends for Gender Equality and is distinguished by its rigor and focus on business impact. Their customer base consists of 200 large organizations in 50 countries across five continents, representing 30 different industries.Prior to co-founding EDGE Certified Foundation, Aniela acquired extensive professional experience as a consultant with Arthur Andersen and Andersen Consulting, as a trader and project manager with TXU Europe and SIG Geneva, and as the CEO of CT Technologies.https://edge-cert.orgwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org

Aniela Unguresan is Co-founder of EDGE Certification, the leading global assessment methodology and business certification standard for gender equality. Launched at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in 2011, EDGE Certification measures where organizations stand in terms of gender balance across their pipeline, pay equity, and effectiveness of policies and practices to ensure equitable career flows, as well as the inclusiveness of their culture. EDGE Certification has been designed to help companies not only to create an optimal workplace for women and men, but also to benefit from it. EDGE stands for Economic Dividends for Gender Equality and is distinguished by its rigor and focus on business impact. Their customer base consists of 200 large organizations in 50 countries across five continents, representing 30 different industries.Prior to co-founding EDGE Certified Foundation, Aniela acquired extensive professional experience as a consultant with Arthur Andersen and Andersen Consulting, as a trader and project manager with TXU Europe and SIG Geneva, and as the CEO of CT Technologies."I think that what is really important on this journey is to understand when we talk about gender and intersectional equity - and yes, gender is that element that is the most universal across different geographies. So for organizations that are present across many different countries and many different continents, there will be one backbone which will be gender, the binary definition, to which they will be adding other aspects of the broader diversity spectrum based on the specificities of the countries of operations. For example, L'Oréal in the U.S., they look at the intersection between gender, race, and ethnicity. We have organizations in Europe that are very often looking at the intersection between age, gender, and sexual orientation. In Southeast Asia, sexual orientation and working with a disability are definitely emerging topics.So allowing ourselves this flexibility in saying we have a solid backbone - which is the one that can be legally measured and tracked across all geographies - which is the gender binary. And on this, we will be building this intersectional view with other beautiful characteristics that compose us as individuals. Having this flexibility allowed organizations such as L'Oréal, but then also some other institutions that we are working with within the UN system or international finance institutions, such as the IMF or the World Bank, to add different intersectional lenses to their gender binary approach."https://edge-cert.orgwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org

"You know, when we were in undergrad, gender or orientation around being bi or straight or gay was what we felt empowered to explore. And that even as a person who at that point was like, Okay, I'm a girl and find myself desiring people with penises, that means I must be straight, right? I wouldn't have questioned anything other than like, Well, if I have this body, and I desire that kind of body, then I am straight, but in undergrad you could still make out with a girl and be like, I'm just experimenting, but now it seems to me that the opportunity to ask oneself about one's own gender is there. And the more I learned about fluidity, the more I thought about my own relationship to the pronouns that I've grown up with, the more I was like, I think that these other pronouns really more accurately express how I've lived most of my life. So 'they' feels deeply right for me now."Sonnet L'Abbé is a Canadian poet, songwriter, editor and professor. They are the author of A Strange Relief, Killarnoe, and Sonnet's Shakespeare. Sonnet's Shakespeare was a Quill and Quire Book of the Year. In 2014 they edited the Best Canadian Poetry in English anthology. Their chapbook, Anima Canadensis, won the 2017 bpNichol Chapbook Award. They teach Creative Writing and English at Vancouver Island University, and are a poetry editor at Brick Books.https://www.instagram.com/sonnetlabbe/https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet-books/2017/12/tree-i-invented-a-new-form-of-poemwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.org

Sonnet L'Abbé is a Canadian poet, songwriter, editor and professor. They are the author of A Strange Relief, Killarnoe, and Sonnet's Shakespeare. Sonnet's Shakespeare was a Quill and Quire Book of the Year. In 2014 they edited the Best Canadian Poetry in English anthology. Their chapbook, Anima Canadensis, won the 2017 bpNichol Chapbook Award. They teach Creative Writing and English at Vancouver Island University, and are a poetry editor at Brick Books."You know, when we were in undergrad, gender or orientation around being bi or straight or gay was what we felt empowered to explore. And that even as a person who at that point was like, Okay, I'm a girl and find myself desiring people with penises, that means I must be straight, right? I wouldn't have questioned anything other than like, Well, if I have this body, and I desire that kind of body, then I am straight, but in undergrad you could still make out with a girl and be like, I'm just experimenting, but now it seems to me that the opportunity to ask oneself about one's own gender is there. And the more I learned about fluidity, the more I thought about my own relationship to the pronouns that I've grown up with, the more I was like, I think that these other pronouns really more accurately express how I've lived most of my life. So 'they' feels deeply right for me now."https://www.instagram.com/sonnetlabbe/https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet-books/2017/12/tree-i-invented-a-new-form-of-poemwww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.org

"We all are looking for a little magic in our lives, and I think that's what art and the creative process allow for, above all. In a world that can be either way too predictable and mundane and create tedium, the creative mind, for me, is the curious mind and the mind that's always learning and allowing yourself to make mistakes. To generate from your core, from your soul, and from your experience something new and experimental and something that is unique to yourself.”Cynthia Daniels is a Grammy and Emmy award-winning producer, engineer and composer working extensively in film, television, and music. Her career has led her around the world, initially specializing in orchestral pop from Big Band Jazz to Broadway, and then crossing over into producing records for young and seasoned artists in the rock, country, and folk-rock world. She is owner and chief engineer at The Hamptons first world-class recording studio, MonkMusic. She has hosted or engineered sessions for Chaka Khan, Beyonce, Coldplay, Paul McCartney, Nile Rogers, Alec Baldwin, Julie Andrews, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Billy Porter.www.cynthiadaniels.netMonk Music Radiowww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org

Cynthia Daniels is a Grammy and Emmy award-winning producer, engineer and composer working extensively in film, television, and music. Her career has led her around the world, initially specializing in orchestral pop from Big Band Jazz to Broadway, and then crossing over into producing records for young and seasoned artists in the rock, country, and folk-rock world. She is owner and chief engineer at The Hamptons first world-class recording studio, MonkMusic. She has hosted or engineered sessions for Chaka Khan, Beyonce, Coldplay, Paul McCartney, Nile Rogers, Alec Baldwin, Julie Andrews, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Billy Porter."We all are looking for a little magic in our lives, and I think that's what art and the creative process allow for, above all. In a world that can be either way too predictable and mundane and create tedium, the creative mind, for me, is the curious mind and the mind that's always learning and allowing yourself to make mistakes. To generate from your core, from your soul, and from your experience something new and experimental and something that is unique to yourself.”www.cynthiadaniels.netMonk Music Radiowww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org

Mario Alberto Zambrano is the Associate Director of Juilliard Dance. He was born in Houston, danced for Batsheva Dance Company, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Nederlands Dans Theater II, and Ballet Frankfurt between 1994 and 2005. He then returned to school and earned an MFA in English at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he received a John C. Schupes fellowship for excellence in fiction. His first novel, Lotería (Harper Collins), was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick in 2013 and a finalist for the 2014 John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Zambrano, who was awarded the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction for his short story “Some of You,” has been a YoungArts Presidential Scholar in the Arts and a Princess Grace Award winner. He has been awarded literary fellowships to MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Scotland’s Hawthornden Castle. Before joining Juilliard, he was a lecturer in theater, dance, and media at Harvard. He serves as program director for Orsolina28’s summer program and curates The LIT Series, a library of interdisciplinary thinking consisting of series of  lectures, interviews, classes and discussions.“In both writing a first draft and in the improvisation of a dancing body, what is so key and relevant and exposed is voice. That internal voice of the artist of what they're writing on the page or what they're writing in space. If you go to fiction workshop, you talk about plot, structure, and you talk about character development, but there are very few classes within a dance curriculum where you break down an improvisation and you talk about voice, point of view, metaphor, or musical composition within a phrase. The lifespan of a phrase. And so this realisation is helping me understand that a one minute post of improvisation or even a ten-minute span of improvisation if it’s recorded is very similar to a first draft of creative writing, where then the artist is in a position to evaluate those 10 minutes and identify what is the setting? What is the voice that has come out of my experience of writing this first draft of an improvisation? And how can I give it structure? How can I give it form?”· IG @juilliardschool · IG @malberto777· IG @thelitseries · www.thelitseries.com· www.juilliard.edu/dance/faculty/zambrano-mario-alberto· marioalbertozambrano.com· www.creativeprocess.info· www.oneplanetpodcast.orgPhoto by Julien Benhamou

Mario Alberto Zambrano is the Associate Director of Juilliard Dance. He was born in Houston, danced for Batsheva Dance Company, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Nederlands Dans Theater II, and Ballet Frankfurt between 1994 and 2005. He then returned to school and earned an MFA in English at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he received a John C. Schupes fellowship for excellence in fiction. His first novel, Lotería (Harper Collins), was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick in 2013 and a finalist for the 2014 John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Zambrano, who was awarded the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction for his short story “Some of You,” has been a YoungArts Presidential Scholar in the Arts and a Princess Grace Award winner. He has been awarded literary fellowships to MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Scotland’s Hawthornden Castle. Before joining Juilliard, he was a lecturer in theater, dance, and media at Harvard. He serves as program director for Orsolina28’s summer program and curates The LIT Series, a library of interdisciplinary thinking consisting of series of  lectures, interviews, classes and discussions.“In both writing a first draft and in the improvisation of a dancing body, what is so key and relevant and exposed is voice. That internal voice of the artist of what they're writing on the page or what they're writing in space. If you go to fiction workshop, you talk about plot, structure, and you talk about character development, but there are very few classes within a dance curriculum where you break down an improvisation and you talk about voice, point of view, metaphor, or musical composition within a phrase. The lifespan of a phrase. And so this realisation is helping me understand that a one minute post of improvisation or even a ten-minute span of improvisation if it’s recorded is very similar to a first draft of creative writing, where then the artist is in a position to evaluate those 10 minutes and identify what is the setting? What is the voice that has come out of my experience of writing this first draft of an improvisation? And how can I give it structure? How can I give it form?”www.marioalbertozambrano.comIG @juilliardschool IG @malberto777IG @thelitserieswww.thelitseries.comwww.juilliard.edu/dance/faculty/zambrano-mario-albertowww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org

“With Lingua Franca, I think maybe the radical idea in centering a film about this minority character, a trans Filipina immigrant...I think a lot of films or media that depict or feature that kind of character almost always emphasize their trauma and just their marginalization or being subjected to all kinds of prejudice and discrimination.But what I set out to do in Lingua Franca was to bring out and depict her sense of selfhood and agency first, especially in the first few sequences of the film, by just observing her being and going about her daily morning rituals and routines as a caregiver to this elderly Russian lady. And I think by training my camera at those rituals, which seem mundane and routine, I'm essentially saying as a filmmaker, that this is a person. A woman and her daily rituals are worth chronicling, are worth paying attention to anything. Just by seeing this woman go about her daily tasks, I think I was already dignifying that life and that perspective, that it's important and that it matters.”Redefining being a multi-hyphenate for artistic control and representation, Sandoval made her television debut directing the 6th episode for the new FX limited series, Under the Banner of Heaven based on the New York Times best seller by Jon Krakauer. Isabel Sandoval is a Filipina filmmaker who made history with the World Premiere of Lingua Franca at the 2019 Venice International Film Festival’s Giornate degli Autori section and was the first film directed by and starring a trans woman of color ever to screen in competition. In honor of her achievements with the film, Sandoval was nominated for the John Cassavetes Award at the 2021 Film Independent Spirit Awards. Her early film works debuted last summer on The Criterion Channel platform, displaying her growth and evolution as a creator, able to embrace new mediums.www.fxnetworks.com/shows/under-the-banner-of-heavenThe Criterion Channelwww.imdb.com/name/nm4583383/Photo credit: Michelle Faye/FX Networkswww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org