Coalition Building in Art Education: Holding Space, Redistributing Weight and Witnessing

Our coalition is made up of four art educators working across institutions of higher education. After encountering various racialized critical incidents, we began meeting virtually and in-person, to imagine new ways of navigating academic spaces. We are all cis women, two of us identify as Black, 2 as white, with varied ages and positions in academic institutions across the country. We gathered after the surge of Black Lives Matter protests and in the wake of a global pandemic. We gathered amid political backlash in the south as anti-CRT and DEI legislation dominated educational landscapes and abortion rights were curtailed. We gathered during another precarious election year that we felt in our bones. We gathered and wondered how to imagine a way forward. How we could engage in coalition building and allyship between white faculty and faculty of color?