This past weekend at A3C Festival & Conference, five civic ventures took the stage in Atlanta for A3C Action, a pitch competition for ideas that use art, music, and culture as a vehicle to address social justice challenges.
The two winners of A3C Action were Atlanta’s own Chop Art, who runs a yearly summer camp for 100 homeless teens in Atlanta, and Media in Neighborhoods Group (MING) from Philadelphia, PA, who use the power of film to bring together formerly incarcerated people with law enforcement officials to make short films about one another.
(Malika Whitley of Chop Art | Photo by Selina Martinez)
The five competing ventures were selected out of 65 applications, and they were all featured on stage during the A3C Festival in historic Old Fourth Ward. ChopArt was awarded $5,000 and MING was awarded $2,500 for first and second place, respectively. Additionally, each of the five teams were awarded $500 for participation.
(Malika Whitley of Chop Art | Photo by Selina Martinez)
During the event, a number of individuals stood up to commit support for the ventures, including Theia Washington, director of the City of Atlanta’s Women’s Entrepreneurship Initiative, who made a surprise contribution of $5,000, on behalf of the City of Atlanta, to be evenly distributed among the five ventures. Additionally, Nzinga Shaw, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer of the Atlanta Hawks Basketball Club, awarded the winning teams with tickets to an Atlanta Hawks game. Jay Tribby, Chief of Staff to Councilmember Kwanza Hall, committed sponsorship support for ventures that worked with youth in Atlanta’s District 2. As icing on the cake, Grammy Award-winning producer Henny tha Bizness committed his support for ventures that want to expose young people into the music industry.
A3C Action is a partnership program between A3C Festival & Conference and the Center for Civic Innovation (CCI) in Atlanta. The festival, which attracts thousands of people from around the country for its artist performances and panels, wanted to use their platform as one of the country’s largest hip-hop festivals to engage with issues facing the communities many of their artists and participants are from and live in today.
"The passion possessed by the A3C Action finalists could be felt across the festival and conference,” says Mike Walbert, Director of A3C Festival & Conference. “I couldn't be more pleased with the outcome and am excited to work with these organizations over the next year. This is just the beginning of A3C Action and we look forward to working with CCI to offer more resources to amazing organizations using hip-hop, art and music to help underserved communities across the US.”
“There has never been a social movement in history that has not had creative people engaged and involved,” says Rohit Malhotra, Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Civic Innovation. “Hip hop, especially, has a historic place in social change. The five ventures at A3C Action fused their passion with their talent to create initiatives that will impact so many people in the communities they are serving.”
A3C Festival & Conference and the Center for Civic Innovation are both enthusiastic about renewing A3C Action for years to come.
