Chabot College Theater Instructor Makes #ArtForGeorgeFloyd

Press release from Chabot College:

Aug. 9, 2020

In a successful attempt to use their voices as performing artists to activate citizen engagement in the fight for racial equality, Dee Dee Stephens and colleague Courtney Lloyd established a virtual protest, the #ArtForGeorgeFloyd project, with the goal of using art to affect change, recently landing a feature spot on NBC's Bay Area News to help continue to spread the word.

The project includes over 60 artists expressing their feelings about George Floyd and the countless other victims of police brutality and systemic racism through a series of videos, each lasting exactly 8 minutes and 46 seconds.

Stephens met Lloyd while they were both obtaining masters in acting degrees at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. The duo aspired to take their talents in performance art and their connections within the artistic community and pair it with activism by connecting people with organizations that are doing the work to make a difference and make a change. They had an idea of what the rest of the artistic community was feeling during these tumultuous times, and knew others may desire to express themselves and take a stance as well.

"We really believe that you have to use what you have, and that's what we did," said Stephens. "To start, we reached out to people that we knew - the masters program we attended, in and of itself, was very diverse, and the two of us had been doing a lot of theater and stand up comedy in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, so we reached out to our friends and connections to get involved, and organically these happened to be people who had immigrated from all around the world."

The compilation of videos are being shared with the world to raise money and awareness for 'Color of Change', a non profit organization that designs campaigns to help people make a difference and do something about real injustice and other similar organizations.

"We want to encourage everyone to participate in social change," said Stephens. "You just need to use what you have. We used our voices as artists to create a virtual protest, but you can use whatever skills you have to raise awareness and that ultimately, creates change."

For more information and to join the cause, visit: www.artforgeorgefloyd.com

This press release was produced by Chabot College. The views expressed here are the author's own.