There isn’t a single cure for racism, however the Penumbra Center for Racial Healing is empowering the community with resources to beat it. On this episode of Off the Charts podcast, we talk with Sarah Bellamy, the middle’s president, and Camille Cyprian, the wellness director, in regards to the tools needed to thrive in an environment with myriad issues, including racism. Take heed to the episode or read the transcript.
The legacy of Penumbra Center for Racial Healing
The Penumbra Center for Racial Healing evolved from Penumbra Theater, a St. Paul, Minnesota, performance space that began within the ’60s through the Black Arts Movement. Its recent incarnation, the Penumbra Center for Racial Healing, seeks to expand its scope by providing recent arts opportunities, equity training, wellness services and more staff to fulfill the needs of the community.
Shepherding that mission are president Sarah Bellamy and wellness director Camille Cyprian. Penumbra is undergoing a community needs assessment to find out one of the best option to serve the community, but healing the harm racism has had on the community is the overarching goal.
Tools for racial healing
Racism hurts everyone. The Penumbra Center for Racial Healing focuses on 4 areas where it’s endemic: health equity, education, criminal justice and climate.
The humanities are an integral part in healing from racism. They create a possibility to inform a story from a novel perspective, one which resonates with the people the Penumbra Center serves. This creates trust that may hopefully function one in every of many inroads to the organization’s resources.
Along with arts programs, the Penumbra Center for Racial Healing will promote equity, advocacy and training, and offer wellness education.
Wellness, for the Penumbra Center, includes personal, mental and physical health, in addition to community health. Racism is directly related to chronic illness due to sustained stress of experiencing racism. The Penumbra Center will support the community with programs to show stress management, which is especially vital for younger generations. Constructing resilience among the many youth and helping them learn manage the stress of racism is one of the best solution when the environment they live in hasn’t yet modified for the higher.
What success looks like
Leadership on the Penumbra Center for Racial Healing endeavors to face and understand the past while looking forward. For them, success looks like several things. It’s constructing awareness of the realities of racism, including its direct correlation to physical health and that it occurs on the systems and private levels.
Penumbra will even connect cultural practices to assist with the rehumanizing of the community it serves. It’s the hope of the leadership at Penumbra that it’ll be a beacon for america. Although the racism experienced in St. Paul could also be different from other parts of the nation, the Penumbra Center hopes it might probably be in fluid relationship with counterparts in other states while having strong support locally.
Take heed to the episode to listen to more from Sarah Bellamy and Camille Cyprian in regards to the Penumbra Center for Racial Healing and its mission.