HartBeat Ensemble Selected by Hartford Foundation for Public Giving

Press release

HartBeat Ensemble Selected for Hartford Foundation for Public Giving's Social Enterprise Accelerator 2023

Hartford - HartBeat Ensemble, under the leadership of Artistic Director Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr. and Managing Director Rhoda Cerritelli, announced today its selection as of one of the participants in Hartford Foundation for Public Giving’s 2023 Social Enterprise Accelerator (SEA). The funding and training support has helped launch HartBeat Ensemble's new Stories Toward a Beloved Community initiative, an innovative program that empowers organizations and communities to actively problem-solve issues of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice (DEIJ) through discussion and interactive theatrical engagement.

According to the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, "The granting program is a 30-month process to strengthen selected non-profit's entrepreneurial capacity by launching or growing revenue generating ventures that are mission-aligned. Administered by the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving’s Nonprofit Support Program, each organization developed and implemented business plans to boost revenue and heighten their mission impact, with the guidance of No, Margin, No Mission, a national consulting firm that helps nonprofits become stronger and more vibrant through earned income, social enterprise, and entrepreneurial practices. Over the next two and a half years, HartBeat Ensemble and seven other select organizations will learn from one another as they build and execute their business plans and launch or grow their ventures."

“The Social Enterprise Accelerator has served as a platform for nonprofits to learn and take the evolutionary steps necessary to become thriving, sustainable organizations with greater impact in our region,” said Hartford Foundation’s Associate Director of the Nonprofit Support Program Meher Shulman. “The leadership, readiness, and culture demonstrated by this cohort will facilitate their efforts to strengthen their entrepreneurial capacity through this exciting 30-month process. Congratulations to these enterprising nonprofits, and thanks to all the organizations that participated in the learning labs.”

Adapted from a series of community-building anti-racism initiatives HartBeat Ensemble Artistic Director Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr. co-developed for Civic Ensemble in Ithaca, NY, Stories Toward a Beloved Community is a professional development program of storytelling and theater-based practices providing a framework for organizations to build more empathetic and just working communities.

The foundation for all these practices is the Story Circle, an equitable listening exercise where each participant tells a personal story relating to a prompt relevant to the challenges faced by their organization. Though effective as a community-building tool on its own, Story Circles, along with other data-driven approaches are used to develop Forum Plays Toward Beloved Communities in which real-world situations provide opportunities for participants to practice productive ways of solving intractable problems. These interactive simulations, in a variety of forms, allow participants to practice stepping up, using empathy, making a conscious choice.

Simmons states, "One of the core complaints organizations and individuals have about DEIJ work is that it either unwittingly shames them or leaves them without tools to solve their problems. What our Forum Plays do is empower organizations and their constituents to solve their own problems through storytelling, reflection, practice, and more reflection.”

HartBeat Ensemble members initiate a deep-dive within an organization, be it a school, a workplace, or an organization. After they conduct story circles, interviews, and work climate surveys to discover what is really going on in a particular environment, HartBeat uses the data to create an original, tailor-made play that ends in a micro-aggression. The play is then performed for the organization’s constituents twice. The second time through participants are instructed to interrupt the action of the play at a moment where they feel they can stop or change the series of events that led to the micro-aggression. Participants are able to insert themselves into the play to change the narrative themselves.

According to Simmons, “Our forum plays help empower stakeholders to recognize micro-aggressions and affect change. People learn that it is never too late to clean stuff up after we mess up. We can undo systems that don't work for people. Participants not only change the narrative of the play; they see their blind spots and change outcomes."

To find out how to bring HartBeat Ensemble's Stories Toward a Beloved Community to your school, workplace or organization, contact Jeanika Browne-Springer at jeanika.browne@hartbeatensemble.org.