Like many Black women, I love all things Octavia Butler, and one of my favorites is the concept of Earthseed; a fictional religion that weaves its values into her novels. The counter-cultural ethos that she describes always reminded me of AS220’s mission and our desperate desire to live in a world that is beautiful, creative, and just. Foo Fest was a profession of this mission; loud, brilliant, and a forum for local artists to share their work for all to see. We stopped throwing Foo Fest after 2018. For most, the halt seemed financial. The cost of hosting a large outdoor festival climbs every year, while sponsorships and attendance were on a slow, steady decline. Other reasons were murky — some obvious, some not — but at that time in Providence, much of it had to do with the rise of PVDFest: a sprawling, free cultural phenomenon that took over the city every June. I mean, really, why would people pay $10 to party with AS220 on Empire Street in August when they could get ten stages, piña coladas, and an Instagramworthy parade of crop tops for free a month earlier? But for artists, we knew the difference. Foo had a gritty, DIY Providence energy that couldn’t be replicated by a more polished, corporate-adjacent production. Foo Fest had the best bands, the realest mosh pits, the weirdest art installations. It was like a dark circus that descended once a summer — an ocean of bodies waving to the music.
Still, even I had to admit — PVDFest was doing things bigger, international, and in some ways, just… better. PVD Fest was doing something AS220 had long struggled with: inviting in curators who shaped the look, feel, and spirit of the festival. When we stopped producing Foo Fest, it wasn’t just a financial decision. It was cultural. For some staff, the question was: How do we make Foo Fest more representative of the communities that actually make Providence what it is? AS220 has never been in the business of curation. For 40 years, we’ve been an unjuried and uncensored space. Foo Fest is the one time each year we do get to sprinkle some magic on the stage. While many loved Foo’s bands, its aesthetic, its vibe, Black and Brown folx at AS220 experienced things differently. Foo was dope, but it still left big segments of our city out. At the same time, another kind of conversation was unfolding just upstairs from Empire Street. In our youth programs, staff were pushing AS220 to lean deeper into its values, particularly when it came to communities of color. In 2018, we linked up with environmental justice advocates and attended Undoing Racism workshops from The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. These conversations weren’t new; they echoed what Black and Brown artists had been saying for years: If AS220 wants all people to realize their true creative potential, we need to address systemic racism — not just in America, not just in the arts sector, but right here in our own organization.
By 2019, those conversations crystallized into our official Racial Justice Initiative (RJI), which found its voice in the form of 12 BIPOC Demands — demands that became our 2020 strategic plan. Some longtime supporters felt uneasy with the change. They thought centering Black and Brown voices was in opposition to AS220’s mission to serve all artists. But we knew the real: To be for all people, we had to dismantle the barriers that kept some people out. The critiques that Black and Brown artists/staff held for the org. did not come from a place of malice, lack of vision or love. On the contrary, it was love and belief in the mission that propelled us to move in this direction. Love is an active practice, and it was nothing but love that gave us the fortitude to not only imagine something different for AS220’s future, but to stay and build that future together. Since then, we’ve worked to transform the organization we love into one where we can see a future — not just for ourselves, but for the youth, families, and artists who once couldn’t imagine themselves walking through our doors. This year’s Foo Fest, while not a direct result of the RJI, is the largest public expression of how we’re doing things differently, in alignment with our anti-racist values. Instead of AS220 curating every stage, we’re collaborating with community curators like Chip Doug, Cam Bells, Takeova Battle League, The Park Studios, and other Black and Brown curators to spotlight their communities. We added a Jam: b-boy battles throughout the day. Because we reworked our Original Music Policy, we’re finally able to showcase DJs, something that used to be impossible. We’ve got the queen Kincaid’s Afro-Caribbean dance party happening in the Black Box, more kids’ programming, sensory chill zones, and we reallocated a large portion of our national headliner budget, putting more money into the hands of local artists. Even our planning committee had representation from every department this time around.
In some ways, Foo Fest is the easiest thing to transform — and it’s only one piece of a much deeper change. The RJI lives in the way we’ve made our housing application process more accessible. It’s in the formation of our Transformative Justice department, and how we are working to approach HR from a restorative lens. It’s in the resource sharing between Youth and Community Studios, because sharing is not only caring, it’s cost-effective. It’s in our multiracial, co-leadership model, because more perspectives mean more sustainability.
It’s the way we are centering creative education. It’s in the simple, powerful fact that we’re still here after COVID, because we believed in AS220’s direction so deeply, we refused to let it die. Becoming an antiracist institution is lifelong work. And best believe, we still have a long way to go and the work stems from back before we announced an anti-racist initiative. When I came to AS220 as a kid, many of the seeds for this work were already planted. Community organizing is the heart of AS220. This garden existed long before me or anyone who works here today. Indeed, the seeds were planted. We just kept watering them. Kept whispering to them. Kept tending to them and planted some of our own along the way. None of us may be around to see the garden in full bloom, but we are committed to handing paradise to our children.
Foo Fest is one small step toward the future we want—not just for AS220, not just for Providence, but for the world. A future where we honor the past, stay rooted in the present, and stretch courageously toward what’s next. Like Octavia Butler once said: Our destiny is to take root among the stars. With the current social political landscape, I don’t know what’s on the horizon for me, AS220, or us as humans period…but I know this: Only when we believe that tomorrow is possible can we fully live it. Tomorrow will arrive. Will we? Come celebrate 40 years with us — and help shape the bold, care-centered, gloriously defiant community we’ve always been, and inshallah, will always be. •