OPEN CALL 2021
The Art HEALS Festival is a Virtual Social Justice Arts Festival that will be tentatively held from August 27-29, 2021 possibly at multiple venues on the East side of Austin, Texas and Virtually by WhatsintheMirror. As a multi-disciplinary festival, Art Heals Festival features art events, panel discussions, speakers, and workshops addressing local social justice issues including eliminating HIV and mental health stigma.
They are looking for provocative, radical, inspiring, empowering, innovative and/or enlightening works from across the artistic media (ie film, poetry, performing arts, music, visual arts and anything else you consider art). Proposals must address local social justice/activist/human rights issues.
Their multiple venues allow for projects of diverse size and scale. they encourage projects that are co-created or co-produced by an artist together with an organization involved in social justice pursuits (though this is not a requirement). Art HEALS Festival Goals:
The Art HEALS Festival aims to create a forum for dialogue and collaboration between diverse communities united by an interest in local social justice issues and to support the community of progressive artists, activists and community workers.
The Art HEALS Festival is a project of WhatsintheMirror — a 501c3 non-profit organization and healing justice social movement that provides suicide prevention and mental health awareness to communities of color through art, advocacy, and affirming care with a focus on women, youth, LGBTQIA+ persons. They are committed to producing and promoting socially relevant art that encourages and affirms the values of dignity, freedom, equality and social justice.
Art Heals Festival encourages artists and curators at any stage in their career to submit a proposal.
High Priority to New Virtual Ideas and Submissions
All chosen artists will receive honorariums.
How to Submit
Art Heals Festival Proposals: (max. of 2 proposals per person or collective). Head over to www. whatsinthemirror.org to submit
MESSAGE FROM EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Over 15,000 Views, Comments, & likes!
On the behalf of myself and our organization, we would like to thank everyone who tuned into our Inaugural Art Heals Festival across all of our platforms. We take pride in offering a space that centered persons living with a mental health condition and persons living with HIV.
Thank You
Tarik Daniels
Thank YoUs
Thank You
To our sponsors Compass Gilead, Southern Aids Coalition, City of Austin, Center for Health Empowerment, & Counter Narrative Project.
To all the artists, videographers, editors, press and media, and Santa Cruz Theater.
SUBMISSIONS FOR ART HEALS FESTIVAL 2021 OPENS January 2021
Starting January 2021, WhatsintheMirror will start accepting proposals for Art Heals Festival 2021. Link and details coming soon!
Inaugural Art Heals Festival 2020
Join us to end Mental Health and HIV STIGMA.
The Art Heals Festival is a four day multidisciplinary virtual art festival that addresses social justice issues and advocates to eliminate HIV and mental health stigma through a healing justice framework.
Our goals are to:
-provide an inclusive and impactful platform that engages the community around social justice topics through artistic expression.
-explore how art can used as a mechanism to heal and restore vibrant ways of living.
-hold brave spaces for meaningful involvement of people living with HIV and/ mental health conditions and all gender identities and body types.
Join us for an artistic celebration and come enjoy photography, paintings, theater, performances, poetry, and more! We hope to spark community conversations about what it means to claim, move throughout, and inhabit space.
Art has the capacity to move us, to open up new ways of thinking and understanding, to increase our empathy and inspire us to take action.
ART HEALS FESTIVAL INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE Policy
Additional Information
WhatsintheMirror? and the ART HEALS PROJECT pledges to be a diverse, inclusive, and equitable organization where all members and volunteers, whatever their gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, age, sexual orientation or identity, body type, health status, education or disability, feels valued and respected. We are committed to a nondiscriminatory approach and provide equal opportunity for members to participate in programs and worksites. We respect and value diverse life experiences and heritages and ensure that all voices are valued and heard.
We’re committed to modeling diversity and inclusion for the entire arts industry of the nonprofit sector, and to maintaining an inclusive environment with equitable treatment for all.
To provide trauma informed, authentic leadership for cultural equity, Whatsinthemirror? strives to:
- See diversity, inclusion, and equity as connected to our mission and critical to ensure the well-being of our members, vendors and the arts communities we serve.
- Acknowledge and dismantle any inequities within our policies, systems, programs, and services, and continually update and report organization progress.
- Explore potential underlying, unquestioned assumptions that interfere with inclusiveness.
- Advocate for and support board-level thinking about how systemic inequities impact our organization’s work, and how best to address that in a way that is consistent with our mission.
- Help to challenge assumptions about what it takes to be a strong leader at our organization, and who is well-positioned to provide leadership.
- Practice and encourage transparent communication in all interactions.
- Commit time and resources to expand more diverse leadership within our board, members, committee, and advisory bodies.
- Lead with respect and tolerance. We expect everyone to embrace this notion and to express it in interactions and through everyday practices.
The ART Heals project
Launched January 4, 2020
The Art Heals Project focuses on the intersectionality of mental health and HIV care with meaningful involvement of People Living with HIV/AIDS through a healing justice framework.
2020 TRANSFORMATIVE GRANT PARTNER
So excited to announce that Whatsinthemirror? has been selected as COMPASS Initiative 2020 Transformative Grant partner! :
Whatsinthemirror? Awarded $52,500 from COMPASS Initiative® to Expand Efforts to Combat HIV in Austin
Funding is Part of Gilead Sciences COMPASS Initiative® to Curb HIV Infection Rate, Reduce Stigma in the South
AUSTIN/TEXAS (Dec. 5, 2019) - Today, Whatsinthemirror? received a $52,500 Transformative Grant from the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work as part of the COMPASS Initiative® to build on community-driven solutions that are reducing stigma and improving the health and wellbeing of those impacted by HIV in the South. Whatsinthemirror? will use the funds to support the Art Heals Project.
“Our Art Heals Project will focus on the intersectionality of mental health and HIV prevention work with the focus on persons living with HIV to reduce stigma through art and affirming care and awareness. We are excited to add to the healing justice work that’s being done across the nation.”- Tarik Daniels, Founder/Executive Director
The South faces a growing epidemic of HIV/AIDS. Despite being home to only 38 percent of the country’s population, Southern states experienced 52 percent of new HIV diagnoses in 2017. Due to societal disparities in the South—including poverty, housing stability and food security—the epidemic represents a complex challenge that requires a variety of community-based solutions. COMPASS invests in community organizations that build awareness, reduce stigma, advance education, share knowledge and promote the well-being of individuals affected by HIV.
The COMPASS Initiative® is awarding more than $2.3 million in Transformative Grants to 40 organizations. This one-year grant will help address inequalities within the HIV epidemic by increasing organizational capacity, reducing stigma and promoting wellbeing, mental health, and trauma-informed care.
“We believe in going where the need is greatest, listening to those working on the front lines and providing them the resources they need to scale their success,” said Korab Zuka, Vice President of Public Affairs at Gilead Sciences. “Nowhere is that truer than in the Southern U.S., where HIV infection rates are increasing and finding access to care can be difficult. Last year our transformative grantees helped reduce stigma, train healthcare professionals and expand access in rural communities. We’re excited to see these new grantees bring their creativity and tenacity to end HIV once and for all.”
About the Gilead COMPASS Initiative®
The Gilead COMPASS Initiative® is a 10-year, more than $100 million commitment in the Southern United States supporting organizations working to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The corporate giving program of the Initiative has a threefold mission: to build capacity and increase knowledge sharing among community-based, underfunded organizations in Southern states; to explore interventions that appropriately respond to patients' needs, including the bundling or reframing of mental healthcare, as well as the intersection between substance use, the opioid epidemic and HIV/AIDS; and to fund awareness and anti-stigma campaigns. Through this Initiative, Gilead plans to dramatically increase the reach of these organizations working to address the epidemic in the region, and ultimately to improve the lives of those affected by HIV/AIDS.
For more information on Gilead’s COMPASS Initiative and the full list of grantees visit
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