Theaster Gates #KeeperoftheDay

The Archive House, The Listening House, The Stony Island Arts Bank, The Dorchester Projects…

Theaster Gates is a keeper of Greater Grand Crossing, his neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. He first encountered creativity in the music of Black churches on his journey to becoming an urban planner, potter, and artist. Gates creates sculptures with clay, tar, and renovated buildings, transforming the raw material of urban neighborhoods into radically reimagined vessels of opportunity for and of the community. Gates resurrects old dilapidated neighborhood buildings, transforming them into living archives, institutes of music, culture, film and gathering, preserving and renewing neighborhoods that have been ignored, overlooked and underserved. The proceeds of these unusual, imaginative endeavors are used to finance the rehabilitation of entire city blocks and the communities that inhabit them.

Listen to the latest from The Kitchen Sisters Present… Theaster Gates: Keeping the South Side.

This story was produced by Alyia Renee Yates in collaboration with The Kitchen Sisters.

Culture is what makes lives meaningful… #KeeperoftheDay

#KeeperoftheDay

Trump’s threats to Iranian cultural sites disrespect our human heritage.
Culture is what makes lives meaningful, and protecting it is one of the acknowledged limits to armed conflict.

-William D Adams, in the Portland Press Herald

The Keeper Quarterly, Vol III #KeeperoftheDay

Strong stories are ahead in 2020, full of humanity, heart and vision as we launch a new series — stories of youth activists and visionaries from around the world. We thank you for helping us turn our microphone in their direction.

The Keepers also continues into 2020.

Here, you will find the latest edition of The Keeper Quarterly, a compendium of our daily, year-long social media project {#KeeperoftheDay} that celebrates and honors the work of activist archivists, rogue librarians, guardians of history and the free flow of information and ideas. We look forward to bringing you more powerful, sound-rich stories of people who take it upon themselves to protect and preserve our cultural and natural heritage in the coming year.

Our deep thanks for your contribution and for being part of The Kitchen Sisterhood — for sharing your resources and talents and visions with us. For helping us bring voices from the edges and margins and seldom heard perspectives to the air. True stories light the path. They give us fuel and help us find our way out of these dark unsettling times.

Our best,

Davia & Nikki
The Kitchen Sisters

Keep it Rolling | Support the Stories

“Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.”
— Elvis Presley

Dear Friends,

Greetings as the year turns. We write to wish you well and to ask for your support for a new year of strong stories — stories full of heart, truth, empathy and surprise.

A new strand of Kitchen Sisters stories is ahead in 2020, the election year, one of the most critical in our nation’s history. Along with continuing to chronicle the nation’s Keepers, we are beginning a series of stories of youth activists and visionaries from around the world.

In August we traveled to Puerto Rico with Dave Eggers for the second gathering of The International Congress of Youth Voices — 137 young activists and writers from 26 different countries focused on pressing, pulsing issues around the world — climate change, gun control, human rights, the arts, LGBTQ rights, race, food, immigration, governance… We are staggered by the voices, stories and imaginations of fearless, funny, activated young people around the globe and we’ll be turning our microphone in their direction in the year ahead.

We write to ask for your support and your collaboration to bring these new, provocative stories to air in this monumental coming year. The heart of our work, and a central part of our mission is to bring new voices and perspectives into the public discourse, to grapple with big issues in profound, unusual and inspiring ways.

We close 2019 with the launch of two new hour-long, sound-rich, hope-filled Keepers Specials narrated by that Academy Award-winning wonder, Frances McDormand now being broadcast by PRX, NPR and public radio stations nationwide. Check your local stations to find out when The Keepers airs in your town. We thank you for making these startling and surprising stories of archiving, keeping and the free flow of information and ideas possible.

Also in 2019, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art commissioned us to produce San Francisco: Stories From the Model City, an unusual look at the cascade of issues bearing down on the Bay Area and cities everywhere — tech, housing, homelessness, gentrification, city planning, neighborhood activism. Roman Mars featured this hour-long Kitchen Sisters documentary on his path-breaking design podcast, 99% Invisible. Take a listen.

Our Radiotopia podcast, The Kitchen Sisters Present… is brimming with rich, deeply layered stories — of keepers, of gutsy girls, pioneering women, sonic pioneers, of food visionaries and kitchen cultures. If you haven’t already, please subscribe. The more subscribers, the more stories we can tell. Stories that ignite and engage.

The Keepers continues in 2020 — Lou Reed’s Archive, the repatriation of 1890’s Oglala Lakota recordings from the Library of Congress to the tribe in South Dakota, Theaster Gates: Keeping the South Side. Food and climate will be a focus as well. This past year we recorded a remarkable series of interviews at FRUTO in Brazil, a gathering of activist chefs, farmers and indigenous peoples, and at The Climate Underground Summit at Al Gore’s farm on the role of soil and regenerative agriculture in combating climate change.

We’re all in this together. Thank you for being such a vital part of The Kitchen Sister and Brotherhood, for supporting the stories and our internship, training and mentoring program. Your participation, your tax-deductible contribution, the stories you share with us, the music you make, the causes you tell us about… all of it adds up. All of it stirs the pot.

Wishing you and your family peace and a fair election in the coming year.

Keep it rolling,

Davia & Nikki
The Kitchen Sisters

Martin Scorsese and The Film Foundation #KeeperoftheDay

The films of Martin Scorsese are astounding. As are his efforts to preserve and save the history and heritage of American cinema through The Film Foundation, a nonprofit he founded in 1990 along with Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and half a dozen other of the world’s leading film directors. Martin Scorsese is a Keeper. A steward of American and global cinema. One of our heroes and inspirations.

Last month the San Francisco Film Society invited Mr. Scorsese to San Francisco to honor his non-fiction film work and premier his latest feature, The Irishman. We were so taken with Scorsese’s onstage interview with Rachel Rosen, Director of Programming for the Festival, that we asked The Festival if we could share it on the Kitchen Sisters Present podcast. They were kind enough to say yes.

On #GivingTuesday | Martin Scorsese: Try Anything | We Give You our Latest Podcast

Dear All,

Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas… to name but a few. The films of Martin Scorsese are astounding. As are his efforts to preserve the history and heritage of American cinema and through his trailblazing Film Foundation, nearing its 30th year.

Martin Scorsese is a keeper, a steward of American and global cinema. One of our heroes and inspirations. The sound mix of Raging Bull had a big impact on the kind of mixes we thought were possible for our fledgling Kitchen Sisters stories. And his soundtracks! The way the man weaves music into his stories. Or doesn’t weave it. Just shocks you with it. Or soothes you with it. His scores and soundtracks are like no others.

And then there are his documentaries. His non-fiction films, starting with Italianamerican, a portrait of his own family, The Last Waltz, his ode to George Harrison, Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, and our own personal favorite, My Voyage to Italy.

Earlier this month the San Francisco Film Society invited Mr. Scorsese here to honor his non-fiction film work. We were so taken by his onstage conversation that we asked for a copy of the recording so we could make a podcast of it for you.

Deep thanks to The San Francisco Film Society for sharing this tape with us. And even deeper thanks to you for your support, for giving us the power to bring you stories from around the world about people keeping our cultural heritage alive and vibrant.

$upport the $tories

On Giving Tuesday we ask that you give to The Kitchen Sisters to help $upport More $tories. There’s going to be a lot that need telling in 2020. Thank you for helping make that happen!

Keep it coming,
Davia & Nikki

Archie Motley #KeeperoftheDay

“Archie knew more about the history of Chicago–of working people–than anyone in town. He knew about labor battles better than anyone. Archie Motley knew about the Bronzeville renaissance as well as anyone. He knew Chicago history from the bottom up, that’s the thing. He was a chronicler, the unofficial chronicler of Chicago working people’s history.” -Studs Terkel

Read more about this incredible keeper in this 2002 obituary from the Chicago Tribune.

Betty Corwin, 1920-2019 #KeeperoftheDay

#KeeperoftheDay – Betty Corwin, Founder & Director of the New York Public Library’s Theater on Film and Tape Archive.

“By definition, live theater vanishes in the moment; Ms. Corwin pushed to have shows videotaped and deposited in a library collection, which she ran for decades.” Read more about this incredible keeper on the New York Times.

And listen to this remembrance on NPR’s All Things Considered:

Jane Fonda #KeeperoftheDay

#KeeperoftheDay #ClimateKeeper
“Jane Fonda at 81, Proudly Protesting and Going to Jail” –New York Times, 11.3.19

Leah Esguerra #KeeperoftheDay

#KeeperoftheDay – San Francisco Public Library’s Leah Esguerra, the nation’s first full-time library social worker.

Learn more about her and how she is helping her community in this 2015 segment on PBS NewsHour.