About Level Ground
Level Ground is an award-winning artist collective and production incubator creating experiments in empathy. We are at our best when we provoke both artists and audiences in spaces that may initially cause discomfort, but are ultimately transformative.
Every year we run 4 core programs and a variety of projects that support, sustain, and give access to multimedia artists across diverse platforms. You can check out most of our past work here.
Since 2020, Level Ground has produced or published the work of over 150 artists of color.
OUR HISTORY
Since our founding in 2013, Level Ground has worked to intentionally center and reflect LGBTQ people and experiences in our community, our art programs, and our organizational practices. In 2020, our staff team and board acknowledged that we would never achieve our mission of destabilizing oppressive social structures until we also committed to destabilizing white supremacy within our own work.
After countless hours of research, conversations, and planning between our staff, artists, and board, we launched a new strategic plan that outlines our long-term priorities to intentionally center Black artists, audiences, and stories and become a non-hierarchical, cooperative 501(c)3 nonprofit led by artists of color. You can read more about this history and transition in our Strategic Plan and by checking out our Contributor’s page.
OUR MISSION
Through organizing and creating with artists, Level Ground is committed to destabilizing oppressive social structures through art making, community building, and resource sharing.
Our vision
Level Ground is a cooperatively-led organization committed to creating a cohesive, non-hierarchical community. We build solidarity through our mutual desires to be in right relationship with each other and the planet, and by fostering collaborations that celebrate our intersecting identities. We hope to inspire new ways of organizing public and private communities in the arts and beyond.
OUR VALUES
We build creative collaborations based on equitable access to resources, participation, and influence.
We support artistic experimentation by protecting space to see differently and create what hasn’t been tried before (and might not even work).
We provoke empathy by being open to the discomfort of seeing things from a new or opposing point of view.
We foster nuanced conversation, especially between people who wouldn’t otherwise connect with each other.
We cultivate diverse relationships because progress is realized when we build solidarity across the imposed social structures designed to keep us divided.