Episode 47: Carlton Turner - Sipp Culture Rising

Carlton Turner understands that when you can't feed yourself the imagination is the first thing to go And if you can't "see" a different future you can't make change. Sipp Culture is about feeding both the body and the mind's eye.

Carlton Turner is an artist, agriculturalist, researcher, and co-founder of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture). Sipp Culture uses food and story to support rural community development in his hometown of Utica, Mississippi where his family has been for eight generations. He currently serves on the board of First Peoples Fund, Imagining America, Project South and the National Black Food and Justice Alliance. Carlton is a member of the We Shall Overcome Fund Advisory Committee at the Highlander Center for Research and Education and is the former Executive Director of Alternate ROOTS and is a founding partner of the Intercultural Leadership Institute.

Carlton is a current Interdisciplinary Research Fellow with the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation and was named to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts YBCA100. He is also a former Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow and former Cultural Policy Fellow at the Creative Placemaking Institute at Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design in the Arts.

Carlton Turner is also co-founder and co-artistic director, along with his brother Maurice Turner, of the group M.U.G.A.B.E.E. (Men Under Guidance Acting Before Early Extinction). M.U.G.A.B.E.E. is a Mississippi-based performing arts group that blends of jazz, hip-hop, spoken word poetry and soul music together with non-traditional storytelling. His current work is River Sols, a new play being developed in collaboration with Pangea World Theater that explores race, identity, class, faith, and difference across African American and South Asian communities through embodiment of a river.

He is also a member of the Rural Wealth Lab at RUPRI (Rural Policy Research Institute) and an advisor to the Kresge Foundation’s FreshLo Initiative. In 2018, Carlton was awarded the Sidney Yates Award for Advocacy in the Performing Arts by the Association of Performing Arts Professionals. Carlton has also received the M. Edgar Rosenblum award for outstanding contribution to Ensemble Theater (2011) and the Otto René Castillo Awards for Political Theatre (2015).

SIPP Culture: The Mississippi Center for Cultural Production is an approach and resource for cultivating thriving communities. Based in the rural South, “Sipp Culture” is honoring the history and building the future of our own community of Utica, MS. 

Sipp Culture supports community development from the ground up through cultural production focused on self-determination and agency designed by us and for us. We believe that history, culture, and food affirm our individual and collective humanity. So, we are strengthening our local food system, advancing health equity, and supporting rural artistic voices – while activating the power of story – all to promote the legacy and vision of our hometown.

Octavia Butler: OCTAVIA E. BUTLER was a renowned African American author who received a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work. Born in Pasadena in 1947, she was raised by her mother and her grandmother. She was the author of several award-winning novels including PARABLE OF THE SOWER (1993), which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and PARABLE OF THE TALENTS (1995) winner of the Nebula Award for the best science fiction novel published that year. She was acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations in stories that range from the distant past to the...

Carlton Turner understands that when you can't feed yourself the imagination is the first thing to go And if you can't "see" a different future you can't make change. Sipp Culture is about feeding both the body and the mind's eye.

Carlton Turner is an artist, agriculturalist, researcher, and co-founder of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture). Sipp Culture uses food and story to support rural community development in his hometown of Utica, Mississippi where his family has been for eight generations. He currently serves on the board of First Peoples Fund, Imagining America, Project South and the National Black Food and Justice Alliance. Carlton is a member of the We Shall Overcome Fund Advisory Committee at the Highlander Center for Research and Education and is the former Executive Director of Alternate ROOTS and is a founding partner of the Intercultural Leadership Institute.

Carlton is a current Interdisciplinary Research Fellow with the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation and was named to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts YBCA100. He is also a former Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow and former Cultural Policy Fellow at the Creative Placemaking Institute at Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design in the Arts.

Carlton Turner is also co-founder and co-artistic director, along with his brother Maurice Turner, of the group M.U.G.A.B.E.E. (Men Under Guidance Acting Before Early Extinction). M.U.G.A.B.E.E. is a Mississippi-based performing arts group that blends of jazz, hip-hop, spoken word poetry and soul music together with non-traditional storytelling. His current work is River Sols, a new play being developed in collaboration with Pangea World Theater that explores race, identity, class, faith, and difference across African American and South Asian communities through embodiment of a river.

He is also a member of the Rural Wealth Lab at RUPRI (Rural Policy Research Institute) and an advisor to the Kresge Foundation’s FreshLo Initiative. In 2018, Carlton was awarded the Sidney Yates Award for Advocacy in the Performing Arts by the Association of Performing Arts Professionals. Carlton has also received the M. Edgar Rosenblum award for outstanding contribution to Ensemble Theater (2011) and the Otto René Castillo Awards for Political Theatre (2015).

SIPP Culture: The Mississippi Center for Cultural Production is an approach and resource for cultivating thriving communities. Based in the rural South, “Sipp Culture” is honoring the history and building the future of our own community of Utica, MS. 

Sipp Culture supports community development from the ground up through cultural production focused on self-determination and agency designed by us and for us. We believe that history, culture, and food affirm our individual and collective humanity. So, we are strengthening our local food system, advancing health equity, and supporting rural artistic voices – while activating the power of story – all to promote the legacy and vision of our hometown.

Octavia Butler: OCTAVIA E. BUTLER was a renowned African American author who received a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work. Born in Pasadena in 1947, she was raised by her mother and her grandmother. She was the author of several award-winning novels including PARABLE OF THE SOWER (1993), which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and PARABLE OF THE TALENTS (1995) winner of the Nebula Award for the best science fiction novel published that year. She was acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations in stories that range from the distant past to the far future.

Maurice Turner: Maurice S. Turner, II is co-founder of Turner World Around Productions, Inc. and one-half of the group M.U.G.A.B.E.E. (Men Under Guidance Acting Before Early Extinction), an artistic ensemble composing and performing a blend of jazz, hip-hop, spoken word poetry, and soul music on a totally conscience tip. Maurice works with people of all ages, cultures and backgrounds facilitating workshops, which range from music production to Civil Rights. When not performing with M.U.G.A.B.E.E., Maurice is a trumpeter for hire. He has shared the stage with many great musicians, which include The Wynton Marsalis Septet, Ellis Marsalis, Cassandra Wilson, Mulgrew Miller, Jon Faddis, Danny Barker, Wallace Roney, Stranger Malone, Donald Byrd, Keeter Betts, Elise Witt, Jimmy Heath, Ray Drummond, Chris “Daddy” Dave, Randy Brecker, and Bobby Rush to name a few. He also served as Musical Director for Uprooted: The Katrina Project, a piece focusing on the displaced citizens of New Orleans and the various struggles that were faced during the catastrophe.

Bob Moses: Robert Parris Moses (January 23, 1935 – July 25, 2021) was an American educator and civil rights activist, known for his work as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) on voter education and registration in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement, and his co-founding of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. As part of his work with the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a coalition of the Mississippi branches of the four major civil rights organizations (SNCC, CORE, NAACP, SCLC), he was the main organizer for the Freedom Summer Project.

In 1982 Moses received a MacArthur Fellowship and began developing the Algebra Project. The math literacy program emphasizes teaching algebra skills to minority students, based on broad-based community organizing and collaboration with parents, teachers and students, in order to improve college and job readiness.

Hollis Watkins: is an activist who was part of the Civil Rights Movement activities in the state of Mississippi during the 1960s. He became a member and organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1961, was a county organizer for 1964's "Freedom Summer", and assisted the efforts of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to unseat the regular Mississippi delegation from their chairs at the 1964 Democratic Party national convention in Atlantic City. He founded Southern Echo, a group that gives support to other grass-roots organizations in Mississippi. He also is a founder of the Mississippi Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement.

Danny Glover:  is an American actor, film director, and political activist. He is widely known for his lead role as Roger Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon film series. He also had leading roles in his films included The Color Purple, To Sleep with Anger, Predator 2, Angels in the Outfield, and Operation Dumbo Drop.. He is also an active supporter of various political causes.In 2022, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences would bestow the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to Glover for his "decades-long advocacy for justice and human rights [which] reflects his dedication to recognizing our shared humanity on and off the screen".[2][3][4]

C.C .Bryant:  Elected president of the Pike County branch of the NAACP in 1954, Curtis Conway Bryant (1917-2001) played a major role in early civil rights activism of southwest Mississippi. He campaigned to expand membership in the NAACP, led large voter registration drives, and endured jail and bombings of his family home and barber shop, both of which served as local centers for movement activities. Bryant described McComb's violent summer of 1964 as "hell on earth."

John O'Neal: Actor, director, performer, writer, community and civil rights activist, and pioneer of African American theater John M. O'Neal, Jr. co-founded the Free Southern Theater in 1963 as the cultural and educational arm of the southern Civil Rights Movement. His work as playwright and social activist demonstrates how his philosophy of art and politics are complementary, not opposing terms. O'Neal's artistic style and vision has afforded him the opportunity to perform widely for audiences throughout North America and Europe.

M.K. Wegman with 40+ years of experience in presenting and producing for non-profit visual and performing arts organizations is the recently retired President and CEO of the National Performance Network/Visual Artists Network, which supports national and international touring and commissioning. As an independent consultant, she works with artist-focused organizations in the performing and visual arts. She is one of the founders of the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center and is an emeritus board member, a past Board Chair of Alternate ROOTS, was founding president of the National Association of Artists’ Organizations (NAAO).

Kathy Randels: Kathy Randels has been generating performance art at the intersection of gender rebellion and community activism since her graduation from Northwestern in 1991. For roughly 20 years now, Randels has led ArtSpot Productions, an interdisciplinary performance ensemble in New Orleans A sense of spirit-guided indignation has led Randels to create and perform avant-garde, site-specific theater in the streets of New Orleans, her flooded-and-gutted childhood home, the levees of St. Bernard Parish (an industrial suburb being gulped up by the Gulf's rising tides), and in the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in the hamlet of St. Gabriel (The LCIW Drama Club for inmates, The Graduates for those released).

Jose Torres Tama: José Torres-Tama is a published poet and playwright, journalist and photographer, renegade scholar and arts educator, visual and performance artist, cultural activist and Artistic Director of ArteFuturo Productions in New Orleans. He explores the effects of mass media on race relations, the underbelly of the “North American Dream” mythology, and the anti-immigrant hysteria currently gripping the United States of Amnesia, which seduces you to embrace forgetting that the origin story of this so-called beacon of democracy is soaked in white supremacists’ beliefs. 

Students at the Center: SAC) is an independent program that since 1996 has worked within public schools in New Orleans. co-directed by educators Jim Randels and Kalamu ya Salaam The students of SAC participate through English and elective writing and social studies classes in their schools. We teach both regular and advanced core curriculum classes that are open to all students. In addition to the daily classes, since Hurricane Katrina, SAC graduates have worked as key staff members, serving as resource teachers in public school classrooms, organizers for youth involvement, and producers of youth media.

Carol Bebelle: Is a poet and cofounder of Ashé Cultural Arts Center. She has championed arts, culture, and community in New Orleans for over four decades. With determination and entrepreneurship, alongside the late visual artist and Ashé cofounder Douglas Redd, Bebelle ignited the revitalization of Central City’s Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard. Ashé is a Yoruba word meaning “the power to make things happen and produce change.” 

Ashe Cultural Arts Center: Our charge as issued by Mama Carol, is to “to fly in leaps and gusts of provocation, instigation, inspiration and aspiration...to call for and exhibit the higher standards of justice, integrity, and kindness for all...to be brilliant concoctors of opportunity, creators of vision, navigators of bs, advocates of culture, and defenders of children...to make real the majesty of dreams, to make plain the magic of being, to manifest the difference between perceiving and seeing!” Ashé Cultural Art Center’s innovative programming is designed to utilize culture in fostering human development and civic engagement. We maintain 10,000 square feet of gallery space and 20,000 square feet of performance space to create and preserve opportunities for the curation, exhibition, and commission of fine, folk, and fine-folk art.

Alice Lovelace is a cultural worker, performance artist, teacher, poet, organizer, author, playwright, and arts administer. Since 1976 Atlanta has been her home of choice; a fertile ground for artistic growth and activism, and in 1978, she discovered the Neighborhood Arts Center and met Ebon Dooley (Leo Hale) and Toni Cade Bambara. Together, they organized poetry readings and classes while conducting meetings for the Southern Collective of African American Writers (SCAAW). Alice shared her stories and wisdom in Episode 23 of Change the Story / Change the World.

Nayo Watkins:  Nayo Barbara Malcolm Watkins (1939-2008) was a poet, essayist, playwright, arts consultant, and cultural organizer in North Carolina, where she lived, and throughout the South. For over 40 years she worked with nonprofit organizations with a focus on arts as tools in community empowerment and social transformation.

Kathy deNobriga: A founding member of Alternate ROOTS, a service organization for community-based artists in the South, deNobriga served as ROOTS' executive director and planning/development director for ten years. A current board member of Alternate ROOTS, deNobriga is a certified mediator in the State of Georgia, and after three terms as Council member deNobriga served as Mayor for the City of Pine Lake from 2012 to 2015.

Bob Leonard: Bob Leonard is a theatremaker, writer, and teacher at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA. He directs the MFA program in Directing and Public Dialogue. His work includes ensemble developed new plays and events as an expression of the public voice; and interactive theater techniques in partnership with local initiatives on race to generate, express, and animate public dialogue and civic imagination. He is the founding artistic director of The Road Company, an ensemble based in Johnson City, Tennessee -1975 to 1998. He co-founded the Community Arts Network (CAN) and is a founding board member of Alternate ROOTS and the Network of Ensemble Theaters (NET). He is project director of the VTArtWorks Initiative to construct an on-line resource for and with the field of grassroots and community-based art making aimed at advancing social and economic justice.