How does Kinetic stand in the lineage of arts-focused movements?

Kinetic is not the first arts-focused collective to imagine a space where creativity, justice, and spirit converge. We are not the first to build rooms where Black and Brown creatives could tell the truth, recover breath, and make beauty amid broken systems. What we are doing sits in a lineage of movements and local ecologies that treated art as more than entertainment—art as infrastructure: a practice of meaning-making, community formation, and cultural strategy.

Two reference points matter deeply for us: the Black Arts Movement and Leimert Park.

The Black Arts Movement

The Black Arts Movement (BAM) crystallized in the late 1960s. It did not begin from scratch. Its architects drew from the Harlem Renaissance, the blues and jazz avant-garde, civil rights organizing, and the small press and coffeehouse scenes that had already been experimenting with independent, community-based art for decades. What made BAM distinct was its deliberate attempt to build Black-controlled institutions—publishing houses, theaters, journals, workshops, and community arts spaces—that could support a new aesthetic and a new political imagination. Art, in this context, was not just self-expression; it was a vehicle for Black self-determination and a means of reorganizing public life.

The immediate catalysts are familiar: Malcolm X’s assassination in 1965, mounting violence against civil rights workers, uprisings in Watts and other cities, and the growing sense that formal civil rights victories had not dismantled deeper structures of racism. In Harlem, the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School (BARTS), founded by LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka), became a template—combining workshops, poetry readings, jazz, and political education in a single initiative, shrinking the distance between rehearsal and revolution. When Baraka later moved to Newark and created Spirit House, he carried this model into a Black neighborhood wrestling with disinvestment, police violence, and the search for new forms of power.

BAM’s infrastructure mattered as much as its artists. Publishing houses such as Third World Press and Broadside Press, journals, and theaters across multiple cities built durable platforms for Black aesthetic experimentation and political imagination. Barbara Ann Teer’s National Black Theatre fused ritual, music, and dance into a spiritual and healing project—prefiguring contemporary conversations about embodiment, trauma, and communal repair. Free jazz and experimental scenes aligned improvisation with an ethic of listening, risk, and collective responsibility.

For Kinetic, the most instructive lesson is ecological: workshops, stages, and publishing (or documentation) functioned as one integrated system—and governance was treated as part of the cultural work.

Leimert Park

Where BAM offered a national movement template, Leimert Park in Los Angeles showed how a local arts district could become a sustained cultural ecology. From the late 1980s onward, spaces like The World Stage, the Good Life Café, KAOS Network, and the Brockman Gallery anchored Leimert Park Village as a creative hub.

The World Stage, co-founded by jazz drummer Billy Higgins and poet Kamau Daáood, built its reputation on consistency—weekly workshops where excellence, mentorship, and critique were normalized. The Good Life Café became a crucible for underground emcees, and its rules created conditions for deeper listening, linguistic innovation, and intergenerational engagement. Out of this soil, cipher culture intensified—breath control, improvisation, and risk sharpened in community.

But the genius of Leimert Park wasn’t only what happened on stage. It was the infrastructure: sign-up sheets, timekeepers, consent norms, sound engineers, greeters, videographers, elders offering loving critique. Leimert Park reminds us that culture is not only what happens in the spotlight; it’s what happens in the systems that support the spotlight.

This is the lineage Kinetic is building with: an ecosystem where gatherings, artist development, and flagship platforms reinforce each other—and where community is not a marketing idea, but a practiced reality.

What is your spiritual grounding / Is Kinetic a religious organization?

Kinetic is an arts organization with an explicit spiritual grounding. We are not a church, and our programs are not designed around doctrinal conformity. But we are honest that our curatorial and community commitments come from a Christian imagination—especially the teachings and practices of Jesus as they relate to dignity, justice, repair, and human flourishing.

Practically, that means we lean into a liberative spirituality: art as truth-telling, meaning-making, and social repair; communities shaped by radical hospitality and clear boundaries; and a refusal to reduce creativity to content or commerce. Our programming is designed to be inclusive and welcoming for artists and audiences across spiritual and non-spiritual perspectives—without being disingenuous about the roots that shape our work.

Kinetic is particularly inspired by a vision for the “Beloved Community” popularized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This vision is grounded in the belief that God calls us to remake our hostility-filled world into communities where love and justice truly reign. Inspired by the love of God operating in the human heart, the human community meets the basic needs of every person. Racism, bigotry, hunger, poverty and prejudices will end because God’s standards for human decency will not allow them to exist in the beloved community. The beloved community is called to confront hate with love because the love of God does not accept injustice or evil. Rather, it loves by way of justice, which ensures equity in access, participation, and flourishing for every human being. We are then empowered to commit to tangible action in our practices, our programs, and our networks that help bring equity and justice to the communities in which we work.

Our understanding of the Beloved Community is grounded in the biblical vision of shalom. For MLK, the Beloved Community was not a sentimental ideal, and neither is it for us. It’s a concrete moral and social vision: a world in which racism, poverty, and militarism are dismantled; where conflict is addressed through nonviolence and repair; and where the flourishing of the most vulnerable is the measure of success. Shalom names this kind of wholeness and right relationship with God, self, others, systems, and the land. It is more than the absence of harm; it is the active presence of justice, repair, and mutual thriving. This shalom-shaped vision informs the way we curate spaces, support artists, and build partnerships so that our creative work, organizational practices, and community life become small but real signs of the Beloved Community we believe God intends for the world.

Do I have to be a Christian?

No. You do not need to be Christian—or religious at all—to participate in Kinetic programs. We welcome artists and audiences across a wide range of beliefs, backgrounds, and questions.

Because our work takes moral and spiritual imagination seriously, you may encounter language about meaning, justice, repair, and the inner life—and sometimes explicitly Christian references depending on the program or artist. But participation is never contingent on agreement, and we do not use our gatherings for coercion or pressure. The standard is simple: show up with respect, engage with integrity, and help us protect a room where people can create, listen deeply, and belong.

Do I have to be an artist to attend?

No. You do not need to identify as an artist—or have any formal training—to attend Kinetic events and programs. While Kinetic is an arts-focused organization and many of our offerings feature exceptional creative work, we believe creativity is a human capacity: the ability to make meaning, to imagine, to interpret the world, and to shape what we carry into it.

Some people come to perform or build their craft. Others come to listen, learn, connect, and be in a room where art has depth and community feels real. All of that belongs here.

What research informs your work at Kinetic?

Kinetic’s program design is informed by a growing body of interdisciplinary research on human flourishing—including work from Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program (HFP). In this research, flourishing is often defined as “a state in which all aspects of a person’s life are good,” and measured across core domains that extend beyond mental health alone. Kinetic’s focus on the creative arts, community, the inner life, wellness, and justice aligns with this framework because our programs are intentionally designed to strengthen multiple domains of flourishing at once—not just provide entertainment or isolated inspiration.

How this shows up in our programming

• Arts + wellbeing: Participation in arts and culture can function as a protective factor—supporting emotion processing, meaning-making, and a sense of vitality over time (especially in communities navigating systemic harm).

• Meaning, purpose, and inner life: Research suggests that practices that cultivate reflection, purpose, gratitude, and future-oriented hope can strengthen wellbeing. Kinetic builds this into our ecosystem through curated spaces that invite depth, not just consumption.

• Relationships and communal belonging: A consistent finding in flourishing research is the centrality of close relationships and social connection. Kinetic’s recurring gatherings and cohorts are structured to build relational trust—not just one-off attendance.

• Character, virtue, and prosocial action: Evidence-based “activities for flourishing” include practices like acts of kindness and volunteering, which are associated with improved well-being and social connection. Kinetic’s culture of mutual support, collaboration, and service pathways reflects this logic.

In short, Kinetic is informed by evidence-based research that treats flourishing as multidimensional—where artistic engagement, relational belonging, meaning and purpose, moral formation, and mental wellness reinforce each other. Harvard’s work provides a language and measurement framework for what many communities already know experientially: people thrive when they have room to create, relationships that hold them, and a sense that their lives and voices matter. As Kinetic scales, we intend to pair this research foundation with clear evaluation practices so partners can see not only compelling programs, but measurable outcomes.