A Juneteenth Celebration – The Land

Culture, Community & Liberation: A Juneteenth Celebration is a one-day arts festival celebrating Black history, freedom, and togetherness with poetry, music, and more, featuring Cleveland playwright Dr. Mary E. Weems, Heights Poet Laureate Siaara Freeman, hip hop group Muamin Collective, singer CHIMI, and more!

Literary Cleveland has partnered with ThirdSpace Action Lab to present Culture, Community & Liberation: A Juneteenth Celebration on Saturday, June 22, 2024. This is the first year that LIT CLE and TSAL have come together to provide exciting, accessible community programming for Juneteenth, our country’s second Independence Day. Attendees can come and celebrate culture, community, and liberation with poetry, music, and more!

Since 2022, Literary Cleveland and ThirdSpace Action Lab have been collaborating to expand literary and storytelling programs into a broader and more diverse area of Cleveland neighborhoods and celebrate Black Excellence in Northeast Ohio and beyond. The organizations have begun a tradition of holding a Toni Morrison Community Reading together, honoring the birthday of the iconic Ohio author, every February 18^th at TSAL and have offered a co-listed Toni Morrison reading course in the summer of 2023. This new Juneteenth event is an expansion of their continuing partnership and a pilot for a program they hope to continue offering every June, from 2023 onwards.

Culture, Community & Liberation is a one-day arts festival dedicated to Black history, freedom, and togetherness. This festival kicks off with a Juneteenth creative writing workshop facilitated by Calil “JUST C.O.S.” Cage and Morgan Paige of Poetry Unplugged and The Sparrow’s Fortune Poetry Collective. This workshop is followed by a special intergenerational and multidisciplinary dialogue and Q&A (Liberation Artists in Conversation) on art, liberation practice, and community building with Dr. Mary E. Weems and Tecia D. Wilson-Stone. Following the Q&A there will be a LIT CLE Open Mic, featuring Heights Poet Laureate Siaara Freeman and Karamu Room in the House fellow Avery LaMar Pope. The festival will then close out with electrifying musical performances by Cleveland singer CHIMI and hip hop group Muamin Collective.

The program will take place from noon-4pm on June 22, 2024 at ThirdSpace Action Lab (1464 E. 105^th Street, Cleveland OH 44106). Registration is open now through June 21. Participants can attend the whole festival from noon-4pm or attend separate activities. Also, the registration fee is on a sliding scale to foster diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. Still, some financial assistance is available for attendees with truly dire financial need.

To register and for more information, visit the Literary Cleveland website:
https://www.litcleveland.org/events-programs/culture-community-liberation-a-juneteenth-celebration