Our clients often think that equity budgeting is just a matter of what goes into your budget. They’re wrong. Equity budgeting, as a concept, insists that economic justice is critical for racial & social justice in community-based cultural work, and beyond — & that the labor of all participants needs to be recognized as such, and to be compensated fairly. Intellectual property is also a form of labor.

The Marion Voices Folklife + Oral History Program has worked, over the past three years, to develop & cultivate a critical model for bringing together economic justice + racial justice organizing in the community-based cultural work sectors. We call this model “equity budgeting.” True to its name, equity budgeting holds that the chief space of praxis & ethics for any community-based cultural work project is its budget.

This piece was originally meant as an accessibility supplement to an unpaid, paywalled talk given on October 17th, 2020, at the digital iteration of the American Folklore Society Conference. This work owes so much to the work of BIPOC activists in my community, and the many BIPOC scholars & activists…

Jess – Thanks so much for your input today!