Alternate ROOTS records

Collection

Identifier: 803

Staff Only

Content Description

The records of Alternate ROOTS at the Amistad Research Center (ARC) consists of the entire body of the activities of the organization and its members from late 1975 to 2017. The records document a thorough and thoughtful exploration of the arts as a form of social justice. At 111 linear feet, the records consist of correspondence and memoranda, minutes of meetings, newsletters, publicity materials, policy papers, and printed ephemera, as well as an extensive collection of electronic media and moving image recordings of performances and programs for the organization, as well as individual artist members. The records are also critical to the documentation or lack of documentation available for theaters and arts organization no longer in existence today, such as The Carpet Bag Theatre in Knoxville, Tennessee; the Birmingham Festival Theatre in Birmingham, Alabama; the Little Marrowbone Repair Corporation in Nashville, Tennessee; and the Playgroup, Sidewalk Dance Theatre in Knoxville, Tennessee. The Alternate ROOTS records tell the story of the organization through its programmatic and educational initiatives, as well as its development and fundraising activities. The records also include an estimated 577+ audiovisual materials, including sound and music recordings, and recordings of theater and dance performances, live performance art, and visual art, in the form of CDs, DVDs, floppy discs, audiocassettes, video cassettes, and mass storage hard-drives.

The topical strengths for research contained in the collection include the organization and cooperation of artists addressing pressing socio-cultural issues; the Black Arts Movement; grassroots arts-activism in the South; and creative approaches to environmental justice, immigration, human rights, and related issues. Further, the collection provides insight into cultural organizing, creative placemaking, regional community theatre and performance art, oral history practice, and art and theater production in rural communities, and the development and exhibition of social justice arts.

Dates

1975-2017

Creator

Alternate Roots (Organization) (Organization)

Historical Note

Alternate ROOTS is a member-driven regional arts service organization based in the South. The organization is artist-led and artist-focused and serves to connect and support artists working at the intersection of art and activism with a focus on community building and dismantling oppression in all its forms. The name derives from the term “Alternate” as in an “alternative”, and “ROOTS” is an acronym for “Regional Organization Of Theatres South”. The organization is now multidisciplinary, and the membership body includes individuals and groups who are not in the Southern region.

Alternate ROOTS formed in 1976 through the gathering of theatrical professionals at the Highland Center in New Market, Tennessee. Originally, the Highlander Folk School founded in 1932, the Highland Center’s purpose is to serve as a catalyst of grassroots movement building throughout Appalachia and the southern United States. Citing the values of the Highland Center, Alternate ROOTS was created to serve activist artists whose work is created for and within their communities to advance social and economic justice reforms and advancement. Alternate ROOTs is primarily a network for artists interested in the use of creativity to advance profound change within society at the fundamental level of community-based advocacy.