Culture and Leadership Connections Podcast

Kamal Sinclair – Making A New Reality

February 19, 2020 Marie Gervais Season 2 Episode 6
Culture and Leadership Connections Podcast
Kamal Sinclair – Making A New Reality
Show Notes

Bio for Kamal Sinclair

Kamal Sinclair is Executive Director of the Guild of Future Architects and supports independent artists as a Senior Consultant for Sundance Institute. Kamal makes art through a family creative practice called Sinclair Futures.

Episode highlight

Born into the arts, Kamal Sinclair has a goal to create a more equitable and enriched future. Listen in to discover her illustrious journey.

Links

Email: Hello@FutureArchitects.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KamalSinclair 

Website: https://futurearchitects.com/ 

Quotes

“Justice is… broccoli... If we design for well-being... it’s not just ‘eat your broccoli’, it’s… a sense of thriving as we design for shared prosperity.” 

“When you consider the person with the least access to what you’re creating as your primary customer, then everybody benefits.”

Takeaways

Childhood incidents:

At the age of 12, Kamal had the opportunity to travel with theatre groups. She says she was changed by the “real sense of what it means to engage with a global community of artists.” 

She had a transformational moment on a rice field in China, thinking back to the violence on her campus back in Los Angeles. She found it futile that there were wars taking place on small matters when “there’s a whole world out here.” 

Groups you were born into and belonged to:

Kamal comes from an arts family. As she puts it, “We had already a great investment in the arts in my family.” 

Kamal had her first brush with arts leadership at the age of 9 in a youth theatre arts group. She went to a high school for the arts in LA, which gave her her first opportunity to create a play from scratch. 

A time I became aware that my way of doing things was cultural and specific to my cultural experience

When Kamal was working at the Woodruff Arts Center, she found it challenging to convince people of the need for the arts.

Kamal once heard a story of gender equality told through the voice of a western feminist woman. That’s when Kamal understood the legacy of inequity in relationships that colonialism left behind, and the blindness of privilege.

Advice to an employer to work with me

Kamal believes that artist residencies should be more inclusive, with intellectual and creative collaboration and consultation. 

More great insights from our guest!

Kamal says that creating a process to mitigate one’s own blind spots in organizational leadership is not easy. She recommends adopting a design for the margins first.

Support the show