A Musical Experience for Healing Communities

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About

The goal of Union: the Musical is nothing less than the healing of our communities.

Through its creative performance, it inspires audiences with the story of the Sanitation Worker’s Strike of 1968; Martin Luther King Jr.’s last campaign and one of the defining moments in American democracy. Through customized community engagement it invites audiences to continue to transform individually and collectively for a more perfect union in our own time and in our own communities.

A project of Clayborn Temple, Union extends the work of healing across the lines of race and class beyond the historic space where the production was conceived.

BRING UNION TO YOUR COMMUNITY

About Clayborn Temple

Clayborn Temple is more than a building with a significant past.

It is a place with a living present; a place being renewed for a transformative future as a hub for culture, community and racial and economic equity…a place where all are welcome to love, heal and authentically thrive.

Our vision is to see historic Clayborn Temple reborn as a hub of personal healing, relational restoration, artistic production, social innovation, economic justice, and community transformation.

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“Seeing my children re-enact my father’s story as a sanitation worker  filled me with pride and hope.”

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Story

In the Spring of 1968, the sanitation workers of Memphis, Tennessee went on strike.

This strike, occasioned both by the tragic deaths of two of their fellow workers and the desperate need for humane working conditions, began merely as a local matter.

And yet, in ways that few could have foreseen, it became a defining moment in the ongoing American struggle toward a more perfect union, transforming the Sanitation Workers’ Strike into a movement of singular importance—both for its own time, and for ours.

Bring Union to Your City
Kristen Adele

Associate Producer, Co-Director

Kristen Adele, Associate Producer; Co-Director

“The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.” The words from Toni Cade Bambara guide Kristen Adele Calhoun’s work as a producer, artmaker and organizer. Kristen is the founding Program Director of Arts in a Changing America and previously served as a consultant for the Arts & Culture portfolio of the Ford Foundation. She is a co-producer for InterFest, an intersectional arts and ideas festival that began at the Harlem School of the Arts and will have its Colorado premiere in 2019. She is an assistant editor for the new edition of Contemporary Plays by Women of Color and her play, Canfield Drive, about Ferguson, Missouri and the murder of Mike Brown (commissioned by 651 Arts in Brooklyn and The St. Louis Black Repertory Theatre) had its world premiere in January 2019 in St. Louis, MO. A native of Dallas, Texas, she is a graduate of the University of North Texas (BFA) and the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University (MFA). www.KristenAdele.net

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Sho Baraka

Associate Producer, Co-Writer

Sho Baraka - Associate Producer, Co-Writer

After being educated at Tuskegee University and the University of North Texas, where he studied Television/Film, Anthropology, and Public Administration, Sho Baraka has spent the last decade traveling the world (5 continents, nearly 20 countries) as a recording artist, culture curator, and activist. His oversees activism has ranged from race relations in South Africa to establishing musical cohorts in Indonesia. Sho is a three-time Billboard charting, award-nominated (Stellar, Dove) artist, founding member of internationally known hip-hop group ‪116 Clique‬, and founder of Forth District and The And Campaign. Currently, Sho is combining his artistic platform with his academic pursuits, contributing a unique perspective to both arenas, while attempting to raise the culture. In addition to regularly traveling for concerts, speaking engagements, and consultation projects, Sho serves as the Executive Director of Terminus Collective, a Creative network that is active in creative and civic innovation. Sho lives in Atlanta, GA with Patreece, his wife of fifteen years, and their three children; one daughter and two sons.

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Art Hooker
Executive Producer, Social Designer

Art Hooker - Executive Producer, Social Designer

Art Hooker is the founder and Principal of Hope Lab Inc a social design and transmedia studio. He has had the opportunity to consult, design and produce campaigns, films, learning programs and community engagement strategies for leading brands such as Herman Miller, Citi Bank, Verizon, The White House, The American Heart Association and a host of local and global for profit and not for profit entities. Informed by over 10 years of qualitative research on 5 continents in the areas of passion, creativity, and movements, he partners with cities, organizations and individuals who desire to replenish the metropolitan regions of the world through leadership development, learning, media and business innovation. Art has won numerous awards in the areas of film, theater, speaking and learning design.

Growing up with four-time Grammy Award Winning Blues Legend John Lee Hooker as a great uncle, Art has a unique perspective of how the arts can affect culture globally and locally. Art is celebrating his 20th year of marriage to the love of his life Natasha. Art and Natasha currently live in Dallas, Texas where they are raising their two daughters Khloe (9) and Kaitlin (5).

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Justin Merrick

Associate Producer, Co-Director

Justin Merrick - Associate Producer, Co-Director

Singer, songwriter, actor, director, producer and most recently named Executive Director of the Center for Transforming Communities of Memphis, TN, Justin Merrick is excited to bring vision and life to the musical Union. Born with the gift to connect with the soul of an audience, Justin Merrick transcends genre and medium to inspire spiritual rejuvenation. He is a meteorite of talent, a Renaissance man driven by his commitment towards a future of justice and love for all people. As recent Director of Stax Music Academy, Justin's body of work integrates hip-hop, soul music and the contemporary voice of Millennial-Memphis to create fresh perspective on the iconic Memphis sound. His Grammy nomination for his work at Stax in cultivating the next generation of Soul-Communicators stretched his artistry into the realm of Education. The Memphis Flyer, in 2015 awarded Justin 20 under 30 most notable leaders in the city of Memphis. In 2016, Justin was formally recognized by the City of Memphis as an Ambassador of Memphis Music and a headliner for Memphis Music Festival of the Netherlands. His powerhouse vocals coupled with his portfolio of accolades, ministry, speaking engagements and performances across America, UK, Spain, Germany, Middle East and East Africa has opened doors for Justin to touch the lives of multiple generations across the international stage. He has been featured in Ebony, Black Enterprise and Forbes magazines and his work highlighted on NBC’s Today Show, from the Lincoln and Kennedy Centers to the White House and Royal Albert Hall. He is the winner of several national competitions including the Leontyne Price Voice Competition, Debbie Allen’s Triple Threat FameUS and Honda All Star music competition. As artist in residence for Watts Justin has served several terms on the Memphis Grammy’s Board and currently serves as a chair for racial reconciliation, care creation within the National Episcopal Diocese.
Justin has a Bachelors from Hampton University and a Certificate in Nonprofit Management and and Masters in Opera with an emphasis in Composition and Conducting from Indiana University (Bloomington).

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Gregory Thompson

Executive Producer, Co-Writer

Gregory Thompson - Executive Producer, Co-Writer

Gregory Thompson is a scholar, writer, teacher, artist, and producer who works at the intersection of moral imagination and social change. Currently he serves as Vice President for Creative Strategy at CultureShift Creative, a Cultural Strategy Firm that produces story-centered strategies for social healing and as Managing Director of Historic Clayborn Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. Before this Gregory served as a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, as CEO of the Thriving Cities Group, a Civic-Design Firm based in Charlottesville, Virginia, as Executive Director of New City Commons, a consulting team that supports faith-based communities in the work of serving their cities, and as Senior Pastor of Trinity Church in Charlottesville, Virginia. Gregory is active in national conversations surrounding race and equity in America and holds both an MA and a PhD from the University of Virginia where he wrote his dissertation on Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Anasa Troutman
Executive Producer, Cultural Strategist

Anasa Troutman - Executive Producer, Cultural Strategist

A cultural strategist, writer, and producer, Anasa Troutman has dedicated her work to the importance of culture and the power of love. As founder & CEO of her company, Culture Shift Creative, and Executive Director or Clayborn Temple, Anasa works to build and execute strategies for artists and organizations that are aligned with her vision of a loving world and her belief in creativity as a pathway to personal, community and global transformation.

Based in Memphis, Tennessee, Anasa awakened to her life’s work during her time in Atlanta, Georgia, attending Spelman College and founding Groovement/EarthSeed Music, a successful record label and collective of young, cutting edge, visionary musicians, performers, and writers.

Best known for her work as strategic advisor and executive producer for long time friend India.Arie, Anasa recently stepped into leadership as the first Executive Director of the historic Clayborn Temple in Memphis. Anasa has provided strategic and creative support in many important cultural, political and social justice spaces; she has designed and facilitated national learning exchanges, served as a consulting producer, trained and transitioned the leadership of organizations to integrate cultural strategy as a community organizing tactic, produced tours & festivals, curated artistic programming, shepherded many artists and creative thinkers through the process of manifesting their own creative vision and has been invited twice to the White House by the Obama administration to advise on cultural policy.

Anasa works hard to embody her strong belief in creativity as a transformative practice and engages art making as a pathway to her own healing and spiritual expansion. While she experiments with many forms of creative practice, her deepest love is writing. She creates stories, songs and essays that reflect her unique point of view, commitment to loving kindness and thirst for beauty and adventure.

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