Black Lunch Table [BLT] is a radical archiving project. Our mission is to build a more complete understanding of cultural history by illuminating the stories of Black people and our shared stake in the world. We envision a future in which all of our histories are recorded and valued. Our archival collections include images, video, audio recordings and transcriptions of conversations centering Black artists and artistic production in the creation of contemporary cultural history.
Collection Description
The Black Lunch Table (BLT) Collection contains 266 hours of recordings documenting conversations between artists of color and between members of the communities within which artists work. These roundtable sessions provide both physical space and allotted time for interdisciplinary and intergenerational discussions, bringing together a diversity of community members and fostering candid conversations. Conversations between artists and amongst the communities within which the artists live and work. The recordings include conversations of the Artists’ Tables, Peoples’ Tables, shared histories, communal struggles and organization, and documents regional dialects and the gathering of communities over food. Founded by Heather Hart and jina valentine as a social practice art project, the collection has grown from unstructured conversations between artists to a multi-decade work that traces not only the work of the artists and their communities, but captures the evolving socioeconomic and political upheavals of the 2000s to today.
The collection includes recordings from fifteen states, parts of Canada, and South Africa. Documentation of the Black Lunch Table art project began in 2005, though the bulk of the digital collection features recorded conversations from 2014 onward. In some cases, transcripts (and partial transcripts) are available, as identified on individual audio pages within the collection. Future additions to the public archive will include event videos and photographs. The roundtable recordings are a rich resource on many topics, such as life as a working artist; social justice; storytelling and family histories; descriptions of schools, education, health care, and community organizations; and discussions of race relations, politics, and significant societal events such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Size
Approximately 150 GB
Abstract
The Black Lunch Table Digital Archive consists of born-digital materials from Chicago-based non-profit arts organization Black Lunch Table's oral history and cultural programming.
Creator
Black Lunch Table
Language
English, Xhosa, Zulu
Restrictions to Access
There are no restrictions to access to the materials in our digital collections, though a significant portion of the full archive is temporarily unavailable for public use due to copyright limitations, additional processing requirements, embargoes, and other restrictions.
Restrictions to Use
Commercial use is prohibited for all materials in this collection.
Copyright Notice
Recording and participant contributions are made available under Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon works non-commercially, as long as the creator is credited and any new creations are made available under identical terms.
Acquisitions Information
Most materials in the collection were created or commissioned by Black Lunch Table founders Heather Hart and jina valentine and transferred to the Black Lunch Table organization upon incorporation in 2019. Most materials in the collection created in 2019 and forward were created or commissioned by the Black Lunch Table organization. Please refer to individual records for any exceptions.
Processing Information
This collection was processed by over 20 BLT staff and contractors.
Scope and Content
The full collection includes documents in the following formats: audio (wav, mp3), video (mp4), text (.doc, .docx, PDF), and images (jpg, tiff, png) collected between 2005 and 2024