Bringing You in the Space

Our sixth installment features Quanice G. Floyd, with our host Courtney J. Boddie from the Teaching Artistry with Courtney J. Boddie Podcast, who challenges individuals to look beyond anti-racism as just a lens, because people’s lives are at stake. Floyd fights inside and outside the classroom to secure an arts curriculum for every student, especially for Black and Brown students that continually experience hardship as the system displays a lack of compassion.

As Executive Director of Arts Education in Maryland Schools Alliance, Floyd interacts with an array of stakeholders including policy makers, teaching artists and the Maryland State Department of Maryland to achieve equitable education for all. Even before this position, Floyd served as an elementary music teacher, where she codified a progressive multicultural curriculum to encompass all students. However, public school education brought personal and interpersonal systemic and institutional issues. Inside the classroom’s walls she could control the situation but once the students stepped out injustice was thrown on them. To Floyd, the curriculum was eurocentric and whitewashed, excluding people’s stories

Though anti-racism has been in Floyd’s vocabulary since birth, she provides these tips to fight against racism: 

  1. Lean on Your Morals and Do it

  2. Challenge Your Way of Thinking & Question Yourself

  3. Challenge Social Constructs & Normalcy 

These tips may look easy (and should be easy) but are often cambatted against comfortability, which brings up Michael J. Bobbitt recurring quote, “Racism will not end until White people are willing to give up power.” White Supremacy has formed complacent behavior to progress that affects White comfortability. As the old normal catered to White ideals, the new normal must cater to everyone. 

People do not know what a racially just world looks like and due to humans’ fear of the unknown, it can promote a sense of dilbitation. However, if you strip your way of thinking, it allows you to be receptive. Why be afraid of something that will support everyone? Floyd believes that “once we have a racially just world, White people will realize what they were missing this whole time”

Join us next week when Courtney interviews Toya Lillard, a theater director, artist, activist and educator who has directed plays, developed curricula, led advocacy efforts and implemented innovative teaching artist training programs both in and out of our city’s schools.

Quanice G. Floyd is a renaissance woman who wears many capes. Born and raised in NYC, she has spent over a decade in Washington, DC where she has received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Music Education from Howard University and Kent State University respectively. Her passion for arts administration led her to pursue her second Master’s degree in Arts Management at American University and is currently a doctoral student at Drexel University. Quanice was recently appointed as the Executive Director of Arts Education in Maryland Schools Alliance after previously serving as the Director of Learning and Leadership Development at the National Guild for Community Arts Education. She is also the Founder & Director of the Arts Administrators of Color (AAC) Network, an organization committed to empowering artists and arts administrators by advocating for access, diversity, inclusion, and equity in the arts in the DC and Baltimore metropolitan areas. She has also been a public-school music educator where she taught elementary and middle school general music, chorus, band, and orchestra. Quanice serves as a commissioner for the DC Commission for the Arts and Humanities, a member of the National Teaching Artist Advisory Committee, and is an alumna of Fractured Atlas’ Artist Campaign School, the National Guild for Community Arts Education's Leadership Institute (CAELI), ArtEquity's Racial Facilitator Cohort, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Music Educators and Arts Administrators Academy, 4.0 Schools' Essentials Program, and the Arts Education Collaborative’s Leadership Academy. In 2018, Quanice received the Americans for the Arts' American Express Emerging Leader Award.