Little Black Pearl Supports Artists And The Community

Haslip – Monica Haslip is the founder of the Little Black Pearl Workshop. Photo credit: Little Black Pearl.
Haslip – Monica Haslip is the founder of the Little Black Pearl Workshop. Photo credit: Little Black Pearl.

Little Black Pearl Supports Artists And The Community

By Tia Carol Jones

Little Black Pearl, located at 1060 East 47th St., has been around for more than 30 years. Monica Haslip is a trained artist, who fell in love with the arts, and it opened a whole new world for her. She opened Little Black Pearl Workshop with the aim to teach arts classes to young people in the community, as well as introducing them to making a living as an artist.

Working for Johnson Publishing Company and BET helped her develop a passion for storytelling and for integrating art and business. She eventually quit her job at BET and started Little Black Pearl as a non-profit in the basement of her house. Back then, Little Black Pearl was focused on providing after school programs for young people.

Little Black Pearl’s tagline is the business of art, focusing on making the connection between creating and teaching how to make a living as artists. Little Black Pearl is one of 200 organizations across Illinois to receive the Healing Illinois grant. The grant is an initiative that helps those organizations address racial disparities and implement impactful programs.

Haslip said receiving the Healing Illinois grant is one of the most important grants she has received because of what it represents. She said the grant was the first time that she as an arts professional felt like she had a tool to talk about racism and her humanity and the importance of the contributions of people of color to this country. She added having the opportunity to talk about commonalities in humanity, while using the platform of Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT) to change policies and systems, it changed the way she did her work at Little Black Pearl. 

“I began to understand how important it was to expand narratives and to speak the truth and to talk about the contributions that people of color made to this country; to use art as a platform to do that and to find ways to keep expanding that through the work that we do,” she said. 

Haslip added that the grant always gave her an opportunity to talk about the importance of wellness, keeping an organization alive for decades, lasting for 30 years, while providing support to the community. She said that some of that longevity has to do with how she takes care of herself and how she views herself in relationship to her contributions. 

She said 30 years in, it became important for Little Black Pearl to ensure the organization was opening doors for other leaders that are doing the same work and need the support to grow their dreams. The Thriving Leaders Center (TLC) is a new initiative designed to support leaders in the creative industries while advancing racial healing.

Haslip said she knows how important it was for her to have support. She said it took a lot of support from a lot of people for her to move from her 2,000 square foot basement to building the 42,000 square foot facility. She said what Little Black Pearl is doing now is making sure it gives the same kind of support to other leaders through the Thriving Leaders Center. 

The Thriving Leaders Center has brought together people in the creative industry and people in the racial healing and wellness industry in a cohort to work on projects to see what happens when those two communities come together. Haslip said the hope is that TLC will elevate the role that the arts has played in affecting change over the years. Little Black Pearl has been doing a lot of work in food justice.

“This is a very challenging moment for those of us who are doing community work, so all of the tools that are connected to racial healing are important because they help us develop practices that strengthen us as leaders,” she said.

For more information about Little Black Pearl, visit www.blackpearl.org.



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