Ringling College of Art and Design recently announced that it was awarded two grants totaling $25,000 from the Community Foundation of Sarasota County to support its Center for Diversity and Inclusion (CDI) and production of CDI’s Narrative Collective Project. The Community Impact and Equity and Access grants reflect the Community Foundation's commitment to enhance programs that care for underrepresented and geographically underserved populations.

The CDI’s Narrative Collective Project is a multidisciplinary, intergenerational, multimedia framework that brings awareness to social justice issues while elevating, celebrating, and raising marginalized voices through the arts, education, and dialogue.

The CDI received an initial $10,000 grant from the McCauley-Brown Fund of the Community Foundation as well as a $15,000 Equity and Access grant supporting the CDI Narrative Collective Project's Violet Stripes, a film which brought together an intergenerational LGBTQ group comprised of Ringling College students and local residents to share stories of their individual journeys.

The $15,000 Equity and Access grant supported the second documentary film undertaking in the Narrative Collective Project, called Warriors of Sarasota: Powerful Women of Color in Sarasota, a multi-part documentary and gallery project featuring the  stories of women of color in Sarasota who are working to better the community and shift systemic oppression and other social injustices within the Sarasota-Manatee communities.