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Choose954 Podcast Episode #82 With Cathleen Dean


Evan Snow: And welcome back to another episode of the Choose 954 podcast, episode 82, with local film producer, Film Festival producer, and executive director of the Arts here at the YMCA, Kathleen Dean, at the LA Lee Mizell Community Center. It's a mouthful, but I'm glad we got it. I'm glad to be here. If you didn’t know about Choose 954, myself, Evan Snow, and my business partner Mr. Andrew Martino started this social movement to cultivate culture and community here in Broward County, where I'm very proud to be born and raised, in an effort to keep people informed about all the great things going on within the arts, culture, and community-building space. The point of the podcast is to connect you with interesting people like her, who are doing important things in the community. There's a lot of important things going on that you're going to find out about and a lot of new initiatives and new spaces.

So without much further ado, thank you very much for taking the time.


Kathleen Dean: Thank you for having me on.


Evan Snow: My pleasure. Why don’t you tell us just a little bit about yourself at a high level?


Kathleen Dean: Sure. I was born and raised in the Bronx, New York, but I have roots here in South Florida. My dad was born and raised in Hallandale Beach, Florida.


Evan Snow: Nice.


Kathleen Dean: I moved here to be close to him 20 years ago. I am the executive director of arts and theater performance at the LA Lee YMCA Mizell Community Center. In my own right, I am a filmmaker and a photographer. I taught in the community for many years. I also produced the Miami Fort Lauderdale 48-Hour Film Project, which is an annual filmmaking competition where teams of people get together and make a short film. It’s become a much-loved annual community event, so I’m happy to continue to produce that and happy to have brought it here to the LA Lee YMCA Mizell Community Center.


Evan Snow: Amen.


Kathleen Dean: I’m an Emmy award-winning filmmaker.


Evan Snow: That’s right. Well deserved.


Kathleen Dean: Thank you. I just won an Emmy for my documentary "Wade In The Water: Drowning in Racism." It’s about the historical, cultural, and spiritual connection people of African descent have always had with the water. It also explores the protests that took place here in Fort Lauderdale to desegregate the beaches and swimming pools.


Evan Snow: Amazing. We’re going to share the link for people to access it online. What platforms is it available on?


Kathleen Dean: It’s not available yet. We’re still doing festivals and private screenings, so if anyone would like to see it, they can contact me, and we can arrange for a screening. I use it for community outreach and engagement to promote water safety and drowning prevention, which is really important here in our community where we’re surrounded by water.


Evan Snow: Amen. And everywhere, people should learn how to swim. It’s become my personal mission to increase the number of people who actually know how to swim.


Kathleen Dean: Yes, and through film, through art, powerful storytelling has the ability to convey important messages like this to educate people. It’s all part of the organization I work for, a place where many people learn how to swim. We’re all about water safety and drowning prevention here. We do wonderful events, offer classes, and it’s a great place to bring the family to learn how to swim or just enjoy our pool.


Evan Snow: Amen. We’re going to invite you to join us here at the Y as Kathleen is going to be our next speaker at AAF Creative Zen, our monthly breakfast lecture series—like a mini TED Talk. She’ll be speaking on Friday, December 9th, sharing her full story. The doors open at 8:30, the talk starts at 9, and we’re out of here by 10. If you’re worried about missing an hour of work, we completely understand. We have a full list of truthful reasons you can tell your boss or employer about why you might miss a few minutes in the morning, gaining valuable insights, inspiration, and potentially connections that you can bring back to your team and company. We’ll put that in the show notes and on the event page as well.


But before we get there, for those who are curious, how did you initially get started in this crazy world of art and filmmaking?


Kathleen Dean: I think my first dabble in art was as a photographer in high school. I took a photography class and fell in love with it. That was when we were still using film and developing in the darkroom—it was just pretty amazing. I loved the principles of photography, playing with light and composition, and I just fell in love with it. Later, I fell in love with storytelling, inspired by watching great movies. One that really inspired me was "Daughters of the Dust," by African-American director Julie Dash. It tells the story of the Gullah Geechee culture off the coast of South Carolina. It was visually stimulating, a great story about culture and history, and it really inspired me to dabble in filmmaking.


Evan Snow: I love to hear that. You’ve been in film now for a few years and have been an influential and impactful member of the film community. How have you witnessed the evolution of the film scene and industry to the current state of affairs here in 2022 in Broward?


Kathleen Dean: It’s changed a lot. As the cost of equipment has come down, it’s opened up the possibility for people who don’t have a huge budget to become storytellers. It’s changed so much. People who probably wouldn’t have been able to afford an expensive camera and film processing can now get a digital camera that shoots great high-definition or even 4K or 8K video and use inexpensive editing software to learn filmmaking and tell their stories. We just have so many more amazing stories that I see as the producer of the 48-Hour Film Project over the last decade. It’s been really amazing, and the quality of filmmaking has really increased too.


Evan Snow: Amen. We’re excited about the future launch of the Fort Lauderdale Studios and glad to have welcomed our stellar new film commissioner, Sandy Leiderman. We’re also excited to announce the launch of a film committee with AAF, the American Advertising Federation, which helps support Creative Zen. We’re going to share more information on that on the morning of Kathleen’s talk on December 9th. For those who aren’t familiar with the AAF, it’s a membership-based organization that advocates, lobbies, and brings together folks within the advertising and marketing space. They work on behalf of agencies and creatives to advance industry opportunities, and we’re excited to extend these resources to film as well. We’ll have more information on that on December 9th.


For those not familiar with the Y and who haven’t been here before, could you tell us a little bit about what you do here and what the Y provides, and the importance it serves to the community?


Kathleen Dean: I’d love to. We are sitting in the brand new LA Lee YMCA Mizell Community Center, located in the heart of historic Sistrunk in Fort Lauderdale. This was the historically Black community during the days of segregation. There was a YMCA here a few blocks down the street, but the Y, along with some wonderful community leaders, including Commissioner McKenzie, thought it was something that would be a game changer for this community. We had our grand opening on May 20th. We’re a 65,000 square foot building with four stories, retail space on the front end, a daycare, and a healthy living center on the second floor with state-of-the-art exercise equipment. As you exercise, you’re looking out on a wall of windows from the floor to the ceiling at the treetops, bathed in natural sunlight. I can’t think of a more exciting place to work out. We have an amazing basketball court and a swimming pool, which was really important to the community. Water safety and drowning prevention is one of the tenets of the YMCA. A lot of people have learned to swim here, and a lot of people can come here and learn how to swim. We also have water aerobics.


We are sitting in the Victory Black Box Theater, where I usually am when you come to the LA Lee YMCA. This is my baby. I helped put this together with a team of great people. The leaders at the Y, in their infinite wisdom, thought it was really important to bring back a theatrical space for the community. We have this space for bringing plays, film screenings, community conversations, whatever you can conceive in this creative Black Box space. We’re here for the community. It’s a 200-seat theater that can be rearranged in any way—round situation, tables, café style, or theater style. We have a lighting grid and top-of-the-line equipment. Our sound system is amazing—it will blow you away.

On our fourth floor, we have a partnership with Broward College. They offer a program called Broward UP, which includes certificate programs that enable people to learn a skill and go right to work. They also offer GED classes there.


Evan Snow: What else would you like the community to know about the space and what’s available?


Kathleen Dean: We have many spaces available for rent. We have two rooftop areas, an art gallery, and we’re looking for partnerships with artists who want to put on shows, whether it’s poetry, spoken word, music, comedy, or improv. We have a beautiful space where we can make all of that happen. If you’re interested in renting, you can go to our website and contact us or come in for a tour. We’ve got a really great engagement team downstairs that will bring you on a tour and share the rich history of this community, which is also captured by local artists and exists throughout the building in the form of art installations.


Evan Snow: Amen. It’s a brand-new space—I can still smell the fresh paint. If someone wanted to join for an event, are there any good events coming up that you’d like to mention?


Kathleen Dean: We do a creative meetup here on the second Thursday, and we’re also doing a Black Archive film series matinee where we ask people in the community to select a film they want to watch together. We watch it and then have a discussion. It’s been a lot of fun. We’re ending our last one with "Crooklyn." You can go on our Instagram, which is @victorybbtymca, to get the schedule for the film screenings, but they generally happen on the second Monday of the month. Our creative meetups are inspiring, and we also do a program called "What’s in the Box?" That’s our arts talk show program, which I started while I was at our corporate office waiting for this building to open. It was a good way to start building an audience and getting the community aware of what was coming and what could take place in this amazing space.

This month, on December 21st, we’re featuring some artists who do drumming, so we’re calling it our Winter Solstice Drum Celebration and inviting everyone to come and be part of the show. It’s going to be fantastic.


Evan Snow: Nice. And it’ll be right here in the theater?


Kathleen Dean: Yes, right here in the theater.


Evan Snow: Amazing. It really is an amazing space—you’ll get to see it for yourself if you come and join us for Creative Zen on December 9th or any of the upcoming events. There are also some very interesting art exhibits coming in the new year as well—very exciting times here. I’ll do my best to share these through Choose 954 and through the various sites we interact with to help extend the reach so more people know about the resources here at the Y. It’s a very resourceful and powerful place.


Kathleen Dean: Absolutely. I encourage people to become members. A YMCA membership gives you so much—you have access to the swimming pool, classes, personal trainers, exercise facilities, and the basketball court. It’s definitely worth the investment.


Evan Snow: What does a membership run, off hand?


Kathleen Dean: I don’t know the exact numbers, but we have an awesome membership team that would be happy to go over all of that information. Actually, one of the guys from our membership team is going to speak at the Creative Zen, and we’re also going to offer a tour after the talk as well on Friday, December 9th, so you can tour the space, find out more about all the offerings here from the Y, and also find out about the AAF Film Committee that we’re very excited to have launching.


Evan Snow: We’re glad to connect any interested filmmakers, producers, or anyone in the creative space looking for a venue. We get outreach all the time—"Where can I do this?" "Where can I do that?" I couldn’t think of a finer, newer, state-of-the-art venue than this. I mean, I don’t think it exists.


Kathleen Dean: Yeah, this is—I'm not just saying this because I work here—but it really is a fabulous space. We have state-of-the-art equipment, and I don’t think anyone would be disappointed. Coming in the new year, we’re going to be launching a series of programming called "Victory After Dark," so it’ll be a place to come have fun and party too.


Evan Snow: Nice.


Kathleen Dean: And there’s phenomenal views, unobstructed, from the rooftop.


Evan Snow: I hear it’s spectacular.


Kathleen Dean: It’s the best view of Fort Lauderdale that I’ve seen. It’s an unobstructed view—you can see the whole Fort Lauderdale skyline from our fourth-floor rooftop in one direction, and if you look in the other direction, you can see the guitar at the Hard Rock. It’s amazing. This is where we are located on Sistrunk, and it gives you that full panorama view, which is super unique. We’re super glad to have not only this space here serving its purpose in the community, but I think I can speak for everyone in saying that we’re super glad to have you—a long-time local legend supporting the arts and specifically the film industry and the film scene here—anchoring this place. It really is impactful, and we want to do our best to support you so you can continue making an even bigger impact and changing more lives. There have been so many great people who have come through, not only YMCA’s, but also Sistrunk. A lot of people don’t know Black Violin came out of here, among numerous others from the Dillard Arts program. We’re really excited for the future of what’s to come here and encourage you to log on to social media or the website to find out more. You can always follow Choose954 for new updates and events.


Evan Snow: We’re glad to continue working with the city of Hollywood to lead free tours of the downtown Hollywood Art Walk every third Saturday night of the month at 7 and 9 PM, right after the free tour of the Downtown Hollywood Mural Project led by the curator and project manager, Jill Weisberg, at 6 PM. That’s the third Saturday night every month. The only other thing I’d say to save the date for, coming up, is the fifth annual Fort Lauderdale Art and Design Week—a self-guided discovery tour of the arts, taking you through all the arts organizations and institutions we know and love throughout Greater Fort Lauderdale and Broward County for one week of the arts. Right now, there's something going on just down the road in Miami—Art Basel and Miami Art Week. Maybe over a million people come to visit it, providing upwards of potentially over a billion-dollar economic impact to Miami, specifically for the arts.


What if we had that impact here in Broward County? I don’t think anyone can argue the impact that Art Basel has made on the art scene in Miami—for better and for worse, of course, but we won’t get into the semantics of that. The arts have a powerful way of transforming communities, and that’s what we’re trying to do here with Fort Lauderdale Art and Design Week. We don’t charge anyone to participate—submit an event to us, and we’ll list it on the calendar and in all our series of promotions on social media, advertisements, and so on. To find out more, you can log on to ftladw.com or find us on your social media. We’ll be posting on Choose954, just trying to give you more reasons to choose the 954.


That leads us to our final question, which we always like to ask—why do you choose the 954?


Kathleen Dean: I love everything about it. I don’t think there’s any place I’d rather live. I live in Hollywood.


Evan Snow: Nice.


Kathleen Dean: I’m seven minutes to the airport, five minutes to the beach. I’ve got a thriving downtown area with an abundance of amazing options for fine dining, a beautiful arts park, and then the history. Once you peel back the layers and learn about the different communities, it’s just an amazing place to be, to connect with a community that cares about art and culture, and to strive to make things better. I’m happy to be here in the 954, and I wouldn’t choose any other place to live.


Evan Snow: Amen. I moved to Hollywood last year as well, so I’m very glad to live there. Great supporters of the arts—the Art Walk is now in its 16th year running, so it’s the longest-running art walk in Broward County.


Kathleen Dean: It is.


Evan Snow: Wow. We’ve got a couple of cool things coming up within Art Week. We’re working on a first-of-its-kind Hollywood Artist Open Studio Day during Fort Lauderdale Art and Design Week, in partnership with the Hollywood Art and Culture Center and curator Megan Kent. We’re going to have a map, and on Saturday, January 28th, we’ll have public-facing studios and private studios where artists have studios in their homes. You’ll have to request access to get the addresses of artist homes for privacy and security. We’re going to have a kickoff reception and tour of the Hollywood Art and Culture Center the night before, on Friday, January 27th, led by curator Megan Kent. We’ll have a nice little party too—they currently have the Florida Biennial up, so she’ll take us through the exhibit, and we’ll distribute the maps there that night as well. The Art Walk also falls at the beginning of the week on Saturday, January 21st, so you can check us out then. We have a lot of great events, potentially over 100 this year, for the fifth annual Art and Design Week. It’s really growing and serving our mission of highlighting and supporting all the arts and culture institutions, organizations, and artists that we know and love throughout the year, but for one week of the arts—engaging with events, taking photos, using the hashtag, telling the story, and telling their friends to tell a friend. Hopefully, places like the Frank in Pembroke Pines, the Bailey Arts Contemporary Center, BACA, the Coral Springs Museum of Art, the Miramar Cultural Center, and the Hollywood Art and Culture Center—all deserving of the arts—will be highlighted and showcased. I think we’re doing a good job of that, and we’re glad to include the Black Box Theater as well. We’ll look to get some programs in the gallery space too.


Kathleen Dean: We have a gallery space on our second floor called the "I Have a Dream" wall. We’ll be using your hashtag too.


Evan Snow: Amen. Some very promising exhibits are coming in 2023. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me—I’m an open book at EvanSnow. I love to hear why you choose 954. We hope to see you Friday, December 9th. Doors open at 8:30, talk starts at 9, and we’ll be out of here by maybe 10:15 with the tour. If you need something to tell your boss, feel free to reach out, and I’ll give you a nice list. We appreciate you tuning in and your support of the arts. Have a good one.

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