We recently connected with Quraysh Ali Lansana and have shared our conversation below.

Quraysh Ali, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of the most important things small businesses can do, in our view, is to serve underserved communities that are ignored by giant corporations who often are just creating mass-market, one-size-fits-all solutions. Talk to us about how you serve an underserved community.

Tri-City Collective serves multiple underserved communities each month through our radio production project, Focus: Black Oklahoma (FBO). The hour-long broadcast is targeted to BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and other marginalized communities across Oklahoma.

Our FBO team is made up of diverse co-hosts, executive and associate producers, and correspondents. BIPOC people tell their stories to and about Oklahomans living in marginalized communities.

Example: During the Covid shutdown, FBO correspondents produced an award-winning series titled Black Plague: Covid in North Tulsa, a historically Black community in the northern section of Tulsa, Oklahoma. To paint the picture of Covid’s impact, the diverse group of correspondents interviewed students, teachers, parents, health care professionals, and social welfare practitioners (food bank, housing solutions, social workers, case managers, etc.). Stories in the series began airing immediately after Tulsa opened back up during the Covid crisis.

Serving underserved communities ematters because historically people from marginalized communities have been presented as criminals or welfare recipients in the mainstream media. It also matters because people who look like them are telling the story.

Quraysh Ali, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I helped launch Tri-City Collective in 2016. As a published poet, I was interested in giving other seasoned educators, activists, and change leaders the chance to use their creative gifts to create diversity and inclusion, and to provide learning and artistic opportunities outside the classroom for youth and adults. These opportunities are executed in many platforms, including but not limited to, radio programming, workshops, art exhibitions, live curated conversations, curriculums, and published written works. One of the most unique things about Tri-City Collective is that the organization is marked by a decentralized system of leadership and a Collective-driven system of decision making. Leadership is in the hands of the Collective and not with one person.

Tri-City Collective’s largest project is Focus: Black Oklahoma (FBO). FBO is a monthly, hour-long news and public affairs program on various topics relevant to the BIPOC communities statewide. Focus: Black Oklahoma features spotlight interviews supported by stories on current topics and events in our BIPOC communities. These topics include news, politics, current affairs, education, law, arts, family, health, relationships, sports, finances, business, spirituality, technology, and more.

Bi-monthly, Tri-City Collective presents Real Talk to the Tulsa community. Real Talk: Voicing the Margins is a series of live curated conversations of critical importance to marginalized communities, including but not limited to: people of color, LGBTQIA+, and economically disadvantaged citizens. Topics this year have included: Why the Anti Semitism?: Kanye and Kyrie, a conversation; Women and Neurodiversity; Love Saves the Day: A Conversation with the Legendary Nicky Siano; and Examining Black Excellence.

As part of Tulsa’s First Friday Arts Crawl in downtown Tulsa, Tri-City Collective plans First Friday Open Studio Sessions. Using a variety of arts media, the sessions feature topics of interest to BIPOC and other marginalized communities.

Black Men In White Coats, a collaboration with Tri-City Collective, seeks to increase the number of black men in the field of medicine by exposure, inspiration, and mentoring. To accomplish this, we are partnering with various medical schools across the country to produce outstanding short documentary videos which bring awareness to this issue that not only affects the black male population, but also the nation as a whole.

Tri-City Collective has written and produced books and curriculum targeted to diverse communities. We are planning to develop a documentary about Black rodeos, provide after-school programming to teach middle- and high-schoolers how to create podcasts, and begin a student version of Real Talk called Teen Talk.

Tri-City Collective and FBO are very proud of the awards we have won for our programming.

Quraysh Ali Lansana served as host and contributing writer for the Emmy award winning documentary from Oklahoma Educational Television Authority that recently won the Oklahoma Association of Broadcasting 2021 Award for Outstanding Achievement in Broadcasting, Television: Civil Discourse and Social Change.

FBO received The DuPont-Columbia Award, which for nearly 80 years has set the standard for audio and video reporting, in broadcast, documentary, and online, for its podcast, Blindspot: Tulsa Burning. In six episodes, Blindspot: Tulsa Burning tells the story of The Tulsa Race Massacre which remains one of the worst incidents of racial terror in U.S. history.

A century ago, Tulsa saw the outbreak of one of the worst incidents of racist violence in American history. The story finally is seeing the light of day. The Hell Came to Tulsa won the 2021 Gold Medal Winner – International Regional Magazine Association. It was written by Tri-City Collective members Quraysh Ali Lansana and Bracken Klar.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Like many other businesses, Focus: Black Oklahoma (FBO) had to adjust many things about its programming and processes during the Covid crisis. What demonstrates the resilience of FBO is that correspondents rose to the challenge during the shut-down by producing an award-winning series titled Black Plague: Covid in North Tulsa. To paint the picture of Covid’s impact on this historically Black community, the diverse group of correspondents interviewed students, teachers, parents, health care professionals, and social welfare practitioners (food bank, housing solutions, social workers, case managers, etc.) The series began airing immediately after Tulsa re-opened. These stories gave listeners a bird’s eye view of how the pandemic affected people of color and those who are economically disadvantaged much more severely than it did their counterparts in other areas of the city.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Educating youth is one part of our mission that specifically drives our creative journeys. We believe teaching creativity is the key to preparing youth for an unknown future. By the time high schoolers are mid-career professionals, 80-90 percent of jobs they will have do not exist today. You cannot prepare them for those jobs, but you can teach them how to be creative problem solvers, teach them how to teach themselves (metacognition), how to set themselves up for success, critical thinking, ability to identify a problem, how to ideate solutions, presentation skills, leadership skills, communication skills, and how to work in groups.

A lot of students are still experiencing education as they did in the 1920’s when students learned from the Henry Ford assembly line preparatory experiences. We think schooling should have evolved to experiential learning, project-based learning, things that involve the student in real-world activities or solving problems that actually exist. Work designed to prepare students to be released into the world as opposed to just receiving a grade from a teacher.

Decisions in education should be more data-based, research oriented, evidence driven. and culturally aware. Teaching should be more interdisciplinary and cross functional. When students learn to de-silo, they are better able to see the world in a broader way. Instead of having tools that are siloed in one specific area of academics, students can be better prepared for college, career, or life when teachers use an interdisciplinary approach.

When I engaged underperforming students with these creative endeavors (i.e., design thinking, universal solutions), giving them real-world solutions, they lit up. I respected them enough to give them an honest shot at a real world problem. With support from me–their teacher–they started seeing themselves as shapers of their own destinies. The students came up with a solution and presented their ideas to the Tulsa Public Schools. Board members changed the way school was delivered during distance learning (Covid). Those students learned they had power in themselves to come up with meaningful solutions for the things that mattered to them.

Contact Info:

• Website: tricitycollective.com
• Instagram: tricitycollectiveok and focusblackok
• Facebook: Tri City Collective and Focus: Black Oklahoma
• Linkedin: Tri-City Collective and Focus Black Oklahoma
• Twitter: @trctycollective and @focusblackok
• Youtube: @TriCityColletiveOK

Image Credits
Photos were taken by Jamie Glisson.