Ivy Tech Community College in Kokomo will host its annual “Doing the Dream” program on Thu., Feb. 6, but there has been a change in the agenda. This year’s event will feature prominent “artivist” Gina Belafonte as its keynote speaker.
Belafonte agreed to be the featured speaker at the event following an unfortunate emergency that caused the previously scheduled speaker, Sonia Sanchez, to step aside.
Belafonte is an award-winning producer, director, actress, educator, and freedom activist, and her work is representative of Doing the Dream’s 2025 theme, “The Art that Moved the Movement.” She will share her experiences as an “artivist” who uses art as a tool to communicate messages of hope and civic and cultural engagement.
The youngest daughter of singer, actor and activist Harry Belafonte, she has spent her life carrying on her father’s legacy as a close confidant of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. She will speak on the topic “Celebrating History Through the Lens of Art, Activism and the Legacy of Harry Belafonte.”
“Art has a unique way of opening hearts and minds,” said Belafonte. “Giving audiences an opportunity to see themselves reflected in the art itself, art not only shows the world as it is but as it could be.”
Ivy Tech’s “Doing the Dream” banquet takes place Thu., Feb. 6, beginning at 6 p.m. at Ivy Tech’s Kokomo campus, 1815 E. Morgan St. in Hingst Hall.