What happens when an almost 30-year-old nonprofit performing arts organization called Barking Legs decides to step beyond Dodds Avenue in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and creates a global arts community via Zoom recordings during a pandemic?

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Cultural Cross Ties, that’s what!

In November 2020, after Barking Legs Theater had been shut down for eight months due to Covid-19, artists were ready to engage in cultural conversations that would stimulate a global understanding, challenge us artistically, build cultural relationships, and inspire artistic collaborations. Naturally, we turned to our Sister Cities Association in Chattanooga and decided to pair four artists from our Sister City in Givatayim, Israel with four artists in Chattanooga for our first year in creating a documentary of their journeys.

Every year, we will continue the conversation and art-making with Chattanooga’s other Sister Cities, including Tono, Japan; Hamm, Germany; Wuxi, China; Nizhny Tagil, Russia; Gangneung, Republic of Korea; and Wolfsburg, Germany. This project is inspired by President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vision of creating partnerships with foreign cities to develop friendships, deepening cultural understanding, and encouraging world peace. We believe in the Sister Cities Association’s mission of creating global relationships based on cultural, educational, information, and trade exchanges. We want to encourage innovation and prosperity throughout Chattanooga by strengthening relationships built upon this system which began in 1956.

Barking Legs is grateful to have the support of The Osborne Foundation, Humanities Tennessee, ArtsBuild, CoPAC, Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport, and private donors for Cultural Cross Ties. Through the arts, we are able to communicate the difficult, important, and beautiful things in life.

Some of the guiding questions for Cultural Cross Ties:

  • How has COVID been influencing your creative process?

  • How have you been isolated from and/or connected to others during COVID?

    • Locally/Nationally/Internationally

    • Artistically/Emotionally/Personally

  • How do you perceive global citizenship as contemporary artists?

  • How do you imagine us connecting through our Sister Cities?

  • How does working with an international partner increase understanding of one another culturally, racially, and artistically?

  • How are our cities similar and different?

  • How do our cities solve our unique and difficult issues, especially during a pandemic?

  • How do we learn from one another and broaden our sense of global community?

  • What outcomes might you imagine through this project?


Donations for Cultural Cross Ties Project


Cultural Cross Ties is funded in part by a grant from Humanities Tennessee, an independent affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.