Alan & Mali Bacon Put Equity and Care at the Center of the Arts

September 10, 2025

With their cultural group GANGGANG, Malina and Alan Bacon are constructing a brand new mannequin for artwork festivals—one rooted in reparations, relationships, and pleasure.

Malina Simone Bacon and Alan Bacon, artists and directors from Indianapolis, have constructed their careers on the intersection of creativity and repair. The pair, who work inside the overlap between activism and expression, based GANGGANG, a cultural group centered on social justice and artistic fairness.

Amongst its flagship tasks is BUTTER, an annual superb artwork truthful in downtown Indianapolis that has shortly develop into a mannequin for equitable arts programming and a platform for Black artists. Alan and Malina opened as much as Black Enterprise on Aug. 29 about what it meant to construct upon GANGGANG’s mission and to proceed placing creatives in command with the fifth Annual Butter Effective Arts Honest.

Malina “Mali” Bacon co-founded BUTTER alongside her husband, Alan Bacon, and their mission was novel from its conception. GANGGANG invests in tradition and operates with an intentional reparational slant, which, in apply, appears to be like like constructing a good that places fairness and care at its core.

Alan defined, “Butter is the no fee truthful. In contrast to different conventional artwork festivals and entities and organizations, we’re not taking 30, 40, or 50% from artists’ gross sales. A hundred percent of the gross sales go to the artists, again into artists’ palms and households. That’s a special mannequin. We’ve been capable of check that and achieve success.”

That success is measurable. In simply 5 years, greater than $1 million in artwork gross sales has gone on to collaborating artists, together with $192,247 from 104 works bought this yr alone.

He continued, “We’re proud that inside 5 years, we have now over 1,000,000 {dollars} going again into artists’ palms. So, I feel because it pertains to what makes BUTTER totally different–particularly inside this second, if you discuss reparations and what’s fairness, in an effort to actually obtain true fairness, there must be a sacrifice of privilege. And when there’s not that sacrifice of privilege, you then’ve acquired to search out different means to help. BUTTER has been that, you recognize, these means and that microphone to the voice of artists who it’s possible you’ll not have heard of or hear the narrative of their tales and of their artwork.”

Malina added, “Reparational is that BUTTER facilities care. [That’s] unusual within the conventional truthful mannequin. We’re…starting relationships with artists once we invite them into BUTTER, and the relationships don’t finish, you recognize? Centering care is distinct from financial justice and…it feels lots like investing in tradition.”

The outcomes of GANGGANG investing in tradition converse for themself. The numbers mark a brand new milestone for BUTTER, with $1,163,947 in whole paintings gross sales so far, with each greenback going on to the creative creators themselves. That funding is deeply rooted in place. By internet hosting BUTTER yearly in Indianapolis—a metropolis with deep however usually missed Black cultural traditions—the Bacons have redirected nationwide highlight towards an missed Midwest metropolis and proven its anchor to tradition.

“The artists listed here are unbelievable, like I stated, as a result of they’ve been doing it with out anyone noticing. And so, this is a chance for us to point out the world who we’re right here. We’re surprisingly and superbly extra Black than folks know. And so which means we’re extra inventive than folks know, and that we have now music and the humanities and movie greater than folks know. This is a chance to point out the world, that is NAP…and to share our historical past,” Malina shared with BLACK ENTERPRISE.

Alan factors to Indiana Avenue, as soon as an epicenter of jazz and bebop, as proof of the town’s cultural legacy.

“We have now a really wealthy historical past within the arts. Indiana Avenue was the mecca of our arts. It was the nucleus of what would have been Indiana’s Harlem Renaissance. Simply having that sort of historical past, the descendants of these people are nonetheless right here. So we’re carrying the spirit together with us because it pertains to what we’re creating and what we’re capable of show in the present day. However that’s simply a part of why that is vital, simply to have the ability to let folks know the historical past that helps the now, and the way that is going to assist information us for the longer term,” Alan concluded.

Via the entire Black excellence exemplified within the BUTTER Effective Arts truthful, Alan and Mali needed attendees to take only one factor away from the Indianapolis weekend of occasions. The Bacons hope attendees stroll away from BUTTER with greater than admiration for the artwork.

“There’s nonetheless gentle, there’s nonetheless hope, there’s nonetheless pleasure, there’s nonetheless love. That is what it seems like if you middle magnificence, fairness, and tradition. And that is what we’re proposing to cities and to programs and to environments and to paperwork, to every thing, that you may middle magnificence, fairness, and tradition. And it has a consequence on our high quality of life, on our emotions, additionally our metropolis’s financial backside line, and our tourism and our narrative.”