The Black Student Union turned the Mandela Room into a creative universe on Thursday at “The Living Magazine” — a banquet that blended music, art and poetry to celebrate Black culture and identity.

The event was a part of the organization’s “Black Museum” series and centered around the core artistic aspects of BSU’s Vanguard Creative Team, Binghamton University’s only Black publication. They created a walk-through edition of their magazine through multiple performances and a fashion show.

“Every other year, we do something called Black Museum,” said Jamirah Hamilton, president of BSU and a senior majoring in biology. “This year, we decided to do a different rendezvous on Black Museum, a play on it. So we brought it, and we put it, and we named it Living Magazine. Every year is very different. In the spring semester with the Black Student Union, you have seen a hair show, Black Museum and today was the first-ever Living Magazine.”

Doors opened at 8 p.m., allowing attendees to find their seats, chat with one another and sip on sparkling apple cider provided to each table. Dinner menus included multiple types of wings, like sweet chili and jerk BBQ, sides of mac and cheese, rasta pasta, rice and peas and various drink options.

“The Living Magazine” aimed to challenge preexisting stereotypes about Blackness, inviting attendees to step beyond imposed definitions, rewrite the narrative and “experience a fuller, softer, and truer version of the Black self.”

Much of “The Living Magazine” was imagined by Aiyana George, publications coordinator for BSU and a senior majoring in cinema. As a student looking to go into a creative career, she expressed that members of the Black community are often deterred from pursuing the arts because of its financial uncertainties and stereotypes around Black identity.

“This event was kind of giving recognition to the people who are still pushing through the boundaries and the barriers that keep us in, like a mental box, and helping us expand out and be more creative and our artistic self,” George said.

Following E-Board introductions and acknowledgments, the emcees moved into page one of the event, centered around song and poetry called “We Speak, We Heal.” Performers included Undivided, Binghamton University’s multicultural R&B singing group, individual singers and the BSU Vanguard, who shared a poem, taking turns to stand up and recite its lines.

“Vanguard is a program that goes under noticed because it’s a subgroup of BSU,” Iyannah Rivers, educational coordinator for BSU and a sophomore majoring in global public health, said. “And I definitely hope that people learn to grow to appreciate that program, because it’s the only Black art creative on this PWI campus. We definitely got to take advantage of spaces that are made directly for us.”

The next portion, “My Body, My Art” — a dance section featuring styles like African, Modern and Jazz — depicted the healing process, allowing for more dynamic movement to follow on page two. X-Fact’r Step Team represented the University, while Miss Divine Mustang, a dance team from SUNY Morrisville, and One World Dance Team from Syracuse University, made appearances as well.

A 20-minute intermission followed, where attendees turned in their menu cards and had food served to their tables. People took advantage of the photo booth on the left-hand side of the room, which allowed guests to leave with photo strips documenting the night.

What followed dinner was by far the liveliest portion of the event, allowing participants to strut down the center of the Mandela Room in the fashion show page titled “The Canvas Itself.”

The aim was for students to express themselves through their clothing, ranging from flowing, translucent blue shawls to black leather outfits. Each walk, curated individually for each performer to express their own unique selves, garnered roars of applause from the audience.

“I feel like you need art, and you also need the audience,” George said. “And I feel like that makes it go around, to see the people’s expression, to see how happy people get for certain dance moves, for certain singers, for certain fashion poses. I think it’s really the people, and seeing them enjoy themselves always puts a smile on my face.”

At the end of the night, scholarships and awards were given out, including a Communal Canvas Award, an Unscripted Identity Award and a Living Page Scholarship.

The Communal Canvas Award recognizes a student organization working to create a sanctuary for “healing, cultural pride and radical affirmation.” It was given to SOUL, an organization focused on mental health for people of color. The Unscripted Identity Award was presented to Elodie Agath, a junior majoring in biology.

“It’s a long journey being the Black Student Union’s president and being a member of the Black Student Union in itself, because we hold a plethora of events, starting from Meet the Culture Week to Black History Month, where there’s absolutely no day unseen or unrecognized,” Hamilton said. “So getting to this point, the whole entire show just looked that up. I was in a tunnel vision state, I got to see how hard my entire executive board worked. I got to see the community come up and show out, and I got to see everybody who poured into the show have fun. So I think the highlight was just everybody’s faces smiling.”