Our Creating Change Conversation Series is back for our 5th season! These conversations really are the heart of what we do here, because each group of panelists helps all of us to think through: HOW DO WE MAKE THE ARTS MORE EQUITABLE, MORE ACCESSIBLE, MORE RELEVANT, AND MORE IMPACTFUL IN OUR COMMUNITIES?
Join us Monday, August 28th at 7pm ET . Panelists (full bios and headshots coming soon):
LUIS ROBERTO HERRERA is currently a South Florida based Colombian-American playwright with a B.F.A. in Acting from the University of Florida and an M.F.A. in Playwriting from The New School. He was a resident playwright in the GREENHOUSE Residency at SPACE on Ryder Farm and a Fellow at Athena Theatre in 2019. He has had work produced at theFRIGID New York Fringe Festival, the Atlanta Fringe Festival, The Chain Theater, Trinity Theatre Company, and Theatre & Co. . His full-length plays include; Poolside Glow, Born Still, SAA(not that one), AS I EAT THE WORLD, and Welcome We Are Now Closed. He was most recently a part of the LatinX Playwrights Circle 2022 Mentorship Intensive, is a member of the 2022-2023 HOMEGROWN Playwright Residency with City Theatre, and his play Poolside Glow was an official selection for the 2023 Valdez Theatre Conference Playlab. Also check out Writing Solo PWFF workshop with Luis on Aug. 14!
JuPong Lin makes socially-engaged art, poetry, and ceremony to honor our Beloved Earth and all her critters. Ghosts of her born-place, Taiwan, haunt her and keep her connected with her ancestors in the work of ending colonialism and repairing our relationships with our homelands. Currently living in Nonotuck/Nipmuc/Pocumtuc Land, known by its colonial name of Amherst, Massachusetts, JuPong’s writes poetry for the Writing the Land project, works for food and land justice with the Hampshire County Food Policy Council and the Land Justice Affinity Group. As the Director of the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts program at Goddard College, JuPong founded a concentration in Decolonial Arts Praxis. JuPong is writing a creative dissertation that explores how socially-engaged arts, deep listening and walking with the land can foster interspecies and intergenerational healing. Please direct donations to Visioning B.E.A.R. Circle intertribal Coalition: https://visioningbear.org/support/ www.juponglin.net
Nicole Y. McClam, MFA, CMA explores the awesomeness of dance with students as an Assistant Professor at Queensborough Community College; bounces to and fro as a member of B3W Performance Group, danceTactics, and Kayla Hamilton Dance Projects; is a single mom to an awesome tween; and loves zombies.
Jen Shook- Jen teaches in Theatre, Dance, & Performance Studies teacher at Grinnell College, on Meskwaki and Ioway lands. Her practice lives at the intersections of performance, literature, cultural memory, Indigenous studies, community engagement, and digital liberal arts. As a dramaturg, director, and theatre producer in Chicago, she founded Caffeine Theatre—a company that mined the poetic tradition to explore social questions (2002-2012). Her in-process book manuscript, Unghosting Tribalographies: Performing Oklahoma-as-Indian-Territory examines transcultural collaborations and Native American artists’ reworkings of historical commemorations in the microcosm of her home state. She also makes art with large rocks and small shadow puppets, creating rituals to make good relations in place and across time. More at https://www.jenshook.com/. Jen would love to see donations directed to the general fund of the First Americans Museum https://famok.org/
Leah Tubbs was reared by Craig & Harriette Smiley in Birmingham, AL, the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement. Her technical and artistic foundation was honed as a Dance major at Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA) and the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. She transitioned from a student into a professional artist working with various dance companies in Alabama, Ohio, California, Texas, & New York. As Leah worked as a dance artist, she was inspired to share her love for dance with others as a teaching artist and arts educator. She has exposed people of all ages and levels to the admiration of dance at private and public schools, dance schools, non-profit dance organizations, and summer dance intensives. She currently edifies budding movers as a teaching artist at Pentacle (Dance Works, Inc.). When Leah isn’t training future artists, she and her husband, Shaun, hold space for BIPOC artists & communities through choreographic work, festivals, concerts, residencies, and workshops in their nonprofit dance company, MODArts Dance Collective (MADC), a Harlem based multicultural professional modern dance company established in 2011. www.modartsdance.com IG- @modarts_dance / @leahsmileytubbs; email - modartsdancecollective@gmail.com / leahtubbs321@gmail.com CashApp: $MODARTSDANCE
We do pay our panelists for their time and sharing. Please consider your privilege and their lived experiences when donating. All funds support our mission, and to help us continue to make our resources for artists and arts educators free and/or affordable, using sliding scale and donation-based pricing models.