Co-producer and steering committee member

PDAF 2024‍ / Inquirer‍ ‍/ WHYY

While public programs manager for the Friends of Laurel Hill, I established the historic cemetery as a 2023 Philadelphia Fringe Festival Hub, hosting three weeks of performances exploring grief, memory, history, death, and afterlives.

WHYY

I secured grant funding in 2023 to partner with historic Eden Cemetery to critically inquire and collaboratively rewrite Laurel Hill Cemetery’s annual walking tour of 18th and 19th century abolitionists. The new program was a joint tour of Eden and Laurel Hill, with art workshops and group discussions guided by 1838 Philadelphia Black Metropolis.

While programming director for this project of the Free Library of Philadelphia, I organized five annual festivals that encouraged reading and civic dialogue through community programming partnerships. Each year more than 100 events took place citywide, including lectures and school visits with the authors:

• Jacquelin Woodson’s Another Brooklyn, 2018

• Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, 2019

• Tommy Orange’s There There, 2020

• Jericho Brown’s The Tradition, 2021

• Quiara Alegria Hudes’ My Broken Language, 2022

I led the production for the One Book program’s 20th Anniversary video in 2021.

A 2020 public dialogue series and interdisciplinary research-collating project in partnership with the Counter Narrative Society, which brings art, pedagogy and activism together to explore bio-power, urbanism, culture and technology.

A teen zine and performance project at Mitakuye Foundation’s Hoye Wayelo arts program at Pine Ridge, SD in 2016.

Lakota Times