With this campaign, I am breathing new life into an original music composition I wrote that reflects on the history and impact of the Great Migration in Chicago neighborhoods. As a performing artist, educator, and poet, I’ve always been passionate …

Chicago Stories is a music project featuring newly commissioned works by Chicago composers inspired by the stories and experiences of fellow Chicagoans and their communities. It all started with a conversation I had with my Bach & Beethoven Experience (BBE) …

It’s 1893 and Chicago bears witness to the World’s Fair. Crowds experience the great Ferris Wheel and classical marble architecture, teas and spices, and performers from around the globe including Sri Lanka, once considered the “jewel” of the British Empire. …

As a professional braider and teacher in the African tradition, I am very passionate about this craft and how it can beautify and empower people. With this campaign, I am raising money to organize a workshop to teach the craft …

Each year, we invite people from across Chicago to join us in supporting a $25,000 3Arts Award that will be given to a local artist who is making indispensable contributions to our city. We name this award in honor of …

I plan to develop a screenplay and produce a short fictional film based on my 10-minute play “Black Girl in Bathtub,” which will stand as a creative call-to-action against the sexual exploitation of girls. It has always pained me that our …

I am illustrating my first children’s book, Okinawan Princess: Da Legend of Hajichi Tattoos. This is a bilingual feminist fairy tale set in Hawai‘i and Okinawa that illuminates an ancient tradition and pushes back against white normative standards of beauty. …

In 2007, I had the opportunity to travel to Senegal, West Africa to participate in a dance training at L’Ecole De Sables. It was there that I met an amazing choreographer/dancer named Jonas Byaruhanga, the founder and artistic director of …

As a dancemaker, I have always been passionate about the collaborative possibilities between dance/movement and music/sound. While knowing that my work is not created in a soundless vacuum, an ongoing interest of mine is to explore the independence of dance …

As a native of coastal Louisiana, I have seen the region and many of its people nearly devastated by natural and manmade disasters but also resilient and powerful in the collective efforts to rebuild and restore. When I left Louisiana …