Founder, Lead Creative Director & Producer
A spider to many webs, Cheyenne makes it her mission to connect the stories of the erased throughout the world. She comes from a political art background through her work as founder of movement organization In Solidarity. The arts have been a part of her life since she was a child, ranging from professional theatre, dance companies, to film director and producer. Cheyenne loves capturing conversations, the imagination, and the ways history cycles itself in our culture, language, clothing, and political beliefs. Their politic is one that centers the narratives, experiences, and visions of Blackness beyond a monolith. As a creative director they center the breadth of Black Indigenous Queer Technologies. Technologies that disrupt white dominant concepts of time, gender, borders, and extreme systems of punishment that have altered a natural order. She is inspired by space that has yet to be discovered or captured. She is inspired by the way film is a medium of archival storytelling and a means to not only shift culture but change consciousness. Cheyenne has worked alongside Democracy Now!, Consortium for Gender Security & Human Rights, ACLU, and The New School, to name a few. Their work has been featured on TEDx, The Void Academy, CRWN Magazine, Medium Magazine, Cambridge Arts Council, and The Queens Museum.
CHEYENNE
WYZZARD-JONES
NASRA
Creative Director & Producer
a queer Oromo/Somali artist based in Amiskwaciywaskahikan (Edmonton) on Treaty 6 territory. Nasra acts as Director/Founder of Black Arts Matter- Alberta’s interdisciplinary Black Arts festival, and was a former Youth Poet Laureate of Edmonton. Their debut chapbook A God Dance in Human Cloth was the co-recipient of the Bp Nichols National Chapbook Award and their newly released ep “Salve” is their latest call to healing; a blend of herbs, poetics and sound. Their he(art)work centres the joy, autonomy and freedom of Black/Indigenous Peoples everywhere.
Photographer & Creativer Director
a tender flame, a blackqueerandtrans first-gen Jamaican / Philly rooted healer. Through movement channeling, laying hands on scalps, witnessing through photography, tender poetics, and filmmaking, their expansive transness is a compass towards liberation and abundance. shanel is committed to healing their wounds by listening to smoke, water, the earth, their ancestors, themselves, and community. They are young and resting, wandering and sweating. They have learned their artistic gifts through non-institutional learning spaces because they don’t believe institutions validate our brilliance, relationships do, we do. shanel cultivates black queer and trans brillance and community everyday. They hold this quote by genius Gwendolyn Brooks: “we are each other’s harvest, we are each other’s business, we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” shanel has worked with Yolanda Wisher as a movement artist In Pirate Jenny’s Conspiracy , Arielle Julia Brown as a movement builder for ‘fallawayinto’, choreographed musicals for the University of the Arts Polyphone Festival and Princeton University. They have offered choreographic work with Nasra Adem for the Black arts matter festival in Edmonton, Alberta. Their film THIS IS FOR US has featured in film festivals globally: Fringe! London’s Queer film festival, Black Femme Supremacy Film Festival. Their creative works have been supported by the Leeway Foundation, Small But Mighty Arts, Red Bull, Mural Arts Philly, and Queer Art’s Eva Yaa Asantewaa Grant.
ANGEL EDWARDS
KAYLA WATKINS
Film Producer
Kayla Naomi Watkins is a filmmaker from Baltimore with a focus in media education and documentary cinematography. She's been filming since 2009 covering issues that impact Black, brown, poor, and femme people. Autonomous visual representation is one of the key elements of achieving liberation in a world which revolves around the consumption of media. In her work she visualizes the feeling of being watched, consumed, and repackaged as a Black femme human for others to evaluate without consideration of our inner motivations. Her work seeks to go beyond “tolerance” of her humanity into true intra- and inter-communal solidarity. Kayla films a world which denies the self determination of people through the use of propaganda and seeks to create alternative, accessible, community centered counter-propaganda. The histories of Black and brown people are oral, visual, kinetic, veiled, and endangered--and she has chosen filmmaking, painting, and media education as her way to interrupt the erasure. Kayla has filmed/ produced/ edited/ colored films for Women Organized Against Rape, The University Community Collaborative, and Philadelphia Student Union. My documentary footage has been included in films such as Catharine Pancake’s Queer Genius and Gabriela Aurazo’s Baobab Flowers. She is currently an MFA candidate in the Future Faculty Fellowship at Temple University.
Communications Manager
a Bahamian writer and creative social media strategist living in New York City. Aside from her love of archiving, she spends her time reading and perfecting my money dance.
KAZ MEGA
JIYA
Creative Music and Art Producer
KazMega is not a rapper, nor is he a poet, nor is he a producer or composer, or beatmaker. He is a journeyman welder of artistic expression, trained to apply hot fiyah to seemingly inflexible topics and forge completely new yet sturdy observations. While artistic expression welding pays significantly less than say-- welding metal, it has provided the opportunity for building communities, safe spaces, international bridges, and potentially schools. Expect sparks to fly, supplied materials to bond together, and the exchange itself to become the trade. Hard hats will not be permitted on site, but thinking caps are mandatory!