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Teaching Artist Meetup + Boot Camp
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About This Program
Sharpen your skills and increase your opportunities to be a dynamic teaching artist this summer and fall. Network with other teaching artists as you learn the ins and outs of classroom management and course development. Understand what it takes to book gigs and get tips to help nurture the balance between being an artist and an educator.
About The Presenters
Christopher Massenburg, better known as Dasan Ahanu, is the keynote speaker for this workshop. Ahanu is a public speaker, organizer, workshop facilitator, poet, spoken word performer, educator, songwriter, writer, emcee, and loyal Hip Hop head born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina. In addition to performing, he has hosted many poetry, jazz, Hip Hop, and cultural arts events across the state and is one of the founders of Black Poetry Theatre. Ahanu is a member of Black Jedi Zulu, a non-profit community organization that seeks to serve the community while also fostering greater cultural awareness of Hip Hop. He was awarded a 2015-2016 Nasir Jones Fellowship with the Hip Hop Archive at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research. Currently Ahanu is a visiting professor at UNC Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill, NC teaching courses on Hip Hop and Black culture.
Andrea "Angie C" Chandler is the Gantt Center’s Education and Programs Manager, as well as a theater artist and educator born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in History and Adolescent Education from Brooklyn College, and studied Theatre Arts in graduate school in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Chandler has taught middle and high school social studies and theater for over 10 years in public schools and takes great joy in creating opportunities for both artists and communities to engage in the arts in a meaningful way. Her mission is to cultivate culture to effect change.
Muralist and teaching artist Bree Stallings, is a North Carolina-native, multi-media artist, illustrator, writer and activist. A 2013 graduate of Queens University of Charlotte, she holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Studio Art and Creative Writing. Stallings teaches adults and children intermediate and advanced drawing and painting techniques at her studio, the Learning Lab. Using art as her vehicle, she, along with her creative team and various partners, raises awareness for many causes, such as economic mobility, sexual health advocacy, displacement and homelessness and environmental consciousness. To date, she has helped raise over $500,000 to further development in Charlotte’s arts and humanities scene.
Her works of art, poetry, and mixed-media collage have been covered and published in various print and online magazines including Creative Loafing, Charlotte Viewpoint, Indigo Rising, My City Magazine, MAYO, The Borgen Project, Society Charlotte, Charlotte Magazine and others. Stallings partnered with the Mecklenburg County Health Department and students at Behailu Academy to create two large-scale public art murals in designated as "food deserts" to highlight the pressing issue of food insecurity in local communities. Stallings is a sought-after speaker and artist who has presented and facilitated workshops throughout Charlotte, including organizations such as Community School of the Arts, ImaginOn Library, Blumenthal Arts and the Knight Theater, Discovery Place, McColl Center for Art + Innovation and The Foundation for the Carolinas.
Jason Watson is a mixed-media artist and educator, whose studio practice combines interests in the figure, found objects, and text as visual material that both reveal and conceal elusive layers of meaning. His work has been shown at galleries, universities, and non-profit spaces including the drawing installation “Q” at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC, the group exhibition “Following Threads” at the Greenhill Center for North Carolina Art in Greensboro, and the contemporary drawing survey “Line, Touch, Trace” at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. His artist residencies over the past several years include the Newark Museum of Art, Cooper Union Emerging Artist Residency Program, the Lower East Side Printshop, the Elsewhere Artist Collaborative in Greensboro, NC, the Ragdale Foundation in Chicago, and the Oberpfalzer Kunstlerhaus in Schwandorf Germany. He recently participated in the Lincoln Center Summer Education Forum in summer 2018 and completed a residency with the Goodyear Artist Collaborative in November 2018.
Watson was awarded the first Wesley Mancini Artist Residency at the McColl Center for Visual Art + Innovation in 2013. He has presented papers and projects at national academic conferences including “Creating in the Queer Diaspora”, a study of LGBTQ creative production in non-urban areas with Queer Caucus for Art at the College Art Association. As an art educator, Watson has taught a wide variety of drawing, painting, and printmaking classes and workshops over the past decade at colleges, universities, and arts non-profits. He was an Assistant Professor and Area Head for Drawing at Appalachian State University from 2008 – 2013, currently teaches at Central Piedmont Community College and is the Director of Visual Art Programs for Arts+, a non-profit in Charlotte that provides art education to underserved populations.
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