Studio Art Core Conversation: On Staying Together

Speaker Name: Creative Resilience Collective (CRC)
Speaker’s Website: https://creativeresco.org/

Zoom Registration link: https://zoom.us/j/99576439735

This presentation will explore emergent strategies and case studies devised or experienced by the Creative Resilience Collective (CRC), a community group based in Philadelphia founded on design and disability justice principles working at the intersection of art, design, education, mental health care, research, and technology. We will share stories and participatory design activities related to our work organizing public art actions, educational workshops, study groups, teen-led programs, and collaborative research projects together with our local communities. In so doing, we will explore how collective practice can support care, and intersectional co-authorship between individuals, institutions, and communities, promoting important, actionable, designable inroads into social change and resilience in uncertain times.

The Creative Resilience Collective collaborates with underserved communities and advocates looking to combat stigma and improve access to self-determined mental health care in Philadelphia, PA. We believe our collective agency can create positive change and envision more equitable futures of care. Motivated by this belief, we organize educational workshops, study groups, produce critical writing, public art projects, youth programs, and design resources to shape the evolution of care towards liberation and joy.

Michelle Lee Delgado (she/her) is an artist, collaborator, and educator living and working in Philadelphia. She studied art at Illinois State University and was a recipient of the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship for the Yale Summer School of Art and Music in 2012. Her work has exhibited in different venues across the United States. She received the 2017 NALAC Transnational Cultural Remittance Travel Award, has been published in Capricious Magazine and is in the collection of Milner Library at Illinois State University. In 2019, Michelle curated an exhibition at High Tide gallery in Philadelphia. She is an educator and after-school program manager at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center and a Landscape Architect graduate student at Temple University.

Bennett Kuhn (he/him) is a Philadelphia-based music producer, DJ, writer, and co-owner of the Brooklyn-based record label and mutual aid project Astro Nautico. Kuhn was musician-in-residence at the Synapsis journal of health humanities at Columbia University (‘18-’19), publishing original music and essays on themes of health justice. Since relocation to Philadelphia from Nicaragua in 2015, Kuhn has formally trained as a trauma-informed teaching artist at Build-a-Bridge International, HIAS Pennsylvania, The Philadelphia School, and other local institutions serving marginalized teenage populations in the Philadelphia area. He is a lead facilitator of Creative Resilient Youth teen art collective.

El Sigelman (they/them) is a community organizer, researcher, mixed media artist and behavioral health worker living in Philadelphia. Their work is situated at the intersections of public health, disability advocacy and navigation. Prior to their role as a behavioral health technician, El has worked in immigration advocacy, mentored incarcerated youth, and organized for a variety of social justice campaigns across the United States. In 2019, El joined the Creative Resilience Collective as a co-organizer, where they are currently working to design a tool that will improve access to care for drug users in Philadelphia.

Andrea Ngan (she/her) is a design strategist and community organizer building collaborative design and organizational strategies to envision caring, just, and joyful futures. She co-initiated the Creative Resilience Collective in 2017, the Design Justice Network Philly Node in 2019, and currently serves as a service design strategist for the City of Philadelphia’s Service Design Studio.

Please contact James Enos, James.Enos@uga.edu if you have any questions.