Rewriting the Narrative: A Healing Environment for Teaching Artists
Arts education has long been steeped in colonial traditions, but through a unique program of check-ins and mental workshopping, we are trying to provide a safe space for teaching artists to confront and dismantle the trauma and self-doubt that has been ingrained in them since their own arts education. Check out our Urban Assembly Program Administrator, Luis Mora’s latest TikTok to explore our process.
Transcription:
Because our mission is to decolonize arts education. We realized pretty early on that one of the ways that we need to actively do that is to decolonize the thought process of our teaching artists in themselves. Because one of the things that I found, and I think that is very relatable to anyone who is a teaching artist today, is that all of us are traumatized from the way that our arts education played out. This has been something that has come up in all of our check-ins. What's funny about our check-ins is that 95% of the time they feel like therapy and we're dealing with things like impostor syndrome or am I even a good enough teaching artist? It's all of this mental work that we really try to dismantle in our very own way. Every time we meet, we leave the meeting in a better place than we came in.
Program Coordinator & Storytelling Director – Luis Mora has over a decade’s experience working with young people grades K-12. Through his career as a teaching artist, he has worked for a multitude of arts organizations including: Inside Broadway, Broadway Musical Theatre Inc., The Roxy Performing Arts Center, EM Arts, and Casita Maria Center for the Arts. At the latter, he took on the position of arts education doordinator, where he supervised over 25 teaching artists in all disciplines related to the arts. Although he is proud of every young person he has worked with, some stand out, as they have gone on to attend and graduate from prestigious arts programs and pursue successful careers in the arts. In addition to a career in arts education, Luis is a practicing artist as a musical and theatrical performer. He has participated in multiple readings, workshops, cabarets, concerts, regional theatre productions, national tours, and Off-Broadway shows. Luis is bilingual, as he is a proud Colombian-American. His work in both education and performance have the common thread of being focused on representation for people of color and immigrant communities. His thoughts on representation have been published online and in print in the first volume of Musical Theatre Today.
