2021 Arts & Culture Cohort
Joseph Ahmed, Obvious Agency
I am a multi-racial artist, arts administrator, and co-founder of the interactive performance company and worker-owned cooperative Obvious Agency. Blending theatrical and digital arts, Obvious Agency creates spaces where participants can co-create their own experiences through first-hand exploration of the worlds we create. Always serious, always silly, we believe that by helping create and define culture, we can create systemic and interpersonal change.
Melissa Beatriz, ¡Presente! Media
As a filmmaker and journalist, I produce documentaries that center racial/immigrant justice and write about community-based arts/culture. I’m a co-founder of ¡Presente! Media, which creates bilingual journalistic short films and investigative articles focused on social justice. Since 2010, I’ve collaborated with a range of grassroots groups and media arts organizations in Philadelphia.
Raani Begum, Heaux History Project
I am a queer, South Asian, full service sex worker in Philadelphia. I organize with Project Safe and Philadelphia Red Umbrella Alliance around the issues people who trade sex and use drugs experience. I am also a current member of Heaux History Project. My community organizing and research is focused on the intersection of street economies, culture, labor, anti-police work and surveillance, and harm reduction from a gendered perspective.
Alexia Chororos, Scribe Video Center
I am the Managing Director at Scribe Video Center. I work to support and strengthen the ability of local groups and individuals to promote their vision and tell their stories through digital media. Producing a media work provides a chance to honor the local experience and to raise awareness about the richness of community histories. I help people acquire power when they have the means to present their own narratives and share their visions for a more just and equitable society.
Vashti DuBois, The Colored Girls Museum
In 2015, DuBois opened TCGM to "honor the stories, experiences and history of Colored Girls throughout the African Diaspora.” It is the first memoir museum of its kind offering visitors a multi-disciplinary experience in a residential space. TCGM initiates the ordinary object, submitted by the colored girl herself, as a representative of an aspect of her story and personal history which she finds meaningful.
Wit López, Till Arts Project
Wit López is an internationally acclaimed, award-winning multidisciplinary maker, performance artist, writer, and cultural advocate based in Philadelphia, PA. Their work explores race, gender, sexuality, and class at the intersection of disability justice. Wit is also the Founder and Artistic Director of Till Arts Project, an LGBTQ+ arts services organization.
Varissa McMickens Blair, Olney Culture Lab of CultureTrust Greater Philadelphia
Varissa McMickens Blair is Founder/Executive Consultant of NOWWellspring Consulting. She's a passionate leader with expertise in organizational growth and transformation. She's regarded by her colleagues as an innovator and a change-agent. Varissa thrives is building collaborations and partnerships that catalyze change. With her background in communications, she's also a powerful, compelling and engaging public speaker.
Sarah Mueller, cinéSPEAK
Sarah Mueller is a proud 19 year community-rooted resident of Philadelphia. She is the Director and Founder of, cinéSPEAK, a West Philadelphia-based independent cinema and publication. Intrinsic to her work is the notion that having the access to create and experience expansive depictions of one’s identities on-screen is a human right. She supports the abolition of police, all carceral systems and militarization; she believes that film is an effective instrument for the dismantling of white supremacy and building a wholly-equitable society, where empathy and tolerance flourish.
Nadine M. Patterson, SIFTMedia 215 Collective Inc.
I am a founding member of SIFTMedia 215 Collective Inc. We are a benefit corporation that provides resources for women of color in the media arts. From public access and educational television, to film collectives, I work to make socially conscious filmmaking accessible to those locked out of the film and television industry.
Cat Ramirez, Philadelphia Asian Performing Artists (PAPA)
Cat Ramirez is a Philly-based theatre director and creative producer. They currently serve as the Beardmobile Line Producer for The Bearded Ladies Cabaret and the Creative Director for Philadelphia Asian Performing Artists (PAPA). They aim to create spaces that make the people they care about feel held. catramirez.com
Philadelphia Asian Performing Artists (PAPA) provides holistic artist care for 100+ Asian and Asian American artists in the Philadelphia area. Through social events, residency and professional development programs, grassroots organizing, and performance opportunities, we hope to empower our members and reflect the greater diversity of this city and its stories.
Jennifer Turnbull, Spiral Q
Jennifer Turnbull is a choreographer, performance and teaching artist. Turnbull develops art-based curriculum that weaves in concepts of formal education creating relevance and space for self-determination. Jennifer utilizes a lifetime of dance training to create most artwork in collaboration with art family. The artistic process is a space to get free and hold our liberation as truth. The product is a critique of that which holds us down and apart from each other and ourselves.
Jennifer is CoDirector of Spiral Q with Liza Goodell where they unleash the power of art to connect people to their collective creative force for change.
Joey Wong, Asian Arts Initiative
I am a trans nonbinary Filipinx working with the AAI team and community members to support the sharing and creation of art that reflects our lives, and to think critically and creatively about the future we want to build for our communities. I carry a deep appreciation for the stories of my elders and ancestors, whose care fuels my drive to continue equity work in public service and social justice spaces. I believe in our liberation and collective access to joy and rest.