Zakiyyah visits NextFab Makerspace in North Philly to check out the Leeway Foundation, featuring the following interview guests:

Tahnee Jackson – Communications and Community Engagement Assistant at Leeway Foundation

Tahnee is an organizer, educator, published writer, and performance artist who exists at the intersections of multiple identities. A first generation Jamaican American and native Philadelphian, they use their lens as a fat, queer, pagan, neurodivergent, chronically ill, non-binary femme of immigrant descent and woman experience as context for their art and expression, and is most known for their work in alternative sexuality education and activism, as well as transgender specific interfaith action.

Denise Brown – Executive Director of Leeway Foundation

Artist, cultural organizer and strategist, and facilitator, Denise M Brown is passionate about using her skills and energies on creating, supporting and illuminating work at the intersections of art, culture and social justice. Prior to serving as Executive Director of Leeway Foundation, she was Associate Director of Bread and Roses Community Fund, a film programmer for the Neighborhood Film/Video Project and Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema (PFWC), and a consultant with Leeway and other organizations in the Philadelphia area. For over 25 years, Denise has consulted with cultural and social justice organizations, individual donors and foundations on program development and grantmaking strategies regionally and nationally.

Li Sumpter – Artist in Residence at Leeway Foundation

Li Sumpter, Ph.D. is an eco-activist and multidisciplinary artist based in Philly. She employs strategies of worldbuilding, D.I.Y media and gameplay to cultivate eco-awareness and community action around the “art of survival”. Li’s social practice and collaborative design initiatives address existential issues of diverse ecologies through speculative tools and sustainability projects that illuminate patterns and power of change. In 2017, Li was the inaugural Artist-in-Residence for the Urban Ecology Arts Exchange at Haverford College and recently completed the Leeway x NextFab Art and Technology artist residency in March 2019.

Muthi Reed – Artist and Photographer

Muthi Reed is an ethnographic media maker living and working in Philadelphia, PA and New Orleans, LA. Their work consists of embodied and digital sketches in various forms, which perform race, time space, embodiment, sound, odyssey and style. Reed’s digital media archive krewe coumbite traces Indigenous ceremony, public appearance, private ritual, trans local navigations, ancestry, and oral history. Their document and remix creative process is interested in the intimacies of blackness and the art of everyday life practices.

Leeway Foundation Website: leeway.org

Music:Lessazo “Soleil D’Hiver” – http://altermusique.org/Lessazo/

Support the show (http://urbanislanders.org)