The Current: Rekindling Hope and Reimagining Possible Futures is the 2nd of a series of teen-organized programs focused on the intersection of art and social change. For this event, ICA teens will host a panel discussion and workshop that explore creativity as a tool to shift traditional narratives and re-imagine possible futures.

Panelist Information:

  • Amanda Torres: Amanda serves as the Festival Director for the Louder Than A Bomb Teen Poetry Slam, Massachusetts, and co-founded the Massachusetts Literary Education and Performance Collective (Mass LEAP), the youth spoken word programming arm of MassPoetry, where she currently serves as Program Director. Amanda also teaches performance poetry in Boston Public Schools and cultural institutions.
  • Damian Duffy: Damian is a cartoonist, writer, and letterer as well as the co-editor of Black Comix: African American Independent Comics Art & Culture. He holds a PhD in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
  • John Jennings: John co-edited the Eidner Award-winning anthology The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art. He is a professor of media and cultural studies at the University of California at Riverside and was awarded the Nasir Jones HipHop Fellowship at Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African & African American research.
  • Eden Bekele: Eden is an ICA Teens alum and the founder and editor of Pigment, a magazine publishing work by people of color and issues related to their communities. She is also events director at UMASS Amherst’s radio station WMUA 91.1 FM.
Cost
Free for teens