Current Projects
OAKLAND UNIFIED ARTS PARTNERS
Co-founded by Aurora Toshiko-King and Indi McCasey, this collective of program administrators, teaching artists, executive directors, district staff, and funders works to strengthen the Bay Area arts education ecosystem through collaborative partnerships between local community arts organizations and Oakland Unified School District public schools.
WHITE ADVOCATES FOR RACIAL EQUITY
Co-launched by Jen Tremblay-Chambers and Indi McCasey, the National Guild for Community Arts Education's White Advocates for Racial Equity (WARE) Network works in collaboration with people of color to promote racial justice in the field of community arts education. The WARE Network collectively investigates the unique role that white people must play in undoing racism, through sharing stories, raising questions, and proposing actionable steps we can take everyday to build racial equity in our workplaces and lives.
INTEGRATED LEARNING SPECIALIST PROGRAM (ILSP)
The Integrated Learning Specialist Program (ILSP) is a series of 3, 30-hour courses that support educators and administrators to develop strategies for leadership, instructional design, and classroom engagement. Drawing on research from Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and 20 years of applied practice in Bay Area schools, ILSP courses connect artistic practice with culturally responsive teaching to foster democratic learning communities of critical and creative thinkers.
Past Projects
TOPSY-TURVY QUEER CIRCUS
India Davis and Indi McCasey co-founded Topsy-Turvy Queer Circus in 2012 as the first all-queer circus showcase featuring artists from across the United States. The show quickly became a staple of the National Queer Arts Festival in San Francisco, building an audience of over 1000 people for their annual performance. Over the years, Topsy-Turvy shifted its focus to highlight performing artists of color through the three-part, Afro-surrealist, multi-disciplinary production PARADISE.
QUEER EMERGING ARTIST RESIDENCY (QEAR)
The Queer Emerging Artists Residency or (QEAR) ran for two years at Destiny Arts Center in Oakland, CA with yearly week-long and semester-long residencies. The first residency of its kind in the country, QEAR paid Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender/Two Spirit, Queer, Intersex (LGBTQI)-identified performing artists of color ages 18-24 to work under the mentorship of a professional artist or pair of artists to utilize art and performance as tools for social change.
CONVERSATIONS IN MOTION
Part part physical theater, part oral history project, Conversations in Motion was a collaboratively choreographed performance where teen artists-as-cultural investigators asked complex questions of community members and themselves. The artists performed a 7-minute acrobatic, moving tableau about schools as sites of disconnection and resistance during Urbano's Spring 2014 showcase.
Conversations in Motion was part of Urbano's 2014 Project, The Emancipated City, and Project Zero's 2014 Artist in Residence Program.