Building Civic Dialogue Through Art: A Community-Based Artist Residency in Montgomery County
What happens when you move an artist’s studio into the heart of a community’s most complex conversations? The Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County (AHCMC) recently concluded an 18-month artist residency program that embedded three local artists within distinct regions of the County to center their practices in community conversations and civic dialogue. Through artistic engagements and community convenings, Artists-in-Residence (AiRs) Jasmine Adams, Liliane Blom, and Alyscia Cunningham facilitated dialogue on critical local priorities such as identity, resilience, economic development, housing, transportation, healthcare, food access, and education. Often referred to as an “experiment,” this program was a brand-new endeavor for all involved. During this session, we will share the inside scoop on the project’s evolution from its conceptual beginnings to the challenges and celebratory moments we encountered along the way. Alongside documentation of each artist’s work, the program manager, consulting artist, and three AiRs will demystify the process by sharing their collective firsthand experiences.
Participants will leave better prepared to embark on their own impact driven strategies for engaging communities in meaningful civic dialogue through creative practice and public convening, even when the process feels uncertain.
Kenya Miles
Kenya Miles is a multidisciplinary artist, educator & the alchemist behind Traveling Miles Studio. A one woman textile and fine art studio utilizing sustainable materials from earth pigments to natural dyes. Kenya’s work honors ancient practices while harmoniously drawing on a distinctive contemporary voice. From the valleys of Oaxaca, Mexico to the red clay roads of Ntonso, Ghana, Kenya’s process is a ledger of years of wandering and apprenticing around the globe.
Kenya has facilitated workshops at the Berkeley Art Museum, Headlands Center for the Arts, the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden and MICA. She was a guest artist at Berkeley Art Musuem’s “The Possible” and in 2019 had a solo exhibition “The Central Sun” at Baana Gallery in San Francisco. From 2019-2020 Kenya was an Artist-in-Residence and farmer in the Baltimore Natural Dye Initiative.
In January 2020, Kenya founded Blue Light Junction, a natural dye studio, alternative color lab, retail space, dye garden & educational facility in central Baltimore. Blue Light Junction focuses on growing, processing, and preserving the history of natural dyes and their artistic, practical, and commercial applications. In 2022-23, Kenya was a Civic Media Fellow, through the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California. She is currently a 2023-24 Braiding Seeds Fellow. Kenya is an avid traveler, gardener, and above all else Indigo’s mother (her son).
Flannery Winchester
Flannery Winchester is the Public Art Manager at the Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County (AHCMC), where she facilitates public art initiatives in collaboration with artists, community members and County agencies; oversees conservation of the County’s existing public art collection; manages exhibitions and programming at the Betty Mae Kramer Gallery, and more. Before joining AHCMC, Flannery worked with the Grants Team at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council to resource artists and arts organizations creating public-facing, community-engaged projects throughout the borough of Manhattan. Previously, she worked with the Cultural Affairs department at the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts (BOPA), where she supported artists in the development of temporary public art projects and managed programming at School 33 Art Center. Raised in South Florida, Flannery moved to Maryland to earn a B.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an M.A. in Arts Administration from Goucher College. In her own practice, she loves gardening, tinkering with natural dye and fiber-based projects and building swamp-inspired ceramics.