2025 Annual Convening Sessions

At this beloved cornerstone of Black arts and culture in Los Angeles, we’ll gather for a networking lunch before activating the stage and studios with creativity, laughter, and movement. Together, we’ll honor the theater’s legacy while filling the space with rhythm, story, and joy through three dynamic, community-led workshops.

When the Rhythm Changes: Line Dance as Leadership Practice — Danny Long
This workshop emerges from a 2025 dance residency exploring how line dance mirrors shifting family and organizational dynamics. Participants will use line dance—rooted in Black social dance traditions—as both metaphor and embodied practice to examine how families, communities, and institutions pass down and adapt core values across generations.

• We’ll explore evolving leadership through the spatial logic of line dance: from singular (1-wall), to dual (2-wall), to collective/horizontal leadership (4-wall). These formations serve as a framework to question: What movements have we inherited? How do we adapt when rhythms change? Who leads when the choreography is unknown?

  The session is 80% movement-based, with integrated conversation and reflective writing. Participants are invited to move at their own pace, engage honestly, and process personal leadership experiences through both dance and writing. Check-ins and “brave space” facilitation support care, openness, and the full emotional range.

  This offering aligns with convening themes of joy, liberation, and reimagined leadership. By uplifting line dance as a joyful, accessible, communal practice, we center joy as a transformative technology. The workshop affirms all bodies and lived experiences, especially those from Black, queer, and intergenerational communities navigating change.

  Participants will leave with embodied insight into their leadership and followership styles, a deeper comfort with uncertainty, and a renewed connection to collective rhythm. Most importantly, they’ll carry with them the rhythm of joy—and maybe a new dance to share.

• Yes, Let’s! An Introduction to Improv Comedy — Mary C. Parker (she/her), Education Lead at Bandit Theater
  This workshop is based on the teachings of improv comedy with a focus on being an affinity play space for BIPOC folks. Improv can provide joy through laughter. We care for ourselves by finding levity in the work we do and improv comedy is one way to add joy back into our lives.

  In this session you will learn and play improv comedy games. Improv is an art form where everything is made up on the spot. There are no scripts or lines. It's an opportunity to lean into our creativity and build made up worlds together and just play.

  As people of color at times we need permission to return to our own agency to just be. We are holding on and often masking for survival that we forget to have balance in caring for ourselves and play can provide that. Improv comedy is one tool we can leverage to provide joy again and showing up without pretext and just play.

  In this session you’ll learn about collaboration, decision-making, identity, and storytelling. The outcomes are to have fun, collaborate and work together, learn more about the improv principle, “yes, and,” and enhance listening skills.

• Rooted Bloom Writing Workshop — Ragni Agarwal (she/her) and Sundeep Morrison (they/them)

  Belonging is about nurturing our roots, both individually and collectively through creativity, connection, and healing. In a world shaped by violence, chaos, and systemic erasure, art offers a way to reclaim agency, process emotions, and cultivate resilience. Rooted Bloom is a community-based creative practice designed to foster belonging through meditative art-making and journaling, inviting participants to water themselves and their communities.

  As South Asians, our ancestral history is deeply tied to the land, our people have survived through resilience and adaptability, maintaining their will to thrive no matter the climate or terrain. We are the dormant seeds of our ancestors’ liberation, now coming to fruition.

  Inspired by Alexander Den Heijer’s words, “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower,” our workshop invites participants to tend to their inner gardens. Through guided creative exercises, we embrace the full spectrum of emotions—joy, anger, hope, and grief—recognizing that all parts of us deserve space to exist and be nurtured. Creativity is not about making something beautiful; it is a tool for processing, reclaiming, and rebuilding.

  Our work extends beyond the South Asian community, branching out and creating deep connections with other BIPOC and QTBIPOC communities. True belonging isn’t about staying insular, it’s about standing shoulder to shoulder, advocating for one another, and breaking down barriers. In our current sociopolitical climate, where communities on the margins face ongoing threats of erasure, we believe in fortifying ourselves and each other through collective care.
  

Led by AAC Community Connector Nafeesah Symonette, this site visit begins with a networking lunch and community dialogue, followed by a hands-on stop-motion animation workshop led by the CAAM team, celebrating play, imagination, and joy as pathways to healing. Participants will also enjoy a guided tour of the museum’s galleries and exhibitions.

Led by Clement Hanami, this site visit includes a networking lunch, a behind-the-scenes hard hat tour, and a screening of Nobuko Miyamoto: A Song in Movement by Tad Nakamura, followed by a community conversation exploring creative leadership, cultural identity, and collective resilience.

Featured workshop: Art as Resistance & Care: A Poster Making Workshop, led by Rosy Cortez and Dr. Judith F. Baca

Led by Dr. Judy Baca, SPARC’s Founder and Artistic Director, this session begins with an introduction to the Great Wall of Los Angeles, followed by a hands-on poster-making workshop with Rosy Cortez, Lead Artist of the Great Wall. Together, we’ll reflect on art as resistance, collective healing, and the power of creative memory-keeping.

Led by Bridgid Coulter Cheadle, this immersive afternoon begins with a lunch and fireside chat featuring sound bowls and a community conversation, setting the tone for reflection and connection. Participants will then rotate through interactive breakout sessions offering art making storytelling and design activities that explore healing, creativity, and collective renewal.

• Root & Rise: Holding Space for Creative Healing — Lindsey Vance

  This restorative workshop invites BIPOC arts leaders into a culturally-affirming space to reflect, reconnect, and recharge through expressive arts. Root & Rise centers the inner lives and leadership journeys of participants, using creative healing practice as a pathway for grounding, connection, and visioning.

  Through guided visualization, story circles, and a hands-on mixed-media art activity, participants will explore their personal “roots” and how they “rise”.

  Participants will leave with:

  ~A personalized “Root & Rise” collage to support their ongoing wellness and leadership

  ~Deeper connections with fellow arts administrators

  ~Practical tools for integrating reflective arts practices into their personal and professional lives

  Centered in the lived experiences of BIPOC leaders navigating systemic and institutional challenges, this session honors ancestral knowledge, cultural creativity, and the need for rest and affirmation. Whether you’re seeking a moment of pause or a creative reset, this workshop offers a sanctuary to be seen, heard, and inspired.

  No prior visual arts experience is necessary...just a willingness to explore and express.