BDAC Announces New Impact Fellows

Meet BDAC’s New Impact Fellows!

In keeping with our 2021 theme “BDAC in Practice,” we are excited to announce the inaugural Impact Fellowship cohort. Over the course of this year, this group of artists and cultural workers will strengthen and advance BDAC’s impact measurement and evaluation praxis.  In doing so, each fellow will investigate the viability, efficacy, and transformative power of community-based arts interventions.  

In January, the cohort completed a week-long course on evaluation through a lens of cultural organizing and arts-based strategy. This month, the fellows established a clear sense of the projects they will follow this year.  In March, the fellows will launch into the practicum phase of the fellowship, which centers on implementing a virtual process of evaluating a national portfolio LatinX arts and culture projects.  The practicum wraps in November with the delivery of project reports.  

Each Impact fellow will serve as a collaborator and witness to the on-going work happening in each community. They will be responsible for gathering information to support the sharing of the story of the project as well as reflecting back learning and recommendations for the project’s next steps.  Ebony Noelle Golden said, “I am really excited to move this aspect of BDAC’s strategic vision forward.  I have for so long wanted to develop an evaluation training curriculum and process built on my belief that artists should have the tools to address the impact of other artists' work and projects.”  

The Impact fellows are critical to the work BDAC has been retained to complete in collaboration with the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) and its Catalyst for Change Award program.  The Catalyst for Change Award program strategically invests in projects that identify a community challenge and its root causes. The artists awarded work in their communities to imagine a community-based, collaborative solution for a more racially just world.  

Fellowship Cohort

Babay L. Angles aka Bomba Brown (Angelica Janabajal Tolentino) is a San Diego, CA -based, Pilipinx interdisciplinary performance artist, educator, and cultural strategist, and rest practitioner from San Diego, CA, Okinawa, Japan, and Olongapo, Philippines.  She holds a B.A. in Ethnic Studies from UC San Diego and a Masters of Arts in Urban Education and Social Justice with a Single Subject Teaching Credential in Social Studies. She has over a decade of experience working as an educator, mental health worker, and grassroots organizer in Southeast San Diego and Oakland, CA. She also has over a decade of experience battling and cyphering throughout the West Coast of the United States in the styles of Breaking and Rocking with Time II Rock Crew and Soul Heavy Crew and 6 years of studying modern and contemporary movement. 

Leticia Contreras is an interdisciplinary artist, cultural organizer, and yoga instructor. Her work history has varied but the continuous theme is service and offering compassionate support rooted in liberation and social equity. She devotes herself to fostering leadership development in the community, especially for young people of color. Leticia’s artistic practice is centered on reimagining our relationship to our past as Black, Indigenous, and people of color and inspiring the possibilities of our future as culture creators and stewards of Pachamama (Mother Earth). She has experience working in schools, museums, academic advising, grant writing, yoga studios, and international youth exchange programs.  These experiences have expanded Leticia’s passion for making information accessible to all. Leticia is dedicated to establishing spaces that honor and value our nuances and multiplicities and she trusts that when we center art, ancestral knowledge, and a balanced relationship to breath, we get free!

Tracey Conyer Lee, a NYC based actor/playwright/teaching artist for 27 years, began working in the corporate sector delivering entertainment based content at meetings and conventions and live industrials. Former industrial clients include ESPN, Amex, Verizon, Sanofi-Pasteur, AstraZeneca, Century 21 and KPMG. Tracey's philosophies on professional presence and successful business communication move past speaking clearly and loudly enough to be heard. They lean into behaviors that engage your audience and colleagues in ways that put them in your corner and keep their eyes and ears on you at all times and in all ways positive.

Praycious Wilson-Gay is a theater manager and artist. She has worked at the Public Theater as their Community Programs Manager for The Mobile Unit. In her position, she launched a digital Hip-Hop vs. Shakespeare writing course for the incarcerated amidst the pandemic. In her prior role as a Marketing Resident at The Public Theater, she managed the Borough Distribution initiative for Free Shakespeare in the Park at The Public.  During this experience, she worked closely with key partners and community organizations to give access to Free Shakespeare in the Park. Praycious has years of experience in community organizing, stage management and theater management.  She is also a Tribe Member of SpiritHouse Inc. based in Durham, NC. She received her B.F.A in Stage Management from Syracuse University and her M.F.A in Performing Arts Management at Brooklyn College.

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To find out more about NALAC, visit nalac.org. Visit our website to meet the fellows! Link in bio.⁠⠀#art #action #impact #BDACisFREE