*Photo credit: Irving Allen, Rodney Donnell*

Elsewhere is proud to announce April Parker as our inaugural Creative Catalyst Fellow.

April Parker comes to Elsewhere as an experienced organizer, activist, and community leader at the forefront of the social justice movements in Greensboro since 2011. She is a cultural worker and architect of Black spaces using public scholarship, radical librarianship, performance art, and direct action. As a community organizer and archivist April centers the lives, histories, legacies, resiliency, and magic of queer and trans-Black people. She brings with her a passion for creative expressions of resistance.

As the Creative Catalyst Fellow, her focus will be on community engagement grounded in concepts of The Porch Project: The Black Lunch Tables, a piece created by artist Heather Hart for Elsewhere as part of South Elm Projects in 2015. The Fellow’s aim is to foster community and generate dialogue that centers Greensboro’s Black community, supporting citizen engagement, communication, and organizing.

The 2020 Creative Catalyst Fellowship with Elsewhere was realized by Creative Director Emily Ensminger in partnership with the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts with additional support from the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation through their mission to empower the next generation of artist leaders in strengthening culture, building businesses and sparking innovati

About Creative Catalyst

Artists are trained to defy expectations through their art works and—even more powerfully—through their creative perspectives. Over the past 25 years, the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts has contributed to the positive impact of artists by supporting their innovative work within creative fields and in the broader contexts of education reform as well as community and economic development. It is vital to continue to invest in the next generation of artist leaders to help them respond to the complex challenges and emerging opportunities of our time.

The Institute’s Creative Catalyst Initiative is a five-year strategic plan that creatively blends the arts, enterprise and innovation to positively impact the lives and careers of arts school graduates across the Southeast. Each of its three programmatic themes—Creative Leaders, Creative Campus and Creative Community—features programs and projects that provide extraordinary training and access for artists to develop and achieve their highest potential.

April’s organizing credits include Juneteenth Jamboree, Black Power Town Hall, Black Girls, and Women Matter Town Hall, #SayHerName Defend Black Womanhood, Midnight March, Black Minds Matter Rally and Raised in the Revolution Youth Summit. She served as a Greensboro Delegate to the NC Black Women’s Roundtable Leadership Council as well as Working Group Strategic Facilitator for Democracy Greensboro. During which she co-authored a progressive political platform to push campaigning city councilors toward antiracism.