Join the Creative Change Coalition for a virtual field conversation with Ricardo Levins Morales and Trevor Smith (BLIS Collective). With our guests, we’ll explore: What are we doing to build the future? What is the storytelling work we need now? What are the strategies we can use to help our communities imagine and build what is next?
All are welcome, designed for place-based organizations.
Ricardo Levins Morales
Bio:Ricardo Levins Morales is a boricua artist, organizer, and author based in Minneapolis. His decades of social movement activism spans supporting the Black Panthers and Young Lords, union organizing, farmer and environmental, and anti-police struggles. He uses his art, writing, and mentorship practice to stimulate historical memory in the face of forgetting, resilience in the face of trauma, and resistance in the face of oppression.
He co-founded the Northland Poster Collective, which produced art, screen printing services, and organizing materials for movements (1979-2009). He was part of a political/artistic current, starting in the 1980s to establish the centrality of cultural organizing and narrative strategy in movements for change, participating in such national initiatives as the Alliance for Cultural Democracy, the Great Labor Arts Exchange, the National Organizers Alliance, and Labor Notes. He works from a collectively managed storefront studio in Minneapolis with fellow members of the News Guild/CWA. Learn more at rmlartsudio.com and ricardolevinsmorales.com.
Trevor Smith
Bio: Trevor Smith (he/him) is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the BLIS Collective. He is a writer, researcher, and strategist focused on racial inequality, wealth inequality, reparations, and narrative change. Previously, he was the Director of Narrative Change at Liberation Ventures, a field-builder accelerating the Black-led movement for reparations, where he launched the Reparations Narrative Lab, a creative and research space designed to build narrative power across the movement for reparations.
He previously held program and communications positions at the Surdna Foundation, New York Civil Liberties Union, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and M+R Strategic Services. He received his BA in Journalism from American University. He is a son and a brother originally from Maryland, by way of Freetown, Sierra Leone. He currently resides in Lenapehoking, now known as New York City. Learn more at bliscollective.org.
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