Erica Stoltz

is the project visionary and lead facilitator for Project Sound System. She is a bass guitarist & vocalist and has worked as a live sound mixer and audio technician in the New York entertainment industry for almost 20 years, in venues such as BB King Blues Club, Highline Ballroom, and Brooklyn Academy of Music. The hands-on education Stoltz received not only prepared her for a fulfilling career, but also gave her a sense of self-confidence.  She would like to share that experience with youth in her Brooklyn community.

A seasoned educator and workshop facilitator, Vanessa Mártir works as a teaching artist in NYC public schools. She also facilitates the Writing Our Lives Workshop, a workshop she created, at Hunter College. Vanessa is a writer and poet, and is currently completing her first memoir, “A Dim Capacity for Wings.” Vanessa has written two novels, “Woman’s Cry” and “To Play Write,” and co-wrote the award-winning Do Something: A Handbook for Young Activists. Vanessa is a graduate of Columbia University. 

 Camilo Almonacid

In 2008, after a year at the Globe Theater in London, Camilo Almonacid earned a BFA in acting from Rutgers University. Since then he has lived with his wife in NYC and continued to pursue acting in film, television, and theater. He has written seven plays: Desolate Wings (presented at the Seattle Fringe Festival); Rhumies; Shit Hole (presented in March 2012 at HERE ARTS CENTER as part of the Downtown Urban Theater Festival); The Lion, (a solo piece based on Pablo Neruda poetry); Amaberis; Coronas; and The Balls (an adaptation of "En Este Pueblo No Hay Ladrones" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez). In addition he has completed a screenplay, Cloud World, and is currently in pre production for a short film he authored, Los Duros. Finally, Camilo has written two books of poetry, Portraits of Things, and Medicine for Elders, and two novels: Botella Papel and The Opus of Labia.  In the Fall of 2012 Mr. Almonacid will be studying for his MFA in Playwriting at Hunter College. He is extremely proud to be a teaching artist with the city's highly praised Department Of Education programs: TheaterDanceEtcetera, Rising City. For more information click here. 

Chelsea Lemon Fetzer

is a poet and fiction writer.  She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University.  Her work has appeared in literary journals such as Stone Canoe, Callaloo, Tin House, and the Mississippi Review.  It can also be found online at Poets for Living Waters, and Sugar Mule.  In addition to serving The Create Collective, she leads writing workshops across New York City in collaboration with PEN American Center's Reading and Writing Program, The New York Writer's Coalition, and independently. 

Carlos Sandoval De Leon

works across various formats, including performance, sculpture, sound, drawing and photography. He was born in 1975 in Sabinas Hidalgo, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. He has exhibited at El Museo del Barrio (New York), RUSH Arts (New York), Teri and Donna (Miami, FL), Artist Space (New York), Scaramouche (New York), and Aljira Center for Contemporary Art (Newark, NJ). He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

is a burlesque danseur, actor and producer.  She is the Creative Producer of New York City's Brown Girls Burlesque and teacher at BGB's Broad Squad. She received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from Goddard College her areas of interest being performance art, women of color in burlesque heritage, and sacred sexuality and spirituality. She is working on a documentary on the legacy of Women of Color in burlesque.

 Celina Martinez

is a dancer and writer originally from Los Angeles, CA. She has been performing and teaching Latin and Middle Eastern dance since 2001.  She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University and a B.A. from Stanford University.  Her short fiction has appeared in literary magazines in the United States and Mexico.  You can find her online at two blogs: ontheB65.blogspot.com and in her comedic Mexican cooking show that features her alter ego online here. Her Tia Lencha blog also appears regularly on Pocho.com. When she is not writing or dancing, she is a public school teacher in Brooklyn, New York. 

is a Directer, Cinematographer and Producer living in Brooklyn, New York. He earned a Master's degree from The School of Visual Arts. His films have shown at numerous festivals including, The Hamptons International Films Festival, The Big Apple Film Festival, Gotham Screen International Film Festival, Great Lakes International Film Festival, GIAA Film Festival, Thr Brooklyn Short Film Concert, New Filmmakers New York. His clients include Quicksilver, Bloomberg, 1-800 Flowers.com, Pelle Pelle Jeans, HarperCollins, Macmillan, LEE, French Toast, The LT Apparel Group, IBM, GOOD Magazine and Mashable's Venture Studio. Photography for: Revel in New York, J/Hadley Jewlery, Applico, Kitt&Lux, TechCrunch, Applico.

 Sydnie L. Mosley

is an artist-activist who is interested in creative work that is both artistically sound and socially aware. Her evening length dance, The Window Sex Project, and its creative process, are a model for dance-activism. With it, she uses movement to respond to the sexual harassment of women in public places. Her dances have been performed extensively throughout New York City and in 2010, she was listed by TheRoot.com as one of twenty-five “Up and Coming: Young Minority Artists and Entrepreneurs.” She presents her choreography with her Harlem-based company Sydnie L. Mosley Dances. As a freelance performer she has danced with INSPIRIT, a dance company, Brooklyn Ballet, Angela's Pulse and VIA Dance Collaborative. Mosley is also dance faculty for The DreamYard Preparatory School and the Grosvenor House YMCA. She earned her MFA in Dance with an emphasis on Choreography from the University of Iowa, not long after she received her BA in Dance and Africana Studies from Barnard College at Columbia University. To learn more, visit: http://www.sydnielmosley.com.

Samita Sinha
is an artist and vocalist/composer based in Jackson Heights, Queens. She combines tradition with experiment to create new forms, drawing from a deep grounding in North Indian classical music, a contemporary vocabulary, folk and ritual music, and songs and texts in several languages. Inspired by Sekou Sundiata’s call to artists to create new public rituals, she extends her practice beyond the art world by leading Community Sings—events that bring different people together in one room for singing and dialogue—in her own Queens neighborhood as well as in York, Alabama. She teaches music, especially the intersection of music and culture, in NYC public schools through Carnegie Hall and the 92nd Street Y. www.samitasinha.com

 tART Collective
is a contemporary feminist artist collective in New York City. Members maintain their individual art practices and are committed to maintaining a close community through post-graduate studio visits, collaborations and offering support through the sharing of ideas, information and resources. The collective produces ‘zines, workshops and discussions and engages communities outside the collective - often in conjunction with exhibitions.

Julia Ulehla
Born in Tennessee and raised all over the US, Germany and the Marshall Islands, vocalist/actress Julia Ulehla now calls Queens home. Early in her career, she sang actively in the opera and oratorio scene of the San Francisco bay area. Desiring to explore the voice outside the conventions of classical singing, Julia moved to Pontedera, Italy to the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, where she worked for four and a half years on what could be considered some of the origins of singing: very old songs from West Africa, Haiti and the American South. Upon the birth of her first child, Julia moved back to NYC in 2011. She continues to explore the possibilities of the human voice (with her daughter's vocalizations as her primary influence), and teaches privately and through Carnegie Hall's Musical Exchange.

Anna Lise Jensen
I am an interdisciplinary artist, combining art-making (mostly photo-based images) with community organizing. My interests include the ways in which we use space, reuse of historic buildings, literacies and de-segregating “outsider artists” and MFA artists. My art projects are layered, involving research, creating & sharing spatial pockets outside and within existing structures (be it space or an organization) - in order to rest, reflect, facilitate interactions and bring about action. Often, I act as an intermediator when making my work, merging and activating different groups of people and forming diverse communities in the process - of artists, community gardeners in New York City and, recently, locals from a depopulated, coastal town in Denmark, Fjellerup, where I've spent time since childhood.I hold an MFA in Visual Arts from Hunter College in New York, NY, and an MA in International Relations from University of Chicago, IL. My work is in the collection of Candida Höfer and Edward Hopper House, Nyack, NY, and I’m the recipient of a Manhattan Community Arts Fund grant as well as participant in a pilot residency program at Arts@Renaissance, Brooklyn, NY.

Kesha Star Young
has been published in Words of Fire: An Anthology of Dragon’s Den Poetry Reading from Think Tank Press. She has facilitated New York Writers Coalition workshops and is also a self-taught artist using photography and assemblage. The arts became a tool to interpret cultural anthropology and social transformation at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Her work is aimed at deconstructing facets of society including identity, education, politics and the environment. With the turn of the century, she moved to New Orleans and became entranced with the folk art and voodoo traditions of the local culture. Wandering the ancient streets, objects would magically appear and serve as inspiration. Now living in Brooklyn, she teaches at Touro College, exploring similarity and difference in culture and education.