Centro Cultural Mexicano

Chama Valley Arts

Chandler Cultural Foundation

Chandra Williams is an artist, educator and community healer dedicated to fostering social and cultural change. Her work highlights the power of the arts to reshape society, empowering communities to create change directly.

As executive director of the Crossroads Cultural Arts Center in Clarksdale, Mississippi—known as the Home of the Blues—Williams leads efforts to celebrate African cultural practices and restore their role in community healing. The center provides space to reclaim Black cultural identity and narrative on local and global levels.

 

Williams earned a bachelor’s in fine arts from Washington University in St. Louis, with concentrations in critical theory and community education. Her experience includes serving as a museum educator, leading a private art school and two decades as a community educator and organizer.

Chapman University

Discipline: Opera/Musical Theatre

I’m truly honored and grateful for this opportunity. My hope with this to build a better foundation for my own longevity and build connections within the artist community. It’s truly amazing how one can take a picture in a way that’s completely different than anyone else looking at the same thing. I describe my photography as sincere, intimate and artful and to be able to do what I truly enjoy just makes my heart full of gratitude.

Name: Chastity Williams. Title: Founder of Spotlight Our Youth, Drama Director at Franklin Middle School.
Chastity Williams was born and raised in Illinois. She moved to Iowa, where she studied Theatre Arts at the University of Iowa and currently attends the University of Dubuque for Elementary Education, to integrate her arts experience in an educational setting. Chastity served as Miss Northeast Iowa 2023 where she continued to amplify the value of the arts. She is an advocate for arts education through her initiative “Spotlight Our Youth – Educate, Engage, and Emerge in Arts Education”. The arts help children find their voice and develop skills that help them become leaders. Her initiative is about sustaining artistic opportunities for kids so they can create their own stories. She has done work with Englert Theater in Iowa City and Chicago Shakespeare Theater in Illinois. She has also been on stage in productions across Iowa, some for other states. Chastity serves as a teaching associate and drama director in the Cedar Rapids School District and is a fan of anime. She’s excited to be a part of this fellowship and learn how to bring inclusivity into the arts!

Public Programs and Outreach Coordinator, Plains Art Museum

My name is Chelsea Steffes and I work at the Plains Art Museum as the Public Programs and Outreach Coordinator, a Teaching Artist, and a Senior Visitor Services Associate. I am a mixed race Filipino American who dedicates her time primarily towards the community that myself and my institution can serve. I got my Bachelor’s degree in Heritage and Museum Studies & Pre-professional Studio Art from Concordia College, Moorhead in 2019. Rather than specialize in a particular artistic medium, I focused on learning multiple artistic skills/practices and becoming an accessible and engaging informal arts educator. I have worked at my current institution since 2018 and have jumped at every opportunity that I can to improve myself and in turn, how I can serve my community. My goal is to make all arts community spaces an accessible and inclusive experience for anyone who visits. I make efforts to engage with our visitors and the local Fargo/Moorhead community through visitor experience, teaching classes, giving gallery tours, and participating in local community events by providing free art activities.

Chelsea Kaiah is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans sculpture and community-centered projects. Born on the Northern Ute Reservation, she is White River Ute and White Mountain Apache. Her creative process is rooted in material exploration, often making her own materials and upholding traditional craft practices such as beadwork, quillwork and hide work. Kaiah regards her materials as sentient collaborators, believing care and intention elicit stories of identity, history and family.

Committed to sustainable ethics, Kaiah invites others into dialogue and reconnection through her artistic practice. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Watkins College of Art and Design in Nashville, Tennessee, and lives in Denver, Colorado. In 2025, she received the Social Impact Award from Bonfils-Stanton Foundation and Denver Arts & Venues, which supported the creation of a hide camp for the local community.

Kaiah has served on the Indigenous Advisory Council for the Denver Art Museum after her term as the museum’s 2022 Native Arts artist-in-residence. She continues to develop her public art portfolio through projects in Westminster and Breckenridge, Colorado.