Aubrey Edwards is a multidisciplinary artist, cultural anthropologist, archaeologist, educator, storyteller and memory worker based in Laramie, Wyoming. Her collaborative practice spans academic, creative and applied spaces, exploring how art and research combine as knowledge-making systems.

She is the founder and executive director of Alces Community Works, a nonprofit design studio that uplifts artists and storytellers through humanities- and arts-based projects, reflecting Wyomingites’ lived experiences and contributing to the creative economy.

Edwards is a doctoral student in public humanities at the University of Wyoming and supports the Mellon-funded Re-Storying the West initiative to celebrate everyday experiences and promote representation across the state.

As a member of Monument Lab’s Re:Generation 2024 cohort, she helps steward High Iron, Wyoming’s only monument to the immigrant laborers who built the Transcontinental Railroad. Housed in a former train car, High Iron honors those who helped build the state’s communities and infrastructure.

Avokado Artists

AZ Board of Regents on behalf of Arizona State University - CA Campus

AZ Board of Regents on behalf of Arizona State University - Tempe Campus

Bare Bait Dance

Bayview Opera House Inc.

Beaverton Arts Foundation dba Patricia Reser Center for the Arts

Program Director, Dreams of Hope

Bekezela Mguni is a queer Trinidadian artist, radical librarian, community organizer, and educator. She holds an MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh and participated in the first Librarians and Archivists with Palestine delegation in June of 2013. She completed her first micro-residency at the Pittsburgh creative hub Boom Concepts and was featured in the 2015 Open Engagement Conference. She was a 2015-2016 member of the Penn Ave Creative Accelerator Program with the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater and launched the Black Unicorn Library and Archive Project. The Black Unicorn Library Project is a Black feminist independent community library and archive. She also served as the 2016 Sophia Smith Archive Activist-in-Residence at Smith College. Bekezela was selected as an Emerging Artist in the 2016 Three Rivers Arts Festival and won the Juror’s Choice award for her visual artwork. She was a featured artist of the 2017 Activist Print Project, a partnership between, Artist Image Resource, BOOM concepts, and the Andy Warhol Museum. Bekezela is a Boom Concepts studio member, a community space and gallery dedicated to the development of artists and creative entrepreneurs. She was most recently artist in residence at Artist Image Resource, focusing on screenprinting, collage, experimental design, and building her creative portfolio. Bekezela also serves as the Education Program Director at Dreams of Hope which affirms the voices and leadership of LGBTQ youth through the arts.

Belt Theater Company

Director of Dance & Movement, Griot Arts

As a native of Cleveland, MS, I am a graduate of East Side High School, Mississippi Delta Community College, and Delta State University. I served 11 years as a dance educator and arts consultant in the Clarksdale Municipal School District and three years with Memphis/Shelby County School District teaching grades kindergarten through 8th. Throughout my life, education and dance have always been in step. I began my dance education at Lynn Pace Dance School at age four. I continued my dance aspirations as a member and senior captain of the Golden Dolls Majorette Squad at East Side High School, as a Delta Dancer at Mississippi Delta Community College, and as captain and co-captain of the Delta Belles at Delta State University. I spent much of my spare time enhancing the lives and dance aspirations of young people through the Delta Arts Alliance in Cleveland, MS, and Griot Arts after-school program in Clarksdale, MS. I served as the artistic director and choreographer of the Jazzy Divas Dance Studio where we performed in several competitions and community events in the state of Mississippi and other states. I also have choreographed routines for pageants, middle/high school dance teams, and community college dance teams.