Zandashé Brown is a storyteller and writer/director born-and-bred in southern Louisiana. She has a background in programming, artists development, and social media strategy for arts organizations. As a daughter of the abandoned American South, she blends Black Southern introspection and spirituality with surrealistic horror to tell stories about neglected places and peoples. Zandashé is a current SF Film Rainin Grant recipient, an alum of Film Independent, of the Sundance Screenwriters Lab and Directors Lab, and of the Tribeca Chanel Women’s Filmmaker Program. She was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film for 2022.

NiQueen Jones is on a mission to inspire and transform lives through art, education, and an unwavering commitment to positive change. A dynamic and passionate Oakland-based multidisciplinary artist with a versatile skill set, she masterfully traverses realms from visual art, creative writing, and photojournalism, to music. For over 20 years she has been a teacher and hip-hop historian who intersects social justice, cultural heritage preservation, youth empowerment, and mindfulness.

NiQueen is currently a candidate for an MA in Arts Management and Entrepreneurship, a 2024 AfroUrban Society Lit From the Black Fellow, and an Emerging Artist Fellow with YouthSpeaks in collaboration with the California Arts Council.

Marcella Sanchez began her love of photography as a child growing up in Oakland, CA. She soon became obsessed with the fundamentals that make a great photograph: lighting, balance, composition, and use of space. She shares her passion through private sessions and events, studio and lifestyle product photography, and personal blogs.

In addition to photography, she has been an advocate of medical cannabis for over 20 years. Along with her parents, she started the country's first medical cannabis magazine, Greenkind. She was the publication’s lead photographer and had the pleasure of shooting many of medical cannabis's most famous and revered activists.

Her photography has been featured in multiple shows on the East and West Coast, in magazines, in a national billboard marketing campaign, and online. She also enjoys shooting events. For weddings, family, elopements, and parties, she brings a non-intrusive narrative to each event she shoots. She is the recipient of the Dream Keeper Enterprising Creative Cohort Grant, Enterprising Creatives: Test Market Laboratory Cohort Grant, the October 2023 Curator-in-Residence at The Black Curator’s Lab through Artist As First Responder at the Minnesota Street Art Foundation, and a 2023 recipient of a San Francisco Arts Commission Dream Keeper Initiative Artist Grant.

Marcella is also the Studio Assistant at the Artist As First Responder office/lab located at Minnesota Street Project Studios and also at the AfroPortals Project Space & Archive at Liberation Park in East Oakland. This project’s first public showing and a retrospective of her work debut in October 2023 at the Minnesota Street Art Studio.

Nakachi Clark-Kasimu is a multifaceted artist, educator, writer, and organizer whose skills bridge transformative justice, nonviolent direct action, and poetry. Nakachi activates her vow to alleviate the suffering of all beings through her expertise in organizational management and her work inside prisons in California and Washington. She is the founder of The Resonance Lab where she facilitates creative and performing arts workshops for incarcerated people through her program, Inside Voices. Through embodied practice and storytelling, she helps cultivate spaces where participants can process harm, reclaim agency, and build community rooted in nonviolence and creative expression.

Sam McGinnis (they/them) is a queer writer, maker, and organizer in Oakland. They work closely with Courtney Desiree Morris Studio and EARTH Lab SF, are deeply passionate about local mutual aid work, and are grateful to steward dyke history at the Bay Area Lesbian Archives. In 2021 they co-founded BLOOM, an Oakland-based artist collective that champions local artists of color and queer&trans artists.

From an early age Cavem has had a deep connection to environmental activism and food justice. Raised in Denver’s Five Points district, often referred to as the Harlem of the West, his interest for gardening and hip hop helped him resist the snares of gang lifestyle. Becoming vegan at age 14, he said he felt a calling to speak about these issues in his songs, “especially since most of the neighborhoods considered food deserts were people of color.” His 2007 debut single “Wheatgrass” with rapper Stic.Man of Dead Prez hit top ten on the charts in Spain and introduced him to the public as an OG (Organic Gardener). It led to his 2010 debut album The Teacher’s Lounge, followed by 2012’s The Produce Section, which featured collaborations with Speech from Arrested Development, Drummi Zeb from The Wailers, and Sa-Roc. Part album, part curriculum, The Produce Section offered lessons on organic gardening, plant-based recipes and alternate uses of energy.

Since then Cavem has traveled the world as both a performing artist and an educator. He’s shared the stage with Nick Jonas, Public Enemy, 2 Chains, Questlove, Wyclef Jean, among others. Offstage he’s involved with numerous organizations and projects dedicated to promoting wellness, eating healthy and environmental awareness.

Ashara Ekundayo is a queer, Black feminist interdisciplinary independent curator, visual maker, cultural theologian, arts organizer, and consultant whose creative practice is rooted in joy-informed pedagogies and the study and creation of Black archives, site-responsive ceremony, and artist-based strategies such as digital photography, screenprinting, zine-making, installations, and altar-making that illuminate the specific expertise of Black womxn of the African Diaspora. Her international creative work explores healing, memory, and place, and she is the founder of the collective Artist As First Responder and also the principal at AECreative Consulting Partners, LLC.

Prior, Ekundayo stewarded Omi Gallery at Impact Hub Oakland (2012-2017) and Ashara Ekundayo Gallery (2017-2019) both in Oakland, CA and has held national and international fellowships and residencies with entities such as the U.S. Dept. of State Bureau of Educational & Cultural Affairs, Institute For The Future, Schools Without Borders, Villa Albertine, Headlands Center for the Arts, Indigo Arts Alliance, and Angels & Muse.

Ashara sits on the Board of Directors at Black Art Library and on the Advisory Board for the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, and the Curatorial Advisory Committee at Minnesota Street Project Foundation. She is co-founder at Black [Space] Residency and director of The Black Curator’s Lab in San Francisco.

A few of her more recent design projects and initiatives include the expansion of the AfroPortals Project Space & Archive, BLATANT Press, the Archive Research Fellowship at the Bay Area Lesbian Archives, and the Alameda County African American Wellness Hub.

Ashara lives and works between the San Francisco Bay Area and her hometown of Detroit, MI. www.Ashara.io

Lyn Patterson is a storyteller and visual artist who lives in Oakland, CA. She is a deeply invigorated poet, specifically inspired to write about Black diaspora and those who have been systematically marginalized in society as a means of empowering future generations with their stories. For Patterson, storytelling is a sacred ancestral endeavor which can be used as a tool for paying homage and building future communities. Patterson often uses visual mediums to encapsulate her words and elevate the ways in which texts exist in conversation with one another. Her work has been published in Popshot Magazine, the Berkeley Poetry Review and has been featured on KQED.

Christian Walker is a Creative Director whose professional arts practice embodies a range of roles including fashion designer, model, image consultant, campaign stylist, photographer, and social entrepreneur.  He is the owner of STUDIOS, a fashion and lifestyle brand based in Oakland, CA.

Christian designs and produces a myriad of outward-facing programming in his role and is the visionary and steward of the “Men’s Wellness Fellowship” - a monthly collaboration with the Sol Affirmations organization and motivational speaker Karega Bailey. The forum invites men of color to convene for a meal and roundtable discussion on vulnerability, safety, and daily wellness practices.