Arts Every Day

Diamond Gray was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. She has participated in the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art Assets 4 Artists residency and the Studio Museum in Harlem's Museum Education Practicum. As an artist and art educator, both roles inform her art and pedagogical practices. She is passionate about BIPOC and LGBTQIA+youth and encourages her students to focus on process, research, experimentation, and produce works that mirror their lives. In her artwork, she uses clothing, hair, India ink, paper, collage, drawing, video, sculpture, and audio to tell the narratives of her maternal family's history. Encapsulating moments of triumph, displacement, otherness, and trauma surrounding race, class, and gender, Diamond's story-telling and documentation challenge and reclaim sites in the United States to create a space for healing for Black womxn.

Noelle Tolbert: A true engineer of movement. An esteemed cultivator of physical ingenuity developed by a deeply rooted connection to her community and the audience in which she engages. Leading a life of artistry, Noelle represents feminine power, ancestral guidance, intuition and strength through dance, choreography, performance art, teaching, and collaborations. Baltimore based artist, this city has become a sustaining platform, building a youth dance program at Chesapeake Arts Center in Brooklyn Park, servicing over 300 students, providing mentorship to PVA students through professional development training / choreography at Brooklyn Park Middle School, recently joining The Moving Company as Hip Hop choreographer, and a dance resident artist at LeMondo creating programming and performance opportunities for local artists. With growth and development, Noelle continues to seek opportunities that are both intellectually and artistically challenging, as she works to connect with Baltimore to bring dance and the arts to areas that need healing.

Gena Proctor was born in New Zealand and raised in Australia. She holds a Bachelors of Education (Massey University) a Certificate of Human Sciences (Taranaki Polytechnic) and a Certificate of Arts Integration (Towson University). She now lives in Towson with her husband and her Pitbull, Gracie. She is a GeGe to baby Freya and will gladly share cute pictures with anyone who asks. She holds 22 years experience teaching 5-8th grade ELA and being the Middle Grades Director at Southwest Baltimore Charter School. Most of her career has been spent in Baltimore City Public Schools as a teacher and a teacher leader. Gena loves it here. She loves city students and believes Arts Integration is the most transformative form of active pedagogy.She has run professional development all over the USA on topics such as, Arts Integration, Crew and Morning Meeting, Student Led Conferences, Teacher Leadership and Making Thinking Visible. In 2007 she was recognised as “Teacher as Leader” in the area of Gifted and Talented Education; this award was presented by the Maryland State Advisory Council on Gifted and Talented Education. In 2022 she was nominated for Maryland Charter School Teacher of the year.