Join Bridge Live Arts and Southern California-based arts organizations DISCO RIOT and Level Ground for a public dialogue on shared leadership. Leaders from these pivotal organizations will discuss ways they establish horizontal infrastructures, develop new projects, and handle unique challenges. Topics include how staff can share administrative and artistic power, why board alignment is important, how leaders plan equitable transitions, and why distributing access and opportunities is significant.

Navigating Shared Leadership: A Conversation with Level Ground, DISCO RIOT, and Bridge Live Arts

> Thursday, September 19, 1:00 - 3:00 PM PDT

> Virtual via Zoom (link shared after registration)

> Tickets: Sliding scale starting at $15. NOTAFLOF available, please contact admin@bridgelivearts.org for more information.

Speakers (clockwise):

• yétúndé olágbajú (b. 1990) is a research-based artist, producer, and residency director living on Ohlone and Tongva lands (Bay Area & Los Angeles, CA). Their work roots in a single question: What must we reckon with as we build a future, together? With no set answers or expectations, olagbaju unravels intricate connections as a means of highlighting our interdependence. Through their social practice and co-directorships they have founded and are a member of numerous artist and worker-led collectives, each with liberatory missions and values. An advocate for non-hierarchical working structures, they embrace shared leadership models that challenge white supremacy, by actively rejecting disposability and power hoarding — two of its guiding tenets. Photo Credit: Amber Salik

• Samantha Curly is an award-winning documentary film producer and creative entrepreneur based in Los Angeles. She is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of Level Ground, which is both a 501(c)3 nonprofit artist collective and a collaboratively run film production company. She is a graduate of Northwestern University and the Kellogg School of Management and currently holds fellowships with the Producers Guild of America, Impact Partners, and NBCU Original Voices. In 2023, she received a Cali Catalyst grant awarded to California changemakers creating tangible impact within the arts and culture sector, shifting power and influence to historically underrepresented voices. Photo Credit: Meredith Adelaide

• Zaquia Mahler Salinas is a Chicanx/Palestinian dance artist invested in movement-art as an act of reclamation and world-building. She dances at the intersection of performance, social practice, education, and advocacy; Zaquia finds joy in cultivating community, and lives for the magic inherent in collaboration. In 2018, Zaquia co-founded DISCO RIOT, a nonprofit organization that supports radical dance and creative possibilities in San Diego. In 2023, Zaquia was awarded one of San Diego’s inaugural Far South/Border North grants for artists working in socially engaged practice. In 2024, she relocated to Boston to accept a role as Senior Director of Artist Programs and Residencies with Boston Center for the Arts, and is currently serving as a Resident Curator with ODC Theater in San Francisco. She is exploring new opportunities to uplift and cultivate collaborative art practice and special projects as a bicoastal artist. Photo Credit: Samantha Zoucher

• Trystan Loucado is an artist, movement creator and director based in San Diego, CA who is deeply committed to creating space for artists with diverse backgrounds to train, work and showcase their art. Having performed internationally in over 20 countries on five continents, Trystan used their experience to grow an appreciation and knowledge of the international dance scene. Through the lens of a queer gender expansive artist, Trystan has presented work for DISCO RIOT, San Diego Dance Theater, and The California Ballet. While navigating their performance career they prioritized developing experience as an artistic leader focusing on collaborative leadership models both in the creative process as well as the office. They are currently coproducing San Diego’s first queer dance festival Queer Mvmnt Fest embarking on its 4th year. Trystan believes relating and empathizing with the intersectionality inside our communities can bring forward more opportunities for everyone. Photo Credit: Samantha Zoucher

Curators:

• Rebecca Fitton (she/they) is a co-director Bridge Live Arts’ where she focuses on operations, development, and curation. She cultivates community through movement, food, and conversation. Her work in the dance field as an artist-scholar, producer, and advocate centers on equitable arts infrastructure, supporting asian american communities, and disability justice.

• Cherie Hill is a curator, co-director, and the Director of Arts Leadership at Bridge Live Arts. She has co-curated Power Shift: Improvisation, Activism, & Community; Anti-Racism in Dance; Liberating Bodies, and the Money in the Arts series. She co-presents on distributed leadership, is an advocate for equity and inclusion, a choreographer, and a dance educator. Cherie collaborated with B.L.A. former co-directors, Hope Mohr, and Karla Quintero to lead HMD/the Bridge Project, an organization with a hierarchical model to Bridge Live Arts, a model based in Distributed Leadership.

Organizations:

Level Ground is an award-winning artist collective and production company that supports Black, brown, trans*, and queer artists, projects, and audiences. We create purposeful and sustained spaces where artists can learn, develop, produce, and exhibit work with and for each other and our communities. Level Ground is a collective tended to by members of multiple and intersecting identities. We believe artistic experimentation and collaboration, coupled with diligent organizing and action, build pathways that support ongoing efforts towards collective liberation. Our community strives to be rooted in right relationship with one another, our ancestors, our planet, and our means and economies of survival. We hope to inspire new, regenerative ways of imagining and organizing our creative and communal lives that resist extractive practices within the arts and beyond.

Founded in 2018, DISCO RIOT exists to grow social consciousness and connection through collaborative, thought-provoking movement-based arts in San Diego. Born out of a need to better support under-resourced independent dance artists working at the margins, the nonprofit strives to provide programming that responds to local needs and uplift underrepresented voices. We offer classes, residencies, a festival, site informed performances, and professional development opportunities that grow, change, and deepen as we engage with the community. While the organizational structure has long been collaborative, in 2024 DISCO RIOT began a formal transition towards a distributed leadership model.