Pedagogy Study Hall: "The Spellcaster's Manual" Poetry Workshop with Ainsley Burrows and Laurielle Noel

October 30, 2025 5PM–7:30PM
CADVC at UMBC, 1st floor Fine Arts Bldg.
Free parking, info below
CADVC

Join poet Ainsley Burrows and producer Laurielle Noel for a hands-on poetry workshop that blends craft and performance. Ainsley Burrows is an award-winning poet twice named "Best International Performer" by London's Farrago Poetry Café, a competitor at the International Poetry Slam Championship in Munich, and an alum of TV One's Verses & Flow and BET's Lyric Café—bringing page, stage, and coaching expertise to the room. He has led performance workshops at The Juilliard School, coached the Nuyorican National Slam Team, and published multiple poetry collections, grounding his teaching in both craft and practice. Partnering with him, Laurielle Noel is a seasoned producer and arts organizer—the engine behind acclaimed cultural experiences like The Sweet Spot Burlesque, Statement 2024/2025 and Art Soiree—skilled in audience engagement, artist development, and live-program design. Together, they'll guide an adaptable session focused on elevating voice, presence, and purpose.

This is a free event, but please register at this LINK.

LINK to Directions, Free Parking, & Maps

This program is presented in connection with "Pedagogy Study Hall," a research project, exhibition, and publication by Tomashi Jackson and Nia K. Evans exploring the structures that sustain our cultural and educational systems.

This program is sponsored by the Wagner Foundation, the Maryland State Arts Council, the Baltimore County Commission on the Arts and Sciences and the Citizens of Baltimore County, and the Arts+ initiative at UMBC.

Our exhibitions and events are free and open to the public for full participation by all individuals regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or any other protected category under applicable federal law, state law, and the University's nondiscrimination policy.

Please contact cadvc@umbc.edu or 410-455-3188 and specify the nature of your request as soon as possible if you need specific accommodations for this event or to experience our gallery exhibition or online programs.

More info at https://cadvc.umbc.edu/

On Thursday, October 26 at 5 p.m., the CADVC presents a conversation with the curator, Fitsum Shebeshe, and Jessica Bell Brown, curator at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The discussion, moderated by Rhea Beckett, founding director at Black Artist Research Space, will focus on curatorial approaches to African diasporic experience and migration.

Please visit here for additional information

Fitsum Shebeshe is a curator and painter based in Baltimore and Washington D.C., and curator of States of Becoming, touring with Independent Curators International. Before moving to the United States in 2016, he was Assistant Curator at the National Museum of Ethiopia. In 2012, Shebeshe co-founded the 1957 Initiative to annually celebrate the liberation of African countries from colonialism through the arts.

Jessica Bell Brown is the Curator and Department Head for Contemporary Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Prior to the BMA she was the Consulting Curator at Gracie Mansion Conservancy in New York, and also held roles at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Creative Time. She is curator of the touring exhibition A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, co-organized with the Mississippi Museum of Art.

Rhea Beckett is an artist, curator, and arts administrator with an extensive performing and visual arts background. She co-founded the Black Artist Research Space (BARS), a Baltimore-based creative collective and incubator. Beckett has served as a Legislative Affairs and Grants Specialist at the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, where she played an integral role in supporting the creative community of Washington, D.C., through policy and grant-making. She has served as Registrar of the Howard University art collection and gallery manager of C. Grimaldis Gallery (Baltimore, MD). Rhea earned her BS in Art from Fisk University, where she sang soprano in the Grammy Award-winning Fisk Jubilee Singers. Rhea received her MFA in Curatorial Practice from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Rhea Beckett is a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.

Header detail: Gabriel C. Amadi-Emina, Fade Catcher, 2021, Diptych photographic print on museo silver rag adhered flat on wooden panel. Courtesy of the artist. Pink and orange flowers on the left is separated by a yellow void from a floral textile with pink flowers in the center. On the right, handwritten text says, "Who will survive."

Logo: "Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture" in white text inside black rectangle