On this show we regularly talk with poets and artists about their work. And today host Ali Muldrow is joined by three professionals who work behind the scenes to make local arts programming happen. And they happen to be artists themselves. 

At a time when arts funding is being slashed left and right, we wanted to make the time to highlight some important arts programming happening in our community. Karin Wolf is the Arts and Culture Administrator at the Madison Arts Commission. She says that the city’s youth poet laureate application will open this month.

Sophia Snow is the director of the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives at UW–Madison and an interdisciplinary performing artist. Snow says that artists play an important role in “documenting, pushing, and inspiring everyone trying to fight for a better world.” 

The Eric D. Newble Jr. is the Arts Education Program Specialist at the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives at UW–Madison. He’s organizing the annual Line Breaks Festival that runs through this weekend and says that it takes collaboration to make programs like this succeed and sing.

They talk about the immeasurable value of the arts, the history of the Line Breaks Festival, the First Wave program, art as a vehicle for social change, the examples they’ve learned from civil rights movements, and the upcoming Brave New Voices international youth festival.

Eric D. Newble Jr. is the Arts Education Program Specialist at the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives at UW–Madison. He is a member of the 7th Cohort of First Wave and has been a Madison resident for over a decade by way of Central Illinois. He is also a multi-disciplinary artist, educator, and creative director.

Sophia Snow is the director of the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives (OMAI) at UW–Madison, which administers the First Wave Hip Hop and Urban Arts Scholarship Program. An alumna of the inaugural cohort to graduate from the First Wave program, Snow is an interdisciplinary performing artist who is passionate about developing talented artists in higher education. Before returning to UW, she served as executive director of Urban Word NYC, one of the oldest and most comprehensive youth literary arts organizations in the U.S. 

Karin Wolf is the Arts and Culture Administrator at the Madison Arts Commission. She manages art projects, educational programs, galleries, collections and more for the City of Madison. Before she joined the Madison Arts Commission she worked for the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design where she created award-winning programs and before that was an educational assistant at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.

Featured image: remix of the logo of the Madison Arts Commission and promo for the Line Breaks Festival by Sara Gabler/WORT.

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