I offer interactive workshops, artist residencies, and community programs that bring together storytelling, movement, visual art, music, writing, environmental education, and multimodal literacy. Programs are designed for learners of all ages and can be adapted for schools, libraries, museums, community organizations, and intergenerational audiences.

🌊 Chesapeake Storytelling Programs

Where Are the Fish?

Inspired by my book Where Are the Fish?, these workshops explore Chesapeake Bay ecology through story, song, movement, and art-making.

Participants engage with environmental themes while creating, singing, and moving together. Activities often incorporate reclaimed and natural materials, emphasizing stewardship, creativity, and our relationships with local waters.

Programs may include:

• Interactive storytelling performances

• Music and movement activities

• Environmental literacy and Chesapeake ecology

• Recycled and nature-based art projects

• Community conversations about waterways and belonging

Suitable for early childhood, elementary students, families, and community audiences.

🎨 Ledger Art & Beading Workshops

Drawing upon Plains traditions of creativity, adaptation, and reuse, these workshops introduce participants to forms of visual storytelling rooted in Indigenous artistic practices.

We explore how Plains peoples transformed discarded ledgers, paper, and materials into enduring works of beauty, memory, and cultural continuity. Programs can include fish stamping, collage, ledger-inspired drawing, and discussions about sustainability and creative reuse.

Traditional and contemporary beading practices are also incorporated through hands-on workshops that explore color, pattern, symbolism, and storytelling through material culture.

Topics include:

• Plains ledger art traditions

• Fish stamping using reclaimed wood

• Visual storytelling and multimodal literacy

• Seed bead art and symbolic design

• Creative reuse and environmental sustainability

• Indigenous perspectives on making and remembering

Programs are adaptable for children, teens, adults, and intergenerational groups.

🎵 Music, Movement & Multimodal Storytelling

These workshops invite participants to experience stories through rhythm, gesture, song, and embodied participation.

Rather than centering literacy solely in written language, participants explore how meaning is created through movement, sound, performance, and collective imagination.

Activities may include:

• Call-and-response songs

• Non-locomotor movement and rhythm games

• Interactive storytelling performances

• Musical exploration and instrument-making

• Embodied and sensory approaches to learning

• Community storytelling circles

Programs are especially well suited for early childhood settings, libraries, family programs, and inclusive learning environments.

✍️ Writing & Story Craft Workshops

Writing workshops support participants in developing their own voices, stories, and creative practices.

Programs may focus on memoir, oral history, place-based writing, multimodal composition, or creative expression through text, image, and sound.

Offerings include:

• Creative writing workshops

• Storytelling and oral narrative development

• Nature and place-based writing

• Multimodal composition

• Arts-informed literacy practices

• Intergenerational storytelling projects

Workshops are available for children, teens, college students, educators, and adult learners.

📚 School & Library Residencies

I partner with schools, libraries, museums, and community organizations to develop customized residencies and programs that integrate storytelling, arts learning, environmental education, and multimodal literacy.

Residencies may include:

• Single-day workshops

• Multi-week artist residencies

• Family and community events

• Professional development for educators

• Collaborative curriculum development

• Interdisciplinary arts integration projects

Programs are designed to be inclusive, participatory, and accessible to learners with diverse experiences, interests, and ways of engaging.

Programs can be adapted for early childhood, K–12 students, college learners, educators, families, and community audiences.

Guiding Philosophy

Across all of my work, I believe that stories are carried not only through words, but through movement, image, music, memory, making, and shared experience.

Drawing inspiration from Pawnee traditions, Chesapeake Bay ecology, community arts practices, and contemporary educational research, I seek to create spaces where multiple ways of knowing, communicating, and participating are welcomed and valued.

By bringing together storytelling, environmental stewardship, multimodal learning, and creative practice, my workshops invite people of all ages to explore how meaning is made together.