U-M Creative Currents

Pan African Creative Exchange With Nike Jonah & Erwin Maas

• Nike Jonah FRSA and Erwin Maas • Season 1 • Episode 1

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How might the arts foster intercultural appreciation and understanding? Can the arts serve as a global economic development tool? What can be done to amplify new voices speaking across international boundaries or offering new perspectives on differences, including race and gender? We’ll discuss these questions and more today on U-M Creative Currents, Michigan arts podcast.

In our very first episode host professor Mark Clague talks with Nike Jonah FRSA and Erwin Maas, our 2024 Visiting Artist Integration Program (VAIP) and U-M School of Social Work Artist Residents. Clague spoke with Jonah and Maas about their groundbreaking work through the Pan-African Creative Exchange (PACE) and what they're doing on campus this spring and fall.


Mark Clague:

We'll discuss these questions and more today on Creative Currents, a Michigan Arts podcast. Welcome to Creative Currents, a project of the University of Michigan's Arts Initiative. I'm your host, Mark Clegg, Professor of Musicology and Arts Leadership at the University of Michigan, and it's my honor to welcome Nike Jonah and Erwin Maas to the studio. Nike and Erwin are the co-directors of PACE, or the Pan-African Creative Exchange, which is an advocacy organization that raises the profile and international impact of the arts across Africa. Importantly, for our conversation today, they are artists in residence at the University of Michigan this sponsored by the Arts Initiative through our Visiting Artist Integration Project. Surprisingly, they are not in residence at one of our professional art schools on campus, but instead are working with Professor Rogerio Pinto, primarily with Michigan's School of Social Work. Nikki and Erwin, welcome to Creative Currents. Thank

Nike Jonah:

you.

Mark Clague:

Thank you. Good to be here. So tell us a bit about your work on campus this semester, and what have you been doing with the School of Social Work? Maybe, Niki, could you kick us off? Oh, wow.

Nike Jonah:

We've sort of met with a range of faculty members, students, and different initiatives and programs that the university has to offer. We've run a number of workshops. So we've told everybody about PACE and sort of like how they can engage, why it's It's an important program. And got feedback. And I think it's important to say that the work started before we got here. Because one of the things that Professor Pinto did is he set up a series of meetings with us, I think from sort of November last year. We were meeting with a number of students and faculty and staff and sharing with them PACE, our ambitions, and getting feedback in terms of how we could be integrated into their programs for our visit or how we might find some kind of meeting point, some synergy. And I thought that was actually very, very powerful because it gave us a sense that we knew who, well, I hadn't been here before. So coming and having a sense of who's, who we're going to meet with, where the interest lies, was incredibly very powerful. So this is

Mark Clague:

your second visit to campus, but really it's in a sense your third or fourth, right? Because you've been engaging with campus over Zoom. Yes. Yeah, Zoom really changed our lives. Oh, it really did. And brought some positive new opportunities as well. I

Nike Jonah:

think we met, I would think, at least 80 people before coming. It's very powerful and very intentional in terms of ensuring that we all

Mark Clague:

get something out of this. So since you mentioned PACE a couple of times, we probably should talk about what that is before we get too much further. Maybe, Erwin, you can tell us a little bit about PACE, how it came to be, how you came to be involved.

Erwin Maas:

Yes. So PACE stands for the Pan-African Creative Exchange. It's a biannual showcase. It's a platform really based in South Africa, but Pan-African for the entire continent, as well as the diaspora. And it's primarily a biannual showcase, showcasing work, creative work in all its facets from the continent, artists in the continent, as well as the diaspora. The flagship is mostly the performing arts, but we also do visual arts. We've done fashion, arts and crafts, food, film. So there's really the gamut of all the arts that is being presented. In our off years, in the years that we don't have a show, showcase, we do also provide career development labs. So we've done a producer's lab. We've done various dramaturgical labs. This year, this happens to be an off year, the 2024. We are doing another lab that is more focused on design and technique. So, yeah, so we are really trying to raise the profile of artists on the continent and make connections for them together with the diaspora, as well as other curators, funders, academics.

Mark Clague:

So, Nico, maybe for those in the audience who don't know what a showcase is, you could talk a little bit about the purpose. Because you might think of it as an entertainment, but it's really not, right? It's meant to raise the profile of some artists and expose them to presenters really from all over the world. It's kind of a career development opportunity for them,

Nike Jonah:

right? And it's such a good question because for nearly nine years, I ran Decibel Performing Arts Showcase, a very similar showcase for the Arts Council England, which is a major... funding body for the arts in England. And that came up all the time. People kept saying festival. And I was like, it's not a festival. And I guess the difference is between a festival and a showcase. First of all, the target audience is the business of the arts. So it can be venue directors, artistic directors, academics, writers, critics, other artists, anyone who has a stake within the business. So often they're either financial or creative investors. in some way, shape or form. And so the idea of the showcase on the continent, there isn't very many that are targeting the arts and creating this space for people to exchange, to develop, to partner, to collaborate. Because we know that in the arts, I mean, there's a figure that we used to bat around at the Arts Council that said 80% of your opportunities in the arts come from your networks. So for us, Pace is an opportunity for people to network, to grow their opportunities, to grow their profile. But I think more importantly, when you're in places like Africa, it's most probably closer to 100% of your networks that are feeding your opportunities. And I, myself, I'm quite well connected. I left the Arts Council in 2012, and I can still say I've only had one opportunity where I didn't know the person. Which is quite shocking. I mean, I'm very, I'm not saying I need to get everything, but it's just given that I've got a very, very big network and I've got quite a big profile in the UK and I've only had one job since I left the Arts Council. So I think if you're from a person of colour or you're from a different part of the country, like you're not from a major city, you're in a rural area, it's much, much closer to 100 in terms of the opportunity. So what we try to do with Pace is showcase the work, support artists in understanding ways that they can develop and sharpen their work because many people's ambitions are to collaborate or to tour their work beyond their local spaces. So in order to do that, they need to see work from around. They need to know where they sit in the world stages.

Erwin Maas:

And I think also Nike and I both ran more international organizations and where you always saw that particularly, not the Global South, but particularly Africa, was very often absent or in the periphery. And we had this conversation with many artists on the continent, and they said, you know, very often these international gatherings and these professional gatherings happen in the Global North or West, and it's very difficult for us to get there, either financially or visa travel. And so that's really also one of the reasons why this idea came from Leitnik, said she's been running a showcase similarly in the UK and there was basically kind of like a coming home to the continent of why can't we have this on the continent as well.

Nike Jonah:

Just to also add, it isn't just about the artist development, it's the sector development. There's something about going to Africa and seeing things through a completely different lens because often everything's filtered when you see things in the States or you see things in Europe. for even for the artistic directors and the researchers to be on the continent that in itself is very very powerful and for people who originally of African descent they talk about the restorative nature of feeling connected to the continent

Mark Clague:

now there's no substitute for like being there yeah seeing this especially with the performing arts yes you have to see the original and you have to be part of the social experience of that work just seeing a video is not going to be compelling in the same way and it makes sense to even though I hadn't really thought about it in this way, that we think of the arts as this kind of intercultural bridge connecting different people in different places, but you need that entrance ramp. You have to build the bridge before it really can function. And who gets to be showcased determines who gets work and who gets to be seen. Can you talk about maybe an example of a work that has come up through this PACE network that you think has been really exciting and has had that kind of international impact? There's

Erwin Maas:

definitely a few. Maybe I talk about Sion and you talk about Esther's Revenge. Because I happen to, total coincidence, see the premiere of a work called Sion by the choreographer Gregory Macoma and Vianney Dance Company in Johannesburg in 2017. And this was the year before our inaugural place, our first showcase, which took place in 2018. And I was just blown away. It was beyond beautiful and impactful. And Gregory Macoma is already known. He's not like, we didn't discover him. He was already touring. But that work really made an impact. And I said, oh, if at all possible, you should come to Pace next year and showcase this at Pace. And he did. We were able to make that happen. And somebody from the Barbican in london saw it and was this has to come to london i told him also to pitch at ispa the international society for performing arts in new york where he was selected for that as well and ever since it's been touring all around the world it's been coming back to to new york twice already at the joyce theater and it's gotten rave reviews it is stunning it's absolutely so if you ever want to see something that really is moving it's uh it's called sion A Requiem of the Bolero. So by Gregory McComb of Wiyani Dance Theatre.

Nike Jonah:

Sounds gorgeous. It was a stunning piece. And the piece I want to talk about is Esther's Revenge. As part of the build up to Pace, I'm originally, my parents are Nigerian. I thought I have to include Nigerians. We don't like to be left out of things. So I went to the Lagos Theatre Festival, which was a festival that was run by the British Council. And I I saw this really interesting site-specific piece called Esther's Revenge. And it was situated within a prison. And it was about a woman who'd killed her British boyfriend just before independence in Nigeria got independence. And the British were concerned that if they gave her the death sentence, that it would cause more problems than what they were all having with people wanting independence so she was imprisoned for life and so this is a story about this lady in her life and her pleading to a jury of 12 people there was more than 12 people in the room supposed to be 12 people but and then we had to decide whether she was guilty or not guilty or should she live or should she die was the instructions the prison guard gave us I thought it was a really interesting piece I felt that it was a piece that could travel there was so many different types of justice, black justice versus white justice. She was working class, so what does it look like in terms of justice if you're coming from a lower class in society, if you like? And so I thought that it would be great to take it to... to pace, to present it as part of our showcase. We had a little budget to make that happen. My sister, who is a forensic psychologist who's worked in a number of prisons, was with me. And she, at the end of seeing the piece, we said to the director, do you mind if we give you some notes, just things that you could do to tweak it? And after that, every single time he saw me coming out of one of his shows, he'd say, Nika, do you have notes for me? the inaugural pace in 2018. So it was only a few months later and they got the most incredible feedback. I mean, the guy was quite visibly kind of taken aback by the interest. It then ends up last year, 2023, in, well, we did the dramaturgy lab with the piece and then they kept reiterating the piece in the Lagos String Festival, which the guy and I runs. It came to the Brighton Fringe and Pace at the Brighton Fringe last year and won two awards. One of the awards was was to come to the Soho Theatre, which they came to in January this year. And the other award is to come back this year to present. But I think for them to have gone through that reiteration, to have got that feedback, it's been incredibly powerful and uplifting. And not just for them, but for other artists that are watching and saying, oh, this is what it looks like to have a showcase to get feedback from your peers and to find ways to tweak and to understand what it is to remount. Some artists on the continent don't ever get a chance to restage a piece. They do it once and that's it. And we all know what it is to be able to edit and rewrite and what it means to be able to kind of go back to the drawing board with a piece and sharpen it.

Mark Clague:

That sounds amazing. I mean, in part because you're taking the showcase and really not just creating a network, but creating a community of practice, really, you know, friends and people, you know, colleagues who can support one another and make the work better.

Erwin Maas:

Yeah. Totally. And I think these, of course, are some of our highlights, and we're very proud of that. But I think even more important, or not more important, but as important, has been the connections that have been made on the continent. Because, of course, everybody would love to tour around the world. I mean, for a lot of artists, that is a dream. But I think one of the things that I so remember on our very first PACE showcase in 2018, we had this brilliant South African singer A musician. And Asandam Kiki. And she performed that night. And we had this Senegalese dancer slash choreographer. Who had a little trouble getting there. But he finally made it late at night. And she was performing. And he got so excited about her work. That he climbed on stage and started dancing. And they totally started basically riffing off each other. Wow. And I was like, this was the first night. And I was like, Nike. We got it. It's there because that's really what Pace is about is these artists connecting with each other and feeling like, hey, we can maybe work together. And so even this last year, there was a fantastic project from Kenya on stolen artifacts in Western museums. And there was this choreographer from Ivory Coast. And he was so inspired by that, that he now invited them to come to Ivory Coast and work together with them. And I think these kind of things are so important because a lot of the opportunities in Africa are north-south. They're still very linked to previous colonial situations. And there is very little connection within Africa possible because of many colonial issues still, like you can't travel from Nigeria to the neighboring country because you have to fly to Paris in order to get there. There are no flights direct. is still very, very present in Africa today. And so for us, that is a big thing that we're trying to work on, is mobility, but it's also really to make these connections for African artists on the continent and not just only from the continent elsewhere.

Mark Clague:

That's

Erwin Maas:

really profound

Mark Clague:

that, you know, Africa is a continent, not a country, right? And there are hundreds of tribal groups and dozens of countries within Africa. But it's interesting, I hadn't really thought about the fact that all those colonial writers actually created barriers to even neighboring countries being in communication with one another.

Nike Jonah:

And you see it with the work that's made. So the French did a lot of investment within dance. You see a lot of strong dance that we're seeing coming out, coming out of places like Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali. But the British invested in festivals of theater. So a lot of the universities held the theater festivals. So in Nigeria and Kenya and all the sort of British spaces and the dance wasn't. So you see that the dance stays quite traditional. And even the dancer in Nigeria that is doing really well, Kudus Oninekeku, he studied in Paris and in Belgium. So he's come a bit out of that French space. But yeah, it's interesting to see what art forms are very strong and why that has been, how that's come about. And the

Erwin Maas:

language barriers too. Of course, the various language barriers that are also still those those uh language lines yeah the lines are still present

Mark Clague:

yeah that's fascinating so let's let's shift gears a little bit and talk about what you're doing on campus to bring this learning through pace and this experience to our students at michigan i i understand you have a showcase with students maybe at the end of this visit and some of our students might actually have an opportunity to showcase at pace coming up next year but what are you doing in in this particular trip i understand you're working with dearborn and flint and the ann arbor campus is well. So give us a little bit of a precie of what your activities are.

Erwin Maas:

Yes. So in our previous, like Nikkei said, we started off with a lot of Zoom calls, which was really helpful because the faculty and students were also able to tell us like, this is something that we would be interested in to hear more about. And so our previous trip, we did a lot of workshops or a lot of classes presenting PACE, but also talking about, for example, something we did was called the artist as a cultural diplomat or the student in this case as a cultural diplomat and how can you really build these links beyond a local context. And so this time around, Nike and I really were quite interested. Of course, it's great to be in Ann Arbor. It's a really lovely city. But we heard also about the Dearborn campus and the Flint campus. And that was something we were very interested in because PACE is inherently a social justice platform. And of course, Dearborn and Flint campuses There is, from what we've heard, we haven't been there yet, but it's more minority communities. And so it's something that we are very interested in to connect with them as well. So this trip around tomorrow, we're going to visit Dearborn. We're going to have meetings with faculty there. We're going to be in a panel conversation there on forced migration, actually, which is also very big topical for what we do in PACE because a lot of artists have to deal with that. And then on Friday, we go to Flint. where we will also present a workshop on international networking and how to pitch yourself and your work beyond the local context again. And I think we're also seeing quite a lot of art, which is exciting. We're going to go to galleries and museums and meet people that way. And then, like you said, next week, we indeed are also doing this pitch session. This is something that we do at the showcase ourselves. People can either present tour-ready work or they can present work in progress or they can pitch. And there's various ways to pitch. And one of the things that we are really excited about is the Speed Networking Pitching Series, which is a much more informal way where people sit across from you in tables and you just pitch seven minutes and you get a quick Q&A. They can give you feedback and then you go to the next table and you do it all over again. And so you can really get better at presenting yourself. And this is something that we're really grateful for for the Arts Initiative is that they are so excited about what we're doing that they are looking into the prospect of potentially sending a few students and their work to the showcase next year. So this is some of the things that we're doing this time around.

Mark Clague:

I'm so excited you're connecting with Dearborn and Flint because that's really a strategic priority of the Arts Initiative as well. And you're going to find some amazing things like the Dearborn Art Museum has a beautiful glass collection. Flint actually has a huge Performing Arts Center. There's really a lot there. But I would say the faculty and students there are really opportunistic and scrappy. They have fewer resources than we have on the Ann Arbor campus. So their ingenuity and energy really comes to the fore. So you'll meet some awesome people. Yeah, we're excited. Yeah, absolutely. So can you tell us a little bit about your own arts journey? How did you get involved in the arts and come to be in arts administration and theater? And I think a lot of our students are curious about their careers and their future and the story of how others have navigated this career path is really interesting.

Nike Jonah:

I started off in fashion. I sort of, Nigerian background, there's this expectation for you to be a lawyer, a doctor, those sort of jobs. While my mum was abroad, I decided I'd basically register for this fashion school. I didn't think I'd get in because I didn't have a portfolio, but I said to the lady, I pointed to someone's portfolio on the wall and I said, I think I'm as good as that. I most probably wasn't, but maybe at the time I thought I was. Got into the school and I was just fascinated to kind of learn about the different ways one can approach aesthetics. And then sort of stayed there for a little while and then went and studied business to kind of please the family but by that time my mother had come around because the first Nigerian fashion designer had made the first million and she said oh there is it is viable you could make a living out of it and after I'd finished business school I then went to America and I ended up being in anything creative I was just interested in so I was a modelling agent for a number of years. I did hair and makeup agent, photographer's rep and then I sort of went into design and I worked in advertising agency for a long time and thought I maybe would have done graphic design if I'd had my time again. I really enjoyed that. I worked on a film so I was across the board and then I moved back to the UK and I was just scrambling to figure out what next and I ended up being offered this opportunity at the Arts Counselling where I worked for like nine years on a programme that was set up to support African, Asian and Caribbean artists based in the UK. It was like... an intervention because they realized that a lot of the funding hadn't gone to these groups of people and they were trying to readdress the balance. And it was something that had come from government and it was 10 million in 10 years. So it was quite nice to be on a diversity program that had very good resource behind it. So that got me started in the journey. Did I expect myself to be in a policy funding organization? Not at all. There was times where I'd be sitting around the table asking myself, what am I doing here? I mean, how did I get here? But when I look back now, I realize it's given me a good, well-rounded understanding of the arts and where the gaps are and how we might plug some of the gaps. And there's a confidence that has come with that. And as I was leaving the Arts Council in 2012, I realized that I needed more experience on boards. So I was was asked to sit on the board of the European Cultural Foundation, which was a foundation that was set up to... Bridge the gap with Europe, finding culture, using culture to bridge the gaps with Europe. So it leaned into what was happening in Eastern Europe, leaning into bringing Southern Europe more closer to the centre. It was based in the Netherlands. And I think when Brexit happened in the UK, we asked ourselves, did we fail? And I said, well, maybe it would have been worse if we didn't exist. That's kind of looking at it from the positive. So I sit on the board. I sit on the board of Birmingham Contemporary music group which is a contemporary music ensemble that's come out of the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and it's all about new music and writing and centring the artists and I knew nothing about writing and composing new music and I know a lot more now but I think I've been on that board for about 12 years and I sat on the board of the Royal Africa Society and I used to sit on the board of the Bush Theatre which was all about new writing so I'm very interested in these spaces of nurturing talent and given opportunities to shift the way that we make things and the way we talk about the work. So that's me for now. I'll stop there. What

Erwin Maas:

about

Nike Jonah:

you?

Erwin Maas:

Nika is very, very modest because she also worked at the Arts Council England on this project that I do want to mention because it's really something that Pais is built out of also and it's ingrained in the work that we both do and it's called the creative case for diversity. You can Google it. You can get the PDF. A big friend of ours, Hassan Mohamed Ali, was a big creator of that as well. It's really something that Arts Council England is now using in all the way how they fund the arts. It's a fantastic policy document actually. I have a little bit more of a linear line in that sense because I'm from the Netherlands originally and And as long as I remember, I wanted to be in the theater. So I started very early on playing theater as a child and went into community theaters and stuff like that. And then around high school, I already started noticing that I liked inventing the whole even more than being just part of the whole. And so got more interested in directing, went to the theater and I ended up here in Stateside because I did my master's in theater directing at Columbia University. That's how I ended up here. So I've really been more, we have a saying in Holland that is in heart and kidneys, in heart and kidneys, I'm a real theater animal. But in 2010, I was approached by the Dutch embassy in the US to become basically the director of performing arts, which really led me more into the politics world and international engagement. And leaving that, I got picked up as artistic director for the International Society for Performing Arts, ISPA, as well as running the fellowship program for the International Performing Arts for Youth. So more and more into that international space, which I always enjoyed and being able to offer opportunities to other artists. So it's a little bit of a split mind because I still also direct I still I have a production right now of Broadway in New York but but I love being in both these worlds so to speak so that's really kind of like where I come from

Mark Clague:

well that's fantastic and of course you have a long-standing relationship with Professor Rogerio Pinto yes who recently came to Michigan and joined the faculty at the School of Social Work and there's a really interesting arts practice happening inspired by Rogerio and just working with theater and I understand you've directed some of his shows. You have a new show you're working on. It's called Skin Deep.

Erwin Maas:

Skin Deep is more of an exhibition but yes, it's a very interesting collaboration that we've had and I love working with Rogerio. This is also of course part of how we got here because Rogerio presented his work Morilia at a festival in South Africa. So Pace is situated in a festival in South Africa and though Nikkei and I are here as representatives. We have a team in Africa that is working with us. I kind of got on board because I had this network and I had a loud megaphone that I could kind of like scream about it. And so that's how it just kind of evolved from there because it's really a grassroots organization. And Rogerio ended up being there presenting his work. And this was also the year before.

Nike Jonah:

2016.

Erwin Maas:

Yeah. And so we had like a roundtable conversation that he was at. kind of hearing about, oh, they want to do this thing. And so he's been kind of following us from afar and has always said this would be really, really interesting for the university to know more about and to see how more connections can be made.

Mark Clague:

Well, and it's fantastic that the arts are finding such a home in social work because we can see the arts not just as decorative, but really as something that helps shape our life. There really is the work of life makes us human. But I think maybe to close, Nikkei, maybe you could talk a little bit i'm interested in this policy document but also just about the power of the arts to bring sort of progress to the issue of diversity inclusion you know connection what do you think is really the key to the arts and their their ability to tell stories that we need to hear

Nike Jonah:

I think that many people should have the opportunity to tell stories in their way. So I think for a long time, there was a particular way of telling stories from a particular group of people that was valued. And now what we're saying is deaf people will tell their stories. They'll tell it through sign language. And as a hearing audience, we'll take something away from it differently from somebody who's in the audience that's deaf. Or people might tell the stories in their language like you see a lot of that in South Africa because they've got what 11 well 12 12 official languages so sign languages become the 12th official language so you often go to events where you're sitting in an audience with no translation and navigating that and I think that's interesting because you look and you see differently when you're listening I've got I've done a lot of that in the Netherlands where I've gone to a show and I said was it about this that and the other and they're like no and I'm like well this was my takeaway and it's still quite powerful you know so I think there's something about who gets to tell the story and how we how stories and narratives are built and shaped I think it's a big part we need to do better in the arts with telling our own story Because I know that from looking at investments in England, there's a bit more of a government focus on design or anything that can be commercialised or monetised, rather than understanding the inherent value of what the arts brings to everything. It's across everything and it's not always explicitly articulated and we need to be better at doing that. And for me, this is why the Arts Initiative and what you doing here is incredibly powerful because you've fundamentally understood that it cuts across everything and it can change the way people feel about themselves it can change the way they tell a story the way they grow their practice and it also prepares them for the world and different worlds that they might encounter

Erwin Maas:

yeah it's I think I would add to that is that imagination and curiosity is something that is so needed I mean always but but tickly right now in the world. And I just remember this article, this is quite a while back, but this was, I think, Harvard Business School, that the 500 Forbes companies were basically complaining to the big business schools that they got students that had no imagination anymore. And so they started working with a dance company, like the business school started working with a dance company. I mean, these kind of things, it's almost like it's not until it's gone that people start to realize how powerful the arts are and how important the arts are and I think artists need to it's also up to us we need to infiltrate those spaces I think we've kind of started looking at our own navel so to speak and it's we need to reclaim these positions in society because before artists were you know also teachers and were doctors and and that was considered considered all part of the same. And now everything has become this kind of managerial thing where schools are run by managers and hospitals are run by managers and there's no imagination anymore or people that are connected to the actual field. So I feel like artists can be really reclaiming those positions. And yeah, it's... Go arts.

Mark Clague:

Yeah, that's fantastic. Well, Erwin and Niki, thank you so much for being here on campus, for sharing your insights and your dreams with our students I think I feel so much sort of concordance and harmony with your goals and our goals in the Arts Initiative to really center the arts at the University of Michigan and to make it a skill that every single member of our community sees as part of their life rather than something that's reserved for a few or that's rare. This is something that's ubiquitous and it really is about our survival, I think, as a society to see the arts. We have a lot of challenges ahead of us and we need all the creativity we could must So thank you so much for being here and for being a guest on Creative Currents.

Nike Jonah:

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Mark Clague:

Creative Currents is a project of the University of Michigan Arts Initiative. Please subscribe to hear more great conversations with artists, scholars, and arts leaders from across the campus and across the globe. Send your comments and suggestions via email to creativecurrents at umich.edu. This episode of Creative Currents was produced by Mark Clegg and Jessica Jenks, and our audio engineer is Audrey Banks. Our original theme music is composed and performed by Ansel Neely, a student at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater, and Dance. To learn more about the University of Michigan's Arts initiative, please visit our website at arts.umich.edu. Thanks for listening.