Poet Tish Jones Takes You All the Way Home

Founder  and Executive Director of TruArtSpeaks, Tish Jones is a poet, performer, educator and organizer from Saint Paul. She has performed at CBGB, Kaplan Theater, The Walker Art Center, Intermedia Arts, The Cedar Cultural Center and more. Her work can be found in the Minnesota Humanities Center's anthology entitled, Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2015), the 2011 and 2013 Saint Paul Almanac, and the Loft Literary Center's Nation of Immigrants audio CD. A graduate fellow of the inaugural Intercultural Leadership Institute, Jones has always had a passion for bridging arts and culture, civic engagement and youth development. Senior Field Building Strategist for Youth Speaks, her work explores the ways in which art can function as a tool for social transformation, liberation and education. For more on her personal praxis in this arena, see Jones’ TEDxMinneapolis Talk on "Spoken Word as a Radical Practice of Freedom." When you think of Tish Jones, know that she is somewhere dismantling age-old systems of oppression, putting on for Hip-Hop culture and creating new art to move the conversations forward. 

Tish Jones is the curating artist for the April 2019 event, Art Is…My Origin. Art Is… My Origin is a sneak peek into the most sacred of creative spaces – home. This segment will explore those living-room, basement and bedroom practices of freedom that led to the discovery of voice. It will look at blackness across difference and art, specifically music and poetry, as an intergenerational connector and catalyst for liberation. 

GET TICKETS for Art Is... My Origin.

See more stories from our multi-media series Art Is…

Special Thanks: Saint Paul Central High School and Carolyn Ross
Production Team: Kate McDonald, Ryan Klabunde, Brennan Vance, Joe Demko.