Art & Emergence Learning Cooperative
10-week course on ecological art, critical theory, and social practice. For emerging artists and creative practioners seeking to deepen their impact in community.
Cohort III: September - November 2025
Applications are now closed.
About The Learning Experience
The Art & Emergence Learning Cooperative is a 10-week small group learning experience for working artists seeking to deepen their practice, expand their radical imagination, and grow through collective learning and one-on-one professional support.
The cooperative will run for 10 weeks (September - November 2025)
The program explores the intersections of ecological art, social practice, and art activism, with a syllabus shaped around the practices and questions of each cohort. The examples below are some of the concepts past cohorts have focused on. Engagement in this learning looks like:
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Weekly readings & artist studies — e.g. Emergent Strategy (adrienne maree brown), Plastic Capitalism (Amanda Boetzkes), Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet; artists such as Mel Chin, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Rick Lowe
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Weekly group meetings for discussion and critique
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Bi-weekly individual studio visits for critiques of WIP, concept development, & professional practice support
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Monthly visiting artist talks featuring exhibiting ecological artists/curators/writers. Fall 2024 artist talk series featured artists Hannah Chalew, Renee Royale, Tilke Elkins, and Hotvlkuce Harjo.
This learning experience will prioritize meaningful connections and community: it will be made up of 4-6 artists, selected based on the strength of their work as well as their potential to grow with and from each other. The meeting schedule will be based on the schedule needs of the selected artists.
Artist Testimonials
Bird's Teaching Background
I am an artist, curator, and educator who prioritizes caretaking and connection. My work explores the throughlines between history and ecological crises, engaging with communities, scientists, and site-specific materials to investigate land memory, systems of complicity, and possibilities for emergence.
I've served as middle school teacher, instructional coach, principal of a turnaround school in New Orleans, and director of social studies, supporting school leaders across the South to implement equitable learning practices and anti-racist history education. Currently, I'm teaching undergraduate studio art at Georgia State University and consulting for organizations across the U.S, specializing in adult learning, equity, and organizational systems. I received my B.S. in art history from Skidmore College and master’s degree in education leadership from Columbia University.
Recent facilitations:
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Observing and Imagining the Health of the Santa Cruz Watershed, University of Arizona School of Art, Nov 2024
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Grateful Gathering: Foraging for Wild Ink Materials on the Atlanta BeltLine Westside Trail, (with Maria Soto), Atlanta, GA June 2024
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The Way of Water: Exploring Local Ecosystems, (with Renee Royale), Virtual Workshop, April 2024
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Creative Visioning In Community: Authentically Expanding Your Support Network, Emory University and North carolina, 2023
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Working With Site-Specific Earth Pigments, New York City, Rhode Island, New Oeleans, North Carolina, and virtual, 2023
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Finding Grounding: Nature Connection + Art Learning Experience, (with Lilia Kapsali Grant), Baton Rouge, LA, Fall 2023
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Atlanta Land Memory Project: Exploring Personal, Scientific, and Historical Layers of Place, Atlanta, GA, Spring 2023
Teaching Philosophy
Excellent teaching can be a form of social practice, create experiences that shift people’s perspectives. I'm interested in using creative processes to interrogate issues of inequity and imagine alternative ways of being through education and relationships. Teaching is based on relational accountability. Through a balance of challenge, support, and trust, education can be transformative, liberating, and expansive.
Cohort I: Winter/Spring 2024
Kariann Fuqua
Oxford, Mississippi
Kariann Fuqua (b. 1976, Oklahoma) is an abstract artist utilizing drawing, painting and collage. She received a BFA in painting from Kansas State University and an MFA in painting from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her work has been widely exhibited in solo and group shows across the United States including Jenkins-Johnson Gallery (San Francisco, CA), Governors Island (New York, NY), Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL), Byron Cohen Gallery (Kansas City, MO), Manifest Gallery and Drawing Center(Cincinnati, OH), Athens Institute of Contemporary Art (Athens, GA) and was awarded a public commission at McCormick Place (Chicago, IL). She received a Joan Mitchell Foundation full fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Mississippi Arts Commission, and her work was published in New American Paintings and the Artist’s Magazine.
She currently lives and works in Oxford, Mississippi where she is an Instructional Assistant Professor of Art and Director of Museum Studies at the University of Mississippi.
Anna Pancoast
Arlington, Massachusetts
Anna Pancoast (they/she) is a self-taught artist working with textiles, mixed-media, and oil painting outside Boston, MA. Their creative practice is grounded in permaculture gardening and community building for climate justice. They are interested in how we transform what we have into what we need. Combining textile and paper scraps with color from plants and earth, their work provides healing, care, and safe spaces where we can stretch and challenge ourselves to transform in turn.
Pancoast studied astrophysics at the University of California Santa Barbara and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. However, their experience with equity and inclusion initiatives in the sciences led to increasing concern about climate change. In 2018, Pancoast left astronomy research to focus on climate justice work, building a permaculture food forest garden, raising two young children, and further developing their creative practice. They currently work with the Extinction Rebellion Boston Art Working Group, organizing community art builds with Mystic Open Studio in Arlington, MA.
Jocelyn Elizabeth
Boston, Massachusetts
Jocelyn Elizabeth (she/her) is an artist, writer, and mom based in Massachusetts. She is a self-taught painter and earned her B.S. in Management with a concentration in Human Resources and B.A. in French from Fairfield University. Her vibrant and expressive paintings encompass a range of mediums including painting, collage and writing, with a focus on abstraction and the natural landscapes of coastal New England. Her art and writing has been published in Humana Obscura, Uppercase Magazine, In Her Space Literary Journal and All She Makes. Her work has been exhibited across New England, including at the University of Rhode Island (Providence, RI), the Peabody Institute Library (Peabody, MA), and the Boston Office of Arts and Culture. Notable public art projects include an installation commissioned by the town of Wellesley, Massachusetts in 2022, Cow Parade New England 2023, and We Share One Sky Murals Project with the Newburyport Art Association in Summer 2024. She was an Artist-in-Residence at Chateau d’Orquevaux, France (2024) and is a member of the Cape Cod Art Center, the Cambridge Art Association, and the National Association of Women Artists. Committed to environmental consciousness, she ensures her studio is free of animal products and supports advocacy for brain injury survivors, women, children and the LGBTQ+ community.
Cohort II: Fall 2024
Shalea Niles
Boston, MA / Atlanta, GA
Shalea Niles is a Caribbean artist, Kundalini yoga teacher, womb practitioner, and ecofeminist activist whose multidisciplinary work merges surrealism, abstract expressionism, and performance. Grounded in her cultural heritage, she explores themes of identity, liberation, and ancestral connection while advocating for climate justice and marginalized communities. Embracing an Ayurvedic lifestyle, she approaches her creative and healing practices through a holistic lens that integrates body, mind, and nature.
Niles's work has been exhibited internationally and nationally, including On Motherhood (Kyoto Shibori Museum, Kyoto, Japan), Seeds of Liberation (Avondale Arts Center, Avondale, GA), The Deep (Pulgram Gallery, Atlanta, GA), Climate Change (Jack Sinclair Gallery, Atlanta, GA), and 100 under 100 (MINT Gallery, Atlanta, GA). She has collaborated with organizations such as Design+Muse by Comfiart, Art Pharmacy, and the Grady Health Foundation. Niles received her BFA in Art Education from Georgia State University and is an MFA candidate in Studio Art at Lesley University in Boston.
Jill Duffy
Hudson Valley, New York
Jill Duffy is an artist and educator exploring the intersection of art, nature, and agriculture on her farm in New York's Hudson Valley. Working exclusively with natural pigments, botanical inks, and earth-based materials, she creates abstract paintings rooted in a deep connection to place. Through workshops and hands-on exploration, she invites others to engage with the landscape as a source of both color and meaning, guided by an ethos of reciprocity. Duffy's work has been featured in Hudson Valley Magazine and Rural Intelligence.
Meg Koning
Denver, Colorado
Meg Koning is a photographer whose work explores the entangelements between humans and the natural world. Her ongoing series, Bones of Us, features portraits of women and couples, capturing the depth of vulnerability and intimacy in everyday life. In addition to traditional photography, Koning experiments with embroidered photography installations, expanding the tactile and narrative possibilities of her images.
Koning’s work has been featured in Ramona Magazine and Unraveled Academy, and she was a finalist for the Neutral Density Photography Award in 2020. She currently lives and works in Colorado with her four children and one black cat.
Morgan L. Silk
Titusville, NJ
Morgan L. Silk is an artist from central New Jersey who somehow finds time in each day to parent her two boys lovingly and enthusiastically, provide support in facilitation, curriculum, and marketing for a education-based nonprofit organization, and paint, draw, and photograph the young people who inspire her. Her work explores themes of personal and collective trauma, resilience, and social justice. On any given day, you’ll find her dancing in the mud with her kiddos, riding her horse through the woods, working on an art piece, or typing unnecessarily fast and loud on the keyboard.
Silk holds a B.A. rom William Paterson University and has received awards and recognition from the Arts Council of Princeton and the Hopewell Valley Arts Council. She was recently named a 2025 national LiberatED Fellow.
Ann Hill Bond
Atlanta, Georgia
Ann Hill Bond is an Atlanta-based journalist, cultural preservationist, and social practice artist working to amplify marginalized voices and uncover untold stories, particularly in the African American community.
Bond works within a wide array of fields, including public installations, performance, facilitation, public relations, media advocacy, and digital communications; most notably serving as the Community Engagement Editor at Capital B News Atlanta. In 2024, Ann was nominated for a Southeastern Emmy for her work with WABE on the project “(re)Defining History: Uncovering The 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre.” Other accolades include the National Black Journalist Association Best Practices Award and the Atlanta Press Club News Innovation Award, which she received in consecutive years for her innovative approaches to community journalism. She was an artist with Emory's Art & Social Justice Fellowship in 2024 and leads frequent walks with interdisciplinary scholars in Atlanta’s historic neighborhoods.
Cohort III / Fall 2025
Applications are now closed.
Sliding Scale Tuition
Your tuition includes 10 weeks of tailored readings, group discussions, critiques, studio visits, and visiting artist talks—all designed to deepen your practice and strengthen your creative community.
Choose the tier that best reflects your access to resources:
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Tier 3 – $2,000 — Full cost, sustaining the program and supporting lower tiers
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Tier 2 – $1,350 — Standard rate covering your participation
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Tier 1 – $650 — Reduced rate for those with limited financial access
Tuition Payment Plan:
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1/3 due upon registration
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1/3 due end of first month
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1/3 due end of second month
Flexible Options:
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Collective Learning Only — Join weekly group meetings (no one-on-one studio visits) for 30% off your chosen tier
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One-on-One Mentorship Only — If you're interested in one-on-one mentorship and not the collective learning program, check out mentorship opportunities here.