Wake the Arts Ambassadors Portal
What is Wake the Arts?
- Wake the Arts Academic Departments:
- Wake the Arts Center
- Galleries and Collections
- Secrest Artists Series
Wake the Arts at Wake Forest University is a hub that delivers on the promise of Pro Humanitate by creating community and providing funding support for all faculty, staff and students through experiential learning opportunities and creative research. Building upon the already high quality of artistic work at Wake Forest, Wake the Arts ignites the disciplinary and interdisciplinary power of the arts to invigorate the intellectual, artistic, and cultural life of the university.
5 events: Spring 2026
E-Letter Archive
Additional Resources
- WTA Stories
An in-depth collection of Arts stories, events and news - Wake the Arts slide deck
Comprehensive deck covering all things Wake the Arts - 2024-25 WTA Annual Report
- Wake the Arts alumni page
- 60th anniversary of Reece Collection (Student Art-Buying Trip)
Funded Projects AY25-26:
| Name of Project | Event Date | Description | Arts Discipline(s) | Project Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Walking the Frame: Film, Storytelling, Art, and Social Justice in Southern Italy | 7/1/2025 | This interdisciplinary study abroad project in Sorrento, Italy (June–July 2025) immersed students in Southern Italy’s culture through the Social World Film Festival, site visits to Procida and Ischia, and encounters with music, poetry, and visual art. Guided by faculty from Wake Forest, Notre Dame and St. Mary’s College, students created original projects—video essays, digital zines, and hybrid storytelling—that connect place, narrative, and justice. | Art, Creative Writing, Film, Music | |
| Deac Beats | 8/23/2025 | New student orientation can be a time of both excitement and anxiety for students. The "Deac Beats" drum circle invited students to sit down and play with a group for as long as they wish over the hour. Many new students left the drum circle in conversation with a person they did not know before sitting down. A great way for the energy of the arts to help kick off a new stage of life. | Music | link |
| The Comeback: A BSA Pep Rally | 9/1/2025 | “The Comeback” is a high-energy, arts-infused back-to-school Pep Rally hosted by the Black Student Alliance, designed to unite the campus community and celebrate the vibrant creativity and excellence of Black students at Wake Forest. This dynamic evening will feature a powerful lineup of student voices and leaders, including Vice President of Campus Life Dr. Shea Kidd Brown, and a student-led fashion show that showcases Black joy, style, and cultural expression. | Art, Music | link |
| Gregg Mozgala visiting FYS | 9/15/2025 | Guest teacher Gregg Mogzala will visit Christina's FYS to share his experiences in the documentary Enter the Faun and in Broadway in the play The Cost of Living. | Dance, Theatre | |
| Laura Minton Welcome Reception | 9/18/2025 | Reception to welcome new Acquavella Director of University Art Galleries and Collections. | Art, Dance, Film | |
| Resistencia Film Festival | 9/18/2025 | The Resistencia Film Festival, scheduled to take place from September 15 to October 15, 2025, is an interdisciplinary and community-centered event that brings together students, faculty, staff, and the broader Winston-Salem community. Through a curated selection of films by Latin American filmmakers, the festival will engage audiences in critical conversations around immigration, healthcare access, environmental justice, and cultural identity. In addition to screenings, the festival will feature discussions with filmmakers, scholar panels, and service-oriented programming that reflect Wake Forest’s values of engaged learning and Pro Humanitate. | Film | link |
| Drawing Movement | 9/30/2025 | I am collaborating with Dance Professor Chelsea Hilding to connect Dance and Drawing students during my Intermediate/Advanced Drawing class's movement unit. Chelsea Hilding has offered to gather a group of dance students outside of their class time to perform for my drawing students in the Scales Fine Arts Building Courtyard. The drawing students will explore how to draw bodies in motion. The dance students will respond to the drawing students' work using improvisation techniques. Later, the drawing students will use their research sketches from this session to develop a larger drawing project in the course. This is an opportunity for arts students from two disciplines to connect at the Scales Fine Arts Center. | Dance, Art | |
| OUT at the Movies opening night screening | 10/2/2025 | OUT At The Movies International Film Festival will hold its Preview Night Screening at the Kulynych Auditorium on Thursday, Oct. 2 at 7pm in partnership with the Documentary Film Program.The screening will feature three short films: “Tending to the Soul”, “Pretty Boy Roy”, and “All That We’ve Done” as well as a Q&A with filmmakers following the screening. The first film is the winner of OATM’s 2024 Emerging Artist Film Grant, and received $5,000 to complete production. The second two films are both original short documentaries, produced within the OATM Queer History Project framework, a collaboration between OATM and WFU DFP students. The Queer History Project began in 2023 to create original documentary films highlighting Winston-Salem LGBTQ+ past and present, answering a vacuum in this kind of storytelling in our community. Prior to the screenings OUT At The Movies will announce its second annual student internship, in collaboration with the DFP. After the event, there will be a reception at the Byrum Welcome Center, where DFP students can interact with visiting filmmakers, festival staff, and WFU faculty. We are seeking Wake The Arts Center support to help supplement the cost of this reception, as well as cost for the rental of Byrum.The partnership between OUT at the Movies and the DFP highlights the intersection of experiential learning, arts education, and community partnerships, and is the driving force behind OATM’s efforts to highlight local culture through film, and supporting emerging filmmakers as they launch their careers in the arts. | Film | link |
| Abraham's Bridge | 10/6/2025 | The evening of Monday, October 6, 2025, we will host a campus-wide screening and post-film discussion. Our guests will include Ellie Pierce, who, in addition to her work as an independent filmmaker, serves as a longtime staff member of the Harvard Pluralism Project, and Abdul Mackie, Operations Manager at the Tri-Faith Center and a member of the mosque community. Rather than a traditional chaplains’ panel, we will foreground their voices, offering the audience both the filmmaker’s creative perspective and Abdul’s lived experience as part of the Tri-Faith Initiative. In addition to the public event, we will host a student lunch with Religion and Public Engagement (RPE) students on Tuesday, giving them a chance to ask questions in a smaller setting and connect their coursework to lived examples of interfaith diplomacy. A faculty roundtable will also be convened to discuss possible collaborations between the Tri-Faith Center and Wake Forest, including internships, research partnerships, and opportunities for public engagement. | Film | link |
| Learning Tea with Ancient Alchemist Lu Yu | 10/7/2025 | The 16 FYS students in my course will travel to the LAM to spend a 75-minute class period preparing tea bricks in the Lam Museum's classroom with the guidance of Dr. Andrew Gurstelle, according to an English translation of Lu Yu's Classic of Tea. In the year 800 CE, Lu Yu says to make tea in a very specific way, and it is not arbitrary because he believes that this preparation will produce effects through alchemical relationships, which is why this activity is relevant to the course. Further, his ideas of tea preparation are informed by his material reality, which means tea had to be transported hundreds of miles by foot--which is why we were making bricks (for transit)! After preparing the bricks, we will prepare and drank it a few weeks later surrounded by the Lam Museum's Changsha collection. | Art | |
| Rudy Shepherd / Molly Kaderka Exhibition | 10/16/2025 | This fall, Hanes Art Gallery will present a two-person exhibition featuring new work by Department of Art Professors Rudy Shepherd and Molly Kaderka, including over 40 watercolor drawings, a series of sculptures, and a live performance. The exhibition invites audiences to reflect on current events, loss, and resilience while also experiencing art’s power to heal through sculpture, performance, and community engagement. | Art | link |
| Curtis Chin: Documentary Workshop | 10/20/2025 | Writer, filmmaker, and activist Curtis Chin—author of the award-winning memoir Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant—will visit campus for a public lecture and reading that draws on his experiences in queer activism, social justice, and the arts. In addition, he will lead a hands-on documentary workshop for students, sharing insights into storytelling, interviewing, and filmmaking craft. | Film | link |
| Tillie Walden Guest Artist Visit | 10/22/2025 | This upcoming fall semester, I have invited graphic novelist and illustrator Tillie Walden to campus for the Dillion Johnston Writers Reading Series. Tillie is the author of fourteen novels, having published her first book in 2015 when she was seventeen. She has won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and several Eisner awards. Her most recent book, Clementine: Book Three (July 2025), is the final installment of her trilogy for The Walking Dead series. Her fifteenth novel, Charity and Sylvia, will be published by Drawn and Quarterly in spring 2026. Tillie will be at Wake Forest on Wednesday, October 22nd, to give a talk about her work. She will discuss the intersection of indie comics with queer identity through her many graphic novels—from science fiction to memoir to historical retelling. Tillie will also share her process and explore the power of visual narrative and why comics are relevant to all corners of America. Prior to her talk, Tillie will also facilitate an in-person making comics workshop at 2 pm on October 22nd. This workshop will be open to all Wake students. In addition to the Department of English, the Dillion Johnston Writers Reading Series directors will also heavily advertise both events in the Art Department, the Gender and Women’s Studies Program, Critical and Creative Media Studies, the LGBTQ Center, and the Women’s Center. Tillie’s talk and workshop will valuably contribute to the promotion of the visual and literary arts across campus in multiple ways. First, students will have the opportunity to engage and learn from someone who is young and began their creative career early in life. The visual arts and literary world are highly competitive spaces where young people are vulnerable to exploitation. Tillie will be able to provide practical knowledge about starting and managing a career in these fields. Second, students will also have the chance to experience some of Tillie’s creative practices, gaining hands-on experience during her afternoon workshop. Finally, her talk will inspire students to tell stories that matter to them, weaving together themes and subject matters from historically underrepresented voices in the arts and literary world. | Art, Creative Writing | link |
| Inter Alia, North Carolina Forests (Orchestra/Poetry) | 10/24/2025 | The first-ever collaboration between the WFU Symphony Orchestra and the UNCSA Symphony Orchestra, “Inter Alia: North Carolina Forests” unveils the world premiere of David Kirkland Garner’s "Inter Alia," inspired by a poem from 2023 T.S. Eliot Prize finalist Ishion Hutchinson. WFU Symphony Orchestra director J. Aaron Hardwick will conduct the free, side-by-side performance, which will also feature Sibelius’s haunting Symphony No. 3. | Creative Writing, Music | link |
| American Coup: Wilmington 1898 Film Screening and Q&A | 11/6/2025 | A screening of the 2024 film, American Coup: Wilmington1898, followed by a discussion with one of the film’s producers, Josh Clinard, from PBS North Carolina. American Coup is a feature-length documentary, which aired on PBS’s American Experience last fall and screened at the RiverRun Film Festival in April. It tells the story of the Wilmington massacre and the work of descendent communities in WIlmington, NC, to recover the history and contend with the ways it transformed the city, region, and the state. | Film | |
| Branford Marsalis (Maya Angelou Artist in Residence) | 11/9/2025 | Jazz musician Branford Marsalis has been named Wake Forest University’s 2025 Maya Angelou Artist-in-Residence. Marsalis, a globally celebrated artist known for his unparalleled contributions to jazz, classical music, film, and Broadway, will bring his vast experience and creative spirit to the Wake Forest campus. The Maya Angelou Artist-in-Residence Award was established to bring world-renowned artists to campus for engagement with students, faculty, staff and the wider community. In 2023, the residency’s inaugural year, Emmy award-winning director and producer Debbie Allen was the first honoree. The residency is awarded every two years. | Music | |
| Painting on Water: Paper Marbling Workshop | 11/14/2025 | Materials and supplies for a hands-on paper marbling workshop held in conjunction with her current exhibition at Hanes Gallery. The event will include two sessions—one for students and one for faculty and staff—serving a total of 24 participants. | Art | |
| Fall Dance Concert - live musicians | 11/20/25 | For the Faculty and Guest Artist Fall Dance Concert (November 20–23, 2025), I am creating a new work for a cast of eleven dancers, from freshmen to seniors. We are already entering our fourth rehearsal, and the students’ dedication has already proven remarkable. The choreography uses large area rugs as both physical and symbolic structures, at once protective and confining. Through them, the dancers negotiate themes of entrapment, guardianship, and resilience, moving between boundaries and freedoms in ways that ask for precision and vulnerability. A central part of this process is the integration of live music. Collaboration with violist Dr. Rachael Keplin (Wake Forest University Music Department) and cellist Cori Trenczer (Greensboro Symphony), who will perform Caroline Shaw’s "In manus tuas" on stage with the dancers. Shaw’s contemporary textures parallels the themes of my choreography, and with live performance, dancers will navigate subtle variations in phrasing, tempo, and tone, developing the adaptability and responsiveness that professional careers demand. The collaboration aims to encourage the dancers to think critically about how music and movement interact, building a deeper understanding of dance as both technical craft and interpretive art. There is also a meaningful Wake Forest connection to Shaw’s work. As Professor Jacqui Carrasco has noted, Shaw’s siblings studied at the university in previous decades, situating this project within a lineage of artistic ties that extend beyond the stage. Including Shaw's music in our concert honors this connection while positioning our students in conversation with one of today’s most influential composers. | Dance, Music | |
| Afrofuturism Film Screenings and Panels | 1/15/2026 | "Afrofuturism: Past, Present, and Future" is a two-part film series exploring the influential genre through screenings and panel discussions of Space is the Place (1974) and Black Panther (2018). This collaboration between a/perture cinema and Wake Forest University will bridge academic and community audiences to illuminate the enduring power and cultural significance of Afrofuturism. We invite you to engage in conversations that connect these two landmark films, showcasing the movement's evolution and its ongoing relevance in arts, culture, and society. | Film, Music, Theatre, Art | |
| Symposium on Interdisciplinary Health Care | 2/13/2026 | The Wake the Arts Center is spearheading a free, one-day symposium that will bring together artists, healthcare professionals, scholars, and community leaders to explore how the arts and humanities can support health care and education in Forsyth County. Centered on the Winston-Salem Arts Council–funded “Arts on Prescription” pilot study, the event will share findings, highlight national models, and spark conversations about expanding arts-based care programs locally and beyond. | Dance, Music | |
| Visiting Guitarist Silviu Ciulei | 2/19/2026 | Romanian Guitarist Silviu Ciulei, professor at UF, will give a guitar recital in Brendle Hall on February 19, 2026, and possibly teach some of my students during the visit. | Music | |
| Wakeville 2026 | 3/21/2026 | Wakeville is an annual student-led, interdisciplinary arts festival at Wake Forest with a focus on sustainability. There will be many creative offerings in and around Scales Fine Arts Center and Davis Field, including music, dance, theater, visual art, film, comedy and more. This Spring will be the fourth installment of Wakeville. | Art, Creative Writing, Dance, Film, Music, Theatre | |
| Collectors Panel: Onay Gutierrez and Jeff Childers | 10/23/2025 | [Onay] Gutierrez and [Jeff] Childers, who began their collection in 2015, describe their collecting philosophy as 'revolving around the contemporary cultural landscape of their time through a cross section of artistic voices primarily from underrepresented communities.' As collectors, they prioritize artists who deviate from traditional or expected approaches to their medium, and who employ unique techniques to convey specific narratives. Their collection reflects contemporary ideas around mental health; LGBTQ rights; Latin/Latinx, African, and African Diasporic identities; as well as broader explorations of activism, protest, and civil disobedience. | Art | |
| "Chase at Wake" Podcast | 2026 | Chase At Wake is a student-led podcast series that began in 2020 as a personal reflection project by Chase Clark, a Communications and African American Studies major on the Pre-Law track at Wake Forest University. What started as a space for Chase to reflect honestly on her own experiences as a young Black woman navigating college life at a predominantly white institution has evolved into a meaningful storytelling platform that has inspired and connected members of the Wake Forest community—especially women of color. Each episode of Chase At Wake blends introspection, authenticity, and conversation. Chase shares personal reflections on topics such as identity, belonging, leadership, and self-discovery, occasionally inviting students and peers to join her in dialogue. Rather than functioning as a traditional interview podcast, Chase At Wake centers vulnerability and growth. It offers an intimate glimpse into the challenges and triumphs of finding one’s voice, building community, and maintaining hope in spaces that can often feel isolating. Over the years, the podcast has resonated deeply with current and prospective students alike. Listeners have expressed that Chase’s honesty and courage in sharing her experiences made them feel seen, understood, and represented. Several women of color have cited Chase At Wake as a factor in their decision to attend Wake Forest—hearing Chase’s reflections gave them confidence that there was space for them to thrive, to lead, and to belong. The podcast thus serves as both a mirror and a guidepost, showing what it means to navigate Wake Forest with authenticity and purpose. While the tone of the podcast is deeply personal, its impact is undeniably communal. Chase At Wake has sparked conversations about student life, mental wellbeing, leadership, and identity, inviting listeners to reflect on their own experiences and how they show up in the world. Each episode embodies Wake Forest’s motto, Pro Humanitate, by encouraging empathy, reflection, and human connection through storytelling. Now in its fifth year, Chase At Wake continues to evolve while remaining grounded in its original mission—to use personal narrative as a form of empowerment and bridge-building. The podcast not only documents Chase’s own growth as a student leader and storyteller but also contributes to Wake Forest’s living history by chronicling the experiences of a generation shaped by resilience, advocacy, and care for community. | Creative Writing | |
| Ways of Knowing: A Sonic Celebration of the Humanities | 4/15/2026 | Ways of Knowing is a 70-minute sound installation that showcases the forms of knowledge produced by the arts and humanities, followed by a Q&A with the creators, radio producers, Chris Hoff and Sam Barnett, who host a podcast on humanities research with the same title. The piece is an experience of close listening that they describe as follows: "For 70 minutes you are going to put on an eye mask, sit in the dark, and be taken on a sonic trip that asks you to rethink the world through your ears instead of your eyes. You’ll hear everything from the vibrations of the Golden Gate Bridge, footsteps of ants, and ancient Latin, to the first piece of musique concrete, a recording of Berlin made in 1930, a sonified essay about the gendering of glial cells, and the theory of how push buttons and Tupperware act as media objects. All the pieces in the show are informed by contemporary humanities research and scholarship, and rendered into soundscapes for an octophonic speaker array." This performance will be co-sponsored by the Humanities Institute and academic departments, and the intended impact is to expose WFU factually and students, and interested community members, to the vital forms of knowledge that are generated by the arts and humanities in a new and experimental way. | Art | |
| Documentary Filmmaking & Censorship in Young Adult Literature | 3/1/2026 | A private screening of the 2024 documentary Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse at A/perture, followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker, Molly Bernstein. | Film, Creative Writing | |
| A Concert of Indian Classical Music | 3/28/2026 | A Concert of Indian Classical Music by Rhitom Sarkar, an evening performance tied to the March 28 Migration Studies conference. Elizabeth Clendinning is also listed as a collaborator on this project. | Music | |
| The Art of Observation: Drawing Plants as Creative Research | 3/1/2026 | The Art of Observation: Drawing Plants as Creative Research, a collaboration between Life Drawing, Biology, and Information Systems in which students conduct creative research in the Herbarium and present a framed exhibition at the Bridge in ZSR Library. | Art | |
| Soul Sessions: Art as Liberation | 2/26/2026 | Soul Sessions: Art as Liberation is an immersive, multi-station creative experience hosted by the Black Student Alliance, featuring writing, zine-making, and music, with a keynote by multidisciplinary artist Arial Robinson. | Creative Writing, Music, Art | |
| New Composition and Environmentalism in Bali | 4/17/2026 | This project will bring Dr. Jonathan Adams (University of Tennessee at Knoxville) and Balinese composer I Putu Gede Sukaryana (Balot Ne) to present an interactive workshop about new composition in Bali, centering Balot's work and offering a casual coffee hour opportunity for students to interact and ask questions about music-making, the recording industry, and general life in Bali. | Music | |
| Captain Berserko: The Work of Thomas McGuane | NA | A documentary film on the writer Thomas McGuane through the eyes of one of his biggest admirers, a writer and scholar at the University of Kentucky, Thomas Marksbury. I am co-directing this film with Grayson Tyler Johnson (a NYC-based filmmaker). Thomas McGuane is one of American’s most beloved writers with a career that spans the 1970s to today. He is a member of American Academy of Arts and Letters. | Film | |
| Wake the Arts New Faculty Reception | 2/5/2026 | WTA New faculty reception before the J'Nai Bridges Secrest Performance | Theatre, Music, Film, Dance, Creative Writing, Art | |
| Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival World Tour | 4/1/2026 | |||
| Yoga Class for the Annoor Islamic Center Health Fair | 4/4/2026 | |||
| Half the Sky | 3/31/2026 | Renowned dancer and choreographer Yin Mei presents her latest work, Half the Sky, an evening-length dance and visual performance rooted in the language of the body, responding to enduring mythologies surrounding women across generations. It features Marie Lloyd Paspe, Ching-I Chang, Miho Ryu, and Yin Mei, with a music score created and performed by composer/sound designer Christian Frederickson. Half the Sky merges dance, projection, and installation art into a choreographic and visual act of reclamation: rescuing the “blank page” from blankness. It’s a laboratory for “becoming”, where there is room for the unexpected moment to strike through space and time, leading to the breakthrough of true creative power. Yin Mei explores how the “becoming” of sensation must happen in an unexpected moment, a moment of silence where the body’s unspoken histories surface. This project was presented at the Asia Society New York, supported by MAP Fund, RF CUNY, New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project Finalist, Baryshnikov Arts, and Danse Mirage Foundation. | Dance, Music, Theatre, Art | link |
| The Hardest Pursuit of All: The Making of The Xenotext | 3/24/2026 | Renowned poet and visual artist Christian Bök (Canada/United Kingdom) will be giving a presentation and poetry reading from his groundbreaking project, The Xenotext, which combines the fields of literature and biology in an ambitious 25-year project that led the way for interdisciplinary work across the arts and natural sciences. In addition to giving a poetry reading, he will present visual art related to the project that he has exhibited internationally and documentation of the protein engineering he conducted with scientific collaborators. | Art, Creative Writing | |
| Beyond the Godfather: Cinema, Stereotype, and Cultural Memory | 4/8/2026 | A public conversation and panel discussion featuring Anthony Tamburri that examines the romanticization of the Mafia in Hollywood films and the broader cultural consequences of these portrayals for Italian and Italian American communities in the United States. As part of the NIAF on Campus Fellowship Program, the event invites students and community members to critically analyze how artistic expression, specifically film, shapes cultural narratives, influences identity formation, and informs public perception. Moving beyond entertainment, the discussion will explore how cinematic depictions of organized crime participate in longer histories of immigration, stereotyping, and collective memory, and how these representations continue to shape contemporary interethnic relations and national discourse. At its core, the program encourages participants to engage in central humanistic questions about representation, ethics, and the power of storytelling. Film will be considered not only as an artistic medium but also as a cultural text that reflects and reflects social realities. By drawing perspectives from history, literature, film studies, and cultural theory, the conversation will provide students with an interdisciplinary framework for understanding how narratives can both illuminate and distort lived experience. In doing so, the event underscores the responsibility of artists, scholars, and audiences alike to think critically about the stories that shape collective understanding. | Film |
Contact
Beth McAlhany
Senior Director of Development
mcalhabd@wfu.edu
Sean Howard
Senior Director of Development
howarse@wfu.edu