Building on a 53-year legacy, the Painted Bride brings together artists, audiences, and communities to push the boundaries of how we create and experience art. It has supported over 25,000 artists, hosted over 5,000 events, commissioned over 100 new works, and facilitated manifold artist and community workshops and educational programs. The Bride cultivates a welcoming environment for critical dialogue and playful exchange to transform lives and communities through art. It is committed to supporting artists from all walks of life and amplifying underrepresented voices to foster diversity and inclusivity.
Today the Bride is forging a bold new path that brings artists’ work into Philadelphia neighborhoods through dynamic community partnerships. This creative evolution will allow the organization to support powerful and provocative projects that explore adaptation, scale, and reinvention.
We value artists and their role as carriers of culture and tradition and guides to living creatively.
We value artistic collaborations that transcend conventional ideas and that present us with visions of how we might live.
We value the active participation of audiences and their interactions with artists, enabling them to experience something new.
We value the power of community to amplify dialogue about pertinent issues.
We value the schools, organizations and businesses that artists partner with to create opportunities for creative expression.
To explore new leadership models that give artists more decision-making power with respect to budget allocation, marketing and other aspects of project envisioning and realization.
To develop new programming that engages with and responds to the needs and strengths of specific communities and our city overall, with the goal of helping to address the challenges our city and its neighborhoods face.
To build new networks and partnerships beyond arts and culture organizations to facilitate cross-disciplinary collective thinking and sharing of resources.
We believe that our work is to support Philadelphia artists and communities, particularly by providing a platform for black and brown artists and communities to create, express, and influence how our neighborhoods and our city will evolve.
We believe that our relationships and the trust that artists, partners and audiences have in our organization are our priceless resources.
We believe that we will have far greater capacity to innovate with and respond to artists and communities when we are no longer burdened with an out-of-date and expensive-to-maintain building.
We believe artists can lead the way in identifying and designing what is needed to create more just, equitable and thriving communities.
The Bride is not a building. The Bride is a way of working with artists, a set of values and strong relationships across the city.
The pandemic and the protests for racial justice highlighted the tremendous need for new ways of thinking and doing and we believe that artists can be leaders in creating empathetic and creative paths forward.
Right now, the Bride should focus on Philadelphia and the artists, residents and neighborhoods of Philadelphia.
Who are our partners in change-making and how can we expand those partnerships?
What are the most urgent issues facing the communities of Philadelphia that the Bride, our artists and partners could begin to address?
What are the most effective ways for the Bride to continue building community without a fixed location?
What are the most effective ways for the Bride to support artists’ creative processes without necessarily having a final ticketed performance or piece of art for sale?
What are the new practices of social engagement where artistic process becomes more important than a final performance or work of art, with a goal of shifting historic ideas and ways of doing things?
Marángeli Mejia-Rabell’s practice is focused on community media practices, cultural organizing, intersectionality, accessibility and diversity. As Director of the Philadelphia Latino Film Festival and Co Founder/Partner of AFROTAINO she co-curates, designs and executes arts and culture programming, collaborations and multidisciplinary projects. She has served as the Philadelphia Latino Film Festival Director for seven years supporting the groundbreaking work of Latinx filmmakers. Throughout Marángeli’s career, she has centered Latinx creators, stories and culture to bring about positive change and representation. Marángeli also serves as a Coach with the National Arts Strategies Coaching Collective working towards her International Coaching Federation certification.
Kalela Williams is the Director of Writing of Mighty Writers, a Philadelphia youth organization, and the founder of Black History Maven, a gathering community that engages groups in literary, artistic, and cultural conversations. Formerly in public programming with the Free Library of Philadelphia, she has worked within the city’s artistic and cultural arena in Philadelphia for more than a decade. Her poetry and prose has appeared in numerous literary magazines, been featured on a BBC 4 radio program, and is forthcoming in an anthology, Ways of Walking, by New Door Books.
Daniella Fadjoh (they/Daniella) is a peer fellow for Girls Justice League (GJL). A member of GJL since 2018, Daniella has spent the last three developing and facilitating curriculum and programming for GJL’s Saturday Institutes and Summer Justice Institutes. Currently, Daniella is a junior in college studying political sociology, philosophy, and colonialism and is learning and writing about apologies, transformative justice, and desire. And right now, Daniella is passionate about getting more specific, writing, doing research, and watching cartoons.
Caitlin Green (she/they) is a Philadelphia-based dance artist with a background in dance/movement therapy (R-DMT). In her work, she tends to concentrate on the body’s role in wellness, individuality, and expressions of personal and collective narratives. As a freelance dance artist, Caitlin has choreographed and co-created works featured in Philly Fringe Festival 2019, RAW Artist showcase (Baltimore), EMERGE Earthdance multidisciplinary artist residency, the Painted Bride Art Center’s artist residency, Building Bridges, and Bodymeld’s GWYN artist residency. She is the curator and facilitator of a workshop series “Dancing to Transgress: lessons from bell hooks” that questions traditional educational settings and challenges today’s teachers, teaching artists, activists, and community leaders to re-imagine what a successful and inclusive learning environment can look like, and convener of “Our Embodied Impulses” which is a collaborative project for movement artists to be the co-creators of dances, using movement scores that explore the interconnected nature of individual and collective restoration. Caitlin is a teaching artist with Dancing Classrooms Philly (DCP), The Village of Arts and Humanities, and BuildaBridge International.
LaNeshe Miller-White is the current Executive Director of Theatre Philadelphia and has more than 15 years of experience on the Philly scene. After graduating from Temple University, Miller-White worked as the marketing manager of Painted Bride Art Center for over nine years. During that time, she also co-founded Theatre in the X, a company dedicated to breaking down the barriers to the art from by providing accessible productions in Philadelphia’s Malcolm X Park for no cost. She is a two-time Leeway Foundation Art & Change grantee, and was the first Philadelphia co-chief representative for the national organization the Parent-Artist Advocacy League (PAAL), of which she is now an advisory board member. She is also a Philadelphia Arts & Business Council Designing Leadership Program Graduate.
