Todd T Brown

Founder and Leadership Team

Multidisciplinary artist and cultural connector, Todd’s experience spans 20 years of integrating artistic disciplines and small-scale arts presenting within the context of community cultural development. In 2003, Todd founded the Red Poppy Art House, originally under the name Porfilio Is, and seeded the Mission Arts & Performance Project (MAPP) later that year. In 2007, together with Meklit Hadero, he co-founded the music ensemble Nefasha Ayer – The Space of In between, a recipient of grants from the San Francisco Foundation and Zellerbach Family Foundation. He has been a Resident Artist atSan Francisco’s de Young Museum (2009) and Residencia Otro Lado,Chiapas,Mexico(2009/10). Todd is an artistic collaborator and advisor for EDELO contemporary art center inSan Cristobalde lasCasas,Chiapas,Mexico. Most recently, Todd was selected for a 2011 year-long Artist Fellowship at the de Young Museum, through which he will be creating new multidisciplinary works, and piloting an organizational network model that merges social networking strategies with administrative support for emerging arts initiatives.

Languages: English & Spanish
Born and raised, 6th generation, in the green mountain state of Vermont

Michael Warr

Leadership Team

Michael Warr’s literary awards include a Gwendolyn Brooks Significant Illinois Poets Award, a NEA Creative Writing Fellowship for Poetry, and The Beat Museum Poet of the Month. He is a co-editor of Power Lines: A Decade of Poetry From Chicago’s Guild Complex and his first book of poems We Are All The Black Boy, was honored by the Illinois Library Association.

His poems are widely anthologized, including such collections as The Spoken Word Revolution: Slam, Hip-hop & the Poetry of a New Generation, Unsettling America: Race and Ethnicity in Contemporary American Poetry, Voices From the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Scars – Poetry In the Face of Violence, Changer l’Amerique, Anthologie de la Poesie, Protestataire des USA. His digital photo/poetry performance, Poetic Aperture – An African American Interprets Africa, based on his poetry and original images created as a photojournalist in Ethiopia and Mali, debuted at Chicago’s Field Museum.

Since returning to his nativeSan Francisco in 2007 Michael has performed spoken word at venues ranging from the Red Poppy Art House to the De Young Museum with Nefasha Ayer. Most recently he has collaborated with multi-instrumentalist Keenan Webster on the performance “FromBaton Rouge toBamako,”  featuring the poetic-storytelling of his travels within the African-American and African experience, with Webster’s performance on the kora, m’bira, and balafon.

Kate Dumbleton

Leadership Team, Adjunct

Kate Dumbleton is Executive Director of the Chicago Jazz Ensemble, resident at Columbia College Chicago.  She is also a member of the part-time faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  In addition to owning a successful art exhibition and performance space in San Francisco (2000-2006), Kate’s experience includes music direction and programming for jazz clubs and festivals; curatorial and project direction of artist residencies for nonprofit arts organizations; project and production direction for interdisciplinary projects in music, dance, theater, visual art and film; venue and record label management; administrative direction; and artist management.

Kate is particularly interested in advocating for support for artistic experimentation, in managing the development and distribution of new work, and in building and managing interdisciplinary and collaborative projects.   Her current research stems from study on black experimentalism, the relationship between black music and social justice advocacy and alternative arts infrastructure, to the emerging field of improvisation studies. Kate serves on the Advisory Council for the Arts Administration and Policy program at SAIC; on the Board of Directors for Rova Arts; and on the Artistic Direction Advisory Council with the Yerba Buena Garden Festival.