Talking to Kids About Race, Justice, and Their Power Using Art
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Talking to Kids About Race, Justice, and Their Power Using Art
Wednesday, March 24, 2021, 7pm
Join the Eliot School Salon Series for a compelling and nuanced conversation about “Talking to Kids About Race, Justice, and Their Power Using Art” with Tanya Nixon-Silberg, Founder of Little Uprisings and co-founder of Wee the People as well as Zahirah Nur Truth- ZNT ARTS- Teaching Artist and Arts Education Consultant. The conversation will be moderated by Alison Croney Moses, Program Director, The Eliot School of Fine and Applied Arts. Finally, respondent Innosanto Nagara, activist, graphic designer, author, and founder of Design Action Collective, will then set the scene for an open audience Q&A.
In this moment, locally and across the globe, people have woken up to racial injustice and the damage it’s doing to our society, especially following the violence in our nation’s capital. Parents, teachers, and others invested in shaping our children’s futures—all are looking for resources, answers, and direction for how we support our kids as they navigate this world. What do kids need? What do adults need in this moment? And for the people who are actively doing this work to dismantle systems of oppression, where can they find joy in their work? How do they/we cultivate a culture of celebration and rejuvenation in the process?
Our conversation amplifies the voices of two educators who are actively engaging with young people and the adults who help mold them. How do we get folks to think about preparing our young people while helping to transform the culture and the systems that they participate in to be more nurturing and affirming? Young people are talking. They're sharing their experiences about their identities, about their interpretation of what's happening around them. How do we as adults really listen?
Join the conversation!
“Talking to Kids About Race, Justice, and Their Power Using Art” is hosted by the Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts, in Partnership with Aspire Institute-Boston University and Wheelock College. The Eliot School Salon Series is sponsored by Melony Swasey with Unlimited Sotheby’s International Realty.
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About Tanya Nixon-Silberg
Tanya Nixon-Silberg (she/her) is a Black mother, artist, educator, and facilitator and Founder of Little Uprisings. Little Uprisings (LU) is a collaborative and liberative racial justice project for kids and their caregivers. LU endeavors to:
- Build long lasting, sustainable, and deep relationships with schools and educators.
- Create programming that centers itself in joy and play—and inspires, educates, and revolutionizes our youth.
- Affirm our children of color and make allies out of our white children.
- Partner with community spaces and existing organizations to bring racial justice work to their forefront.
You mostly find Tanya playing, radicalizing and learning from her 8-year-old daughter Myla, puppeteering and dreaming up fun ways to engage children in racial justice, and radically imaging how we all get free together. She can be reached at
About Zahirah Nur Truth
Mama, Teaching Artist, Artivist, and Art Activator.
Zahirah Nur Truth is an open and authentic artist that uses art as a form of healing and self-care in her personal practices. She shares her love of art through many modalities like illustration, painting, metalsmithing, and more. There is no end to where her creativity will go. When she’s not creating, she works in the Boston community serving young people as a teaching artist. Her most expansive work is supporting arts institutions and other organizations in the development of community engagement opportunities, workshops, and curriculum development that centers on uplifting and affirming BIPOC through the arts. If she's not creating, she is sometimes found in the kitchen creating vegan triple chocolate brownies and other vegan treats.
About Innosanto Nagara
Innosanto Nagara is the author and illustrator of numerous social justice-themed children’s books, including the bestseller A is for Activist. Originally from Jakarta, Indonesia, Inno came to the US to study zoology. He instead became an activist and graphic designer, and is the founder of Design Action Collective in Oakland, California. Increasingly, however, his focus is on children’s books. He is a member of the team that organizes the annual Social Justice Children’s Book Fair in the Bay Area. He is on the editorial board of The Bull Horn, an online magazine that focuses on creators of social justice-themed children’s books. He is a regular contributor to children’s book anthologies and has authored six books, spanning board books to middle grade chapter books. His most recent book is Oh, the Things We’re For! (Seven Stories Press, 2020).