Presenting the Graduates of the 2017-2018 Teaching Artist Project (TAP). This anthology is a compilation of their work, experiences and the fun we've all had together during this academic year. Community-Word Project's TAP is in its 20th year and is the longest-standing professional development program open to the Teaching Artist field by a non-profit organization in New York City. TAP prepares Teaching Artists to provide high-quality arts education to underserved youth in Ne

Xiaolin Li is a visual artist. She joined Community-Word Project in the fall of 2017 as a trainee in the Teaching Artist Project (TAP). She is currently completing her BA in Childhood Education and English at Hunter College. She creates Japanese influenced anime/ manga art using a variety of mediums, such as Copic markers, watercolors, oil paints, acrylic paints, color pencils, graphite pencils, and digitally by means of photoshop, SAI, etc. She is a first-generation Chinese

Multimedia artist Valérie Hallier came to the US with a Fulbright Scholarship after graduating from the ENSAD (Video, Cinema, Animation) in her native Paris, France. In NYC, she received a MFA from SVA. Conceptual and project based, her work consists of series and installations. - “As a child, I was obsessed with the idea of drawing every single thing that exists in the world.” Valérie’s projects explore the absurdity and the poetry of exhaustive study. Her work is being sho

A poet, writer, storyteller, photographer, actor, and mixed-media artist, Seánan has performed, taught, and been published around the world, and has been fortunate enough to win merits on two continents. As a workshop leader, teacher, and activist, Seánan has worked with people from seven to eighty years of age, in international communities dealing with issues as wide-ranging as the human mind. For Seánan, it is a privilege to create brave spaces, bear witness, boost creativi

Reilly Horan is a Brooklyn-based stage manager, technical director, scenic carpenter, storyteller, writer, and teaching artist, working with Blue Man Group, the Public Theater, Signature Theater, HERE Arts Center, the Moth, and the DreamYard Project. Both in New York and in a touring capacity, her work focuses on devised and multimedia collaborative theater and dance, theatrical community engagement projects, arts accessibility and working with young people, and disrupting an

Philip Berezney is a teaching artist with with a focus on mixed media visual arts. His work in arts education has brought him from co-developing expressive-arts programming aimed at acknowledging trauma in post-Katrina New Orleans public schools, to introducing arts curriculum in a science-focused summer school for multilingual migrant students in coastal Maine, to teaching in schools all over NYC. Philip has taught visual arts classes as a teaching artist with Community Word

Noelle Lorraine Williams use craft, sculpture, photography and performance to engage audiences in conversations about community. She has exhibited her work, given artist talks and lectures at Newark Museum, Rush Arts Gallery, Jersey City Museum, Rutgers University, Kean University and other galleries in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Louisiana. Her work has also mentioned in the New York Times, Star Ledger and she was lauded as one of the “100 Women We Love in Go Mag

Mak Morin is a native Vermonter and 2016 graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where she studied Dramatic Writing and Educational Theatre. Since graduating, she has worked for screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson, Archer Gray Productions, Double Take Comics, Rebel Playhouse, and Nickelodeon. Currently, Mak is serving as a Teaching Artist Resident at VOYAGES Prep high school in Queens as a part of AmeriCorps' ArtistYear of National Service. In September, she will return to N

Michelle Houslanger is a poet and current MFA candidate at Sarah Lawrence College. She graduated with a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College in 2015, concentrating in poetry and classics. She currently lives in Yonkers, New York. TAP Work: "Through TAP I had the opportunity to intern in a fifth-grade classroom at P.S. 279, Captain Manuel Rivera, Jr. in the Bronx. Observing and working with Katie Rainey and T. Scott Lilly was a wonderful experience. Watching them work together was

Michael Feldman is a playwright from Dallas, living in Brooklyn. Prior to pursuing politics, Michael worked in politics, interning at the White House as an intern on the Domestic Policy Council’s education team and on the advance team for President Obama and then working as a researcher at Everytown for Gun Safety. Michael was a member of Field Research Team and Strategic Planning Committee of The Civilians. Current projects include a musical about a Baptist church and a play