Khadijah Ali-Coleman

We are continuing the series Art and Change, which focuses on how the visual art world to helping to change society, whether on the community level or internationally. Today we are talking with one of the founders of an exciting social network of artists, Khadijah Ali-Coleman of Liberated Muse Productions based in the Metro Washington, DC area.

 Khadijah Ali-Coleman is founder of So Our Youth Aspire (SOYA), LLC , and co-founder of Liberated Muse Productions, the founding group of the Capital Hip Hop Soul Fest. She is a freelance writer & photographer who has appeared in numerous print and online publications including the Washington Post, Honey Magazine, and the Washington Informer.She pens an arts column in the Washington DC-based monthly paper East of the River, showcasing talent hailing from the Washington DC area.

In addition to writing and serving as web manager of http://www.liberatedmuse.com/, Khadijah is a perfomer who has appeared on the television show “Showtime at the Apollo” and has appeared in various venues nationally and locally as a singer. As an actress, she has acted in stage presentations of “The Medea Myth”, “The Life”, and “The Vagina Monologues”. Her preference is to perform in socially conscious and boundary-stretching presentations that address complex issues of race, gender and social class. She is a member of the arts collective The Saartjie Project (http://www.thesaartjieproject.org/) which examines the politics of the Black Woman’s body.As a director and creative writer, Khadijah produced in February 2008 the play “Shades of Black: a thought in progress”.The play debuted in Baltimore, Maryland on the campus of Morgan State University. Khadijah’s creative writing has also appeared in different places, including recently in the online literary magazine Flask and Pen. She is editor the recently published anthology “How I Freed My Soul”, Volume One in a series of Liberated Muse publications. She will soon publish a poetry chapbook “Legacy of Lovely” and is working on finishing the book “Being Heard Through the Noise: A Youth Worker’s Guide to Working with Urban Youth”.

To learn more about Liberated Muse, visit their website at http://www.liberatedmuse.com

You can listen to this podcast through i-tunes ,the podcast home page here or download the mp3 here.