Creative Conversations for a Changing World

A Virtual Panel Mini-Series

September 9, 2020

Join ExCITe Center director, Youngmoo Kim, and Play On Philly’s program director, Jessica Zweig, for a series of conversations about how Philadelphia is designing and implementing creative and innovative arts education programming in the virtual space. We’ll speak with renowned organizational leaders from Philadelphia’s cultural and education communities who are thinking in AND out of the box about new ways of performing, learning, and sharing in the era of social distancing.

Events Schedule

The mini-series includes 3 virtual panel discussions, held every two weeks on Tuesday afternoons at 4pm.

B.PHL Innovation Festival

Tuesday, September 15th - starting at 4pm, Featuring an all-star panel:
- David Devan, General Director of Opera Philadelphia
- Valerie Gay, Chief Experience Officer & Deputy Director of Audience Engagement, Barnes Foundation
- Melissa Talley-Palmer, Administrator of the Bartol Foundation

On Collaboration

Tuesday, September 29th, 4-5:30pm, with another amazing group of panelists:
- Ellen Fishman, composer and Director of Arts & New Media, Springside Chestnut Hill Academy
- Jay Fluellen, composer and Choir Director, Northeast High School
- Paul Smith, co-founder of VOCES8

Looking to Others

Tuesday, October 13th, 4-5pm, featuring the following outstanding panelists:
- Juliet Fink Yates, Digital Inclusion Fellow at the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Innovation and Technology
- Bill Rhoads, Senior Vice President of Esperanza Arts Center
- Chris Bartlett, Executive Director at William Way LGBT Community Center

In this role she is charged to build the community of those in Philadelphia interested in addressing digital inclusion and help support innovative digital equity practices in Philadelphia. She has been working on addressing digital equity since 2001 when she was managing a small ISP for 10,000 low-income Philadelphians without Internet access for the Critical Path Internet Project. For many years, she worked as the Chief Learning Officer at Philadelphia FIGHT Community Health Centers at the intersection of adult education, technology and healthcare. In 2010, she wrote, in collaboration with the City of Philadelphia, the broadband stimulus grant that brought $5.4 million to low-income communities to set up computer labs (which became known as KEYSPOTS) in 77 locations, reached out to cultivate the key partners involved in that grant, and helped to design the structure of that program, overseeing a team that managed 28 of those KEYSPOTS. She was a founder of the Technology Learning Collaborative, Philadelphia’s first professional development organization dedicated to digital literacy providers and advocates and was a member of the City of Philadelphia’s Digital Literacy Alliance. She has a Master’s in Education from Harvard University Graduate School of Education with a focus on technology in education.

Bill has been active throughout his career as a board member, guest speaker/lecturer, composer, guitarist, advisor, funder, and advocate for new music and the performing arts, serving a long list of organizations and institutions over three decades, including ASCAP, Composers Concordance, Women’s Philharmonic, CRI, Peabody Conservatory, University of Pennsylvania, NYU, University of Wisconsin, ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble), London Sinfonietta, Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Phoenix Concerts, League of Composers/ISCM, English Symphony Orchestra, Fresh Inc/Fifth House Ensemble, Poulenc Trio, Orchestra 2001, and Ensemble contemporain de Montréal (ECM+), the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in New York City, and the American Composers Forum.

Chris has a long history of working in the non-profit organization management including Fundraising, Coaching, Grassroots Organizing, Program Evaluation, Governance, and Event Management. He has served as the LGBTQ Commissioner of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Director of the LGBT Leadership Initiative and the SafeGuards Gay Men's Health Project, as well as board member of the Mayor's Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Counsel, the Philadelphia Youth Poetry Movement, CenterLink, and the Women's Medical Fund. Chris has a BA focused in Classics from University of Oxford.