The Creative Advantage Institute is back at the Seattle Art Museum Saturday, Sept. 27. This day of professional learning in and through the arts is the creative start to the 2025-2026 school year and serves as a time for teachers, artists, community partners, arts administrators, and education leaders to reconvene, get inspired, and explore new collaborations. Attendees will learn from panels, workshops, networking, student performances, lunch, and receive clock hours.

Register and learn more about the workshops and participating teaching artists below.

• Date: Saturday, Sept. 27 
• Time: 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.  
• Location: Seattle Art Museum 
• Clock Hours: 5 

Graphic Narrative as Medicine w/ Lin Lucas  

In this 90-minute workshop, participants will create graphic narratives that explore life-lessons learned through illness and the personal “origin stories” that are the source of their strengths, resilience, and ambitions.   

Lin Lucas is a multi-disciplinary ritual-artist, educator, and ancestral lineage healing practitioner. He holds space for others at the crossroads where creativity, culture, and a passion for liberation converge. As an artist and educator, Lin believes that social change arises from personal transformation and that artistic expression is the heart of that (r)evolutionary process. Lin has taught for a variety of schools and community arts programs, including Powerful Schools, Coyote Central, Path with Art, Gage Academy, Bainbridge Arts & Humanities Council, Bainbridge Art Museum, Writers in the Schools, and Young Audiences of Washington & Oregon.   

Interactive Theatre with Olisa Enrico  

Infuse your space with interactive theater-based games, find the work in the play and explore the pedagogical impact of doing and being the learning. Participants in this session will explore ways to activate young learners with kinesthetic interpretation of any subject or topic and walk away with strategies to interpret topics and put them in the body! 

Olisa Enrico specializes in arts infused facilitation. An artist, educator and administrator, Olisa believes in the unique power of art to cultivate community cultural spaces. prioritizing connection to emotional, spiritual and cultural truth, providing structure to reach specific goals. She earned her BFA in Theatre Performance Magna Cum Laude and MFA in Theatre Pedagogy with a dual focus in both Acting/Directing and Voice/Speech from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her work is rooted in Ritual Poetic Drama within the African Continuum, a pedagogy that relies on shared responsibility through collaboration. Olisa is an artist and member of The Conciliation Project engaging courageous conversations. Olisa is also the Executive Director of The Residency, and Artistic and Executive Director of Ase Theatre a collective of Black Womxn artists.  

Face the Music: Combating Erasure with Daniel Atkinson and Joe Seamons  

Explore American musical history and the lessons it contains for combating erasure with special guest, author Daniel Atkinson. Exploring the story of dancer, performer, and activist George “Nash” Walker, participants will learn how to celebrate hidden and erased stories of Black American musical history while adapting them into impactful curriculum. Co-led by The Rhapsody Project’s co-founder, Joe Seamons, this session will provide tools for counteracting white supremacy in classrooms and communities.  

Ethnomusicologist Dr. Daniel E. Atkinson offers a fresh take on the lives and accomplishments of the “Vanguard Generation” of Afro-Americans who leveraged Black cultural products for profit and prestige between the close of the Civil War and the start of World War I. Gathered from recently digitized newsprint, recordings, film and other media from the beginning of the modern era for the forthcoming book, The Rediscovery of George “Nash” Walker: The Price of Black Stardom in Jim Crow America, the contextual depth of this data enriches the historical record with previously lacking nuance that exemplifies the Black experience, the artistic hamster wheel of ubiquitous Black cultural influence, and perpetual secondary status of Black people in the United States. 

Joe Seamons is a musician and educator based in Seattle and dedicated to helping people connect with their heritage through music and storytelling. As co-founder of The Rhapsody Project, he builds communities that serve and center young people while establishing cultural equity. Alongside non-profit partners Totem Star and Red Eagle Soaring, Joe helped establish The Station Space, a new youth arts hub. As part of the leadership team of Black & Tan Hall, Joe has worked since 2016 to establish the Black-led, multi-cultural cooperative that now stewards a 3,000 square foot performance venue in South Seattle. 

Everybody Dance Break with Shannon Barnes and Liz Fleck 

The ever popular Everybody Dance Break is also back this year. A session for all Institute attendees spotlighting arts integration and the Dance and Quality Physical Education Project with Pacific northwest Ballet’s Shannon Barnes and Seattle Public Schools physical education teacher Liz Fleck 

Shannon Barnes is a dance educator and arts administrator committed to inclusive and creative practices. As Director of Community Education at Pacific Northwest Ballet, she oversees community-based programs and partnerships with public schools. Shannon also serves as a co-director for the Washington State Teaching Artist Training Lab (TAT Lab). Shannon is the 2018 Dance Educators Association of Washington Dance Educator of the Year and has been a guest instructor for Seattle University and Cornish College of the Arts. Shannon holds a B.A. in Dance and Psychology from the University of Washington and a Post-Graduate Certificate in Dance in Community from Laban, London. 

Liz Fleck joined Seattle Public Schools in 2014 as the Physical Education teacher at McDonald International School, in the Tangletown neighborhood. She received her Master of Arts in Teaching in 2014 at Seattle Pacific University and holds a Health and Fitness endorsement in Washington State. Liz’s students have access to dance instruction during her PE lessons starting in kindergarten. “Kids really enjoy showing what they know, and learning from each other”. She has found the use of movement to music without lyrics really helps students notice how the music inspires them to move. When Liz is not teaching PE, she enjoys playing Sunday soccer with her ladies’ team and gardening at her Lake City home. 

Teen Leadership Panel

We’ll also be spotlighting teen leadership with a panel including representatives from the new SPS Youth Arts Collective and SAM’s Design Your Neighborhood Program facilitated by SAM’s Youth Programs Manager Cristina Cano-Calhoun and teaching artist Monyee Chau. 

Cristina Cano-Calhoun (she/her) is a Houston native who moved to Seattle in 2019 to pursue a Masters of Urban Design and Planning at UW. Now Cristina serves as SAM’s Youth Programs Manager where she leads programs and develops resources for high-school aged youth. She is passionate about improving access to educational opportunities in both urban and rural communities, especially those that center community-based learning and experimental problem-solving. 

Monyee Chau (they/them) is an artist based on Coast Salish/Duwamish land, and has graduated with a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in 2018. They explore a journey of personal and collective healing through their lens as a queer Taiwanese/Chinese American, believing in the power of storytelling and breaking bread as a means of community building for the path to justice and liberation. Monyee’s work spans across mediums to speak to the multitude of themes of labor, diaspora, and collective community care.