OUR STORY / LIVING ART TO UHURU
We were the art
we wanted to see.
And we lived it.
The idea that gave us our name
A life.
A community.
A work of art.
Living Art began with a conviction: creativity belongs in the whole of life. In the way we pay attention. In the way we teach and learn. In the relationships and institutions we build.
In Chicago, we taught Shakespeare through house music. Students could hear the rhythm of a line in music they already knew. The knowledge they brought into the room became part of how the room learned. One of our mottos is that ‘education is a conversation where there are no experts.’
Our founding question grew out of studies of Harold Cruse. What could Black artists make when writers, actors, directors, and producers came together to tell their own stories on their own terms? Creative Liberation Practice™ grew from pursuing that question with communities.
The meaning of Uhuru
Freedom is something we practice—in our bodies, in our relationships, and in what we build together.
Uhuru means freedom in Swahili. The name gives language to the purpose that has carried our work from the beginning.
Our history · Our evidence
Twenty-one years.
Always becoming.
Founded in 2005 as Living Art, NFP, TUAF grows from a practice of making culture together: breath, text, voice, performance, and the possibility that opens when people create.
2005 / CHICAGO
Living Art, NFP incorporates in Illinois on March 15. The Joy Arts Society takes shape that summer.
2008–2015 / LEARNING THROUGH MAKING
Performance Literature Workshops bring oratory, poetry, and performance into Chicago community and school settings, including the 2015 Hope Institute Learning Academy student showcase.
2017–2019 / NASHVILLE
The work expands in Nashville, including programming through OZ Arts and writing and creativity workshops at Cheekwood.
2025 / BECOMING UHURU
The board approves the name The Uhuru Arts Foundation. Uhuru means freedom.
2026 / THE NEXT CHAPTER
The founding campaign builds operating capacity and resources for new initiatives.
People who carry the practice
Who makes a workshop?
A student chooses a poem. A teaching artist asks how it should sound. A host opens the doors. Someone sets out the chairs. By the time a voice fills the room, many hands have already shaped what happens there.
Who makes the next one possible?
You might bring a neighbor, offer a space, or give each month. A recurring gift helps TUAF plan beyond a single gathering. A founding gift helps build the Power Reclamation Fund’s first reserve. Both give Black women and girls more room to shape institutions of their own.
What we carry forward
The work belongs
to the people
who make it.
Our archive holds students choosing and writing the material they performed, workshops built around voice and breath, and a continuing search for learning environments where people create culture together.
Our next chapter grows from that practice. It asks what becomes possible when creative work has the resources, records, and shared responsibility to endure.
The Uhuru Arts Foundation
Liberating creativity. Cultivating freedom.
create@theuhuruartsfoundation.org
© 2026 The Uhuru Arts Foundation.