AMINA

Amina Norman-Hawkins is an internationally recognized voice of grassroots hip-hop activism. She is a writer, performing artist, filmmaker, and hip-hop practitioner who has spent the past 20 years involved in the preservation of Chicago’s hip-hop culture and community. She is co-founder of Chicago Hip-Hop Initiative & Chicago Hip-Hop Heritage Month, as well as the ‘B-Girl Power’ movement, an international all-inclusive celebration of women in hip-hop.

In 2010 Amina became a United States Cultural Envoy spending two weeks leading a team of three hip-hop artists from Chicago on tour through seven regions of the West African nation of Cote d’Ivoire. The following year, Amina produced the documentary ‘Keep It Moving – Chicago to Cote d’Ivoire’ which premiered to much acclaim in the 2011 Chicago International Movies & Music Festival.  Currently, she lectures, ¨writes¨ and performs around the country.  She is also a part-time faculty member at Columbia College, as well as a teaching artist with Columbia College’s Center for Community Arts Partnerships. In both roles she brings her expertise into the classroom and hopes to inspire, empower, and help her students unlock their creative potential.

Kelsa Robinson is a dance artist, educator and curator with deep experience and training in the underground house, hip-hop and street dance communities, and a focus on socially engaged arts practices.  Since 2006, Robinson has been a member of Venus Fly, an internationally known all-styles crew.  She has performed and served as a guest artist at venues including: B.Supreme (London, UK), B-girl Be (Minneapolis, MN), J.U.I.C.E. Hip Hop Dance Festival (Hollywood, CA), and Pritzker Pavilion (Chicago, IL).  Robinson is a lecturer at The Dance Center at Columbia College Chicago where she teaches courses in technique, pedagogy, dance studies and community cultural development.  Since Spring 2013, she has been co-curator of The B-SERIES, a biannual festival celebrating hip hop culture and bringing the grassroots hip hop and street dance communities into verbal and embodied dialogue with students, faculty and staff.  From 2005-2011, Robinson developed and managed Cityfolk’s Culture Builds Community program.  Her work won Cityfolk the 2009 Governor’s Award for the Arts in Ohio in Community Development & Participation.  Robinson served as a consultant for the Center for Arts Policy at Columbia College Chicago (2005-2008), leading the evaluation project for LISC/Chicago’s 3-year pilot program, Building Community Through the Arts (BCA), for the New Communities Program, Quality of Life neighborhood planning process.  Robinson holds a bachelor degree in sociology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a master of urban planning and policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago.