WE THE PEOPLE: A People’s Salon

Andrea Faye Hart is a co-owner of Build Coffee & Books and a radical queer Quaker who believes Chicago is the center of the universe. 

For nearly two decades, she has worked as a media-based organizer, helping transform the journalism landscape by co-founding City Bureau in Chicago, growing MLK50: Justice Through Journalism in Memphis, and serving as the inaugural Membership Director at Tiny News Collective. 

Andrea holds an MDiv from Vanderbilt Divinity School, where she served as the first chaplain intern for the Program for LGBTQ Health and as a transformative justice facilitator. A 2019 Northwestern University Catalyst for Change in Writing honoree, she currently serves as Director of Resource Organizing at Access Reproductive Care–Southeast and lives in Durham, NC.

Photo by Ariel-Cobbert

Meida McNeal is Artistic and Managing Director of Honey Pot Performance. She received her PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and her MFA in Choreography & Dance History from Ohio State University. 

Over the past two decades, Meida has produced numerous creative projects as both a solo artist and with Honey Pot Performance, with works performed in Illinois, Rhode Island, Ohio, California, and Trinidad. Positioning her work as an Independent Artist and Scholar at the intersection of performance studies, dance, and critical ethnography, she has taught courses in dance, critical performance ethnography, and black diasporic cultural production at Northwestern University, Brown University, Governors State, Columbia College Chicago, and the University of Chicago.

Meida also works with the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events (DCASE) as the Deputy Commissioner of the Cultural Grants & Resources Division. Previously, Meida served as Senior Manager of Art and Community Impact Investments, spearheading the design and implementation of grant programs focused on pandemic recovery for the arts sector. Prior to this role, Meida worked with the Chicago Park District as Arts & Culture Manager, supporting community arts partnerships, youth arts, cultural stewardship, and civic engagement initiatives.

Photo by Anjali Pinto

Silvia Inés Gonzalez is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and cultural worker in Chicago, creating spaces where collective wellness is engaged through critical dialogue, art-making, and community building. Her visual and audio work is a ballad to nostalgia--the borderline between myth and memory. 

Silvia has curated exhibitions and facilitated workshops to address structures of power, imagination, repair, collective care, play, confinement, and freedom. She is a member of the Chicago ACT Collective and Artists for Radical Imagination. 

Silvia has recently developed Sala: A Living Room of Ideas on Lumpen Public Radio. Sala invites artists, cultural workers, and civically minded people to discuss liberation, education, organizing, community, and practices toward healing.

Learn more about Silvia's work silviainesgonzalez.com.

Nora Sharp is a performer, writer, filmmaker, drag artist, comedian, and trainer/facilitator in social change organizing spaces. Across forms and frames, they host audiences in worlds where language and embodiment merge in unexpected and illuminating ways. 

Sharp's work has been supported or presented by Queer|Art, the Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist Award, the Oberlin Screenwriters Intensive, the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, On the Boards, INVERSE at The Momentary, Movement Research at the Judson Church, the Pivot Arts Festival, Links Hall Co-MISSIONS, Notes on Masculinity, Salonathon, the Fly Honey Show, the Cannonball Festival, Open TV, WUSSY Mag, Hambidge, The Croft, and many other stages and screens both DIY and institutional in their hometown of Chicago and across the country.

Follow Nora Sharp at norasharp.com.