From her Mellon Foundation Discovery Through Iterative Learning (DisTIL) and Creative Futures fellowships, to her focus on Southern Futures at CPA and beyond, Brooklyn-based singer, composer, musician, curator, activist and producer Toshi Reagon is CPA’s longest-running artist-in-residence. Through music and community collaborations, Toshi cultivates curiosity and connection with Triangle audiences, artists and change-makers. 

Through Creative Futures, Reagon is developing a series of short musicals exploring different aspects of the ideas of survival, economy and music. She has engaged local artists and researchers in this work, with plans to collaborate with locally-based youth. 

“I’m grateful that Creative Futures will let me stay in this community, which I love. Chapel Hill has a strong Black community oral tradition, leading scholars, amazing activists and great artists, and I’m excited to continue to work with all of them.”

Toshi Reagon, from “Making the Future“

Toshi also brought these ideas to her role in Comm 665: Performance, Politics, and Culture, a UNC-Chapel HIll Department of Communication course. Taught by Renée Alexander Craft and Joseph Megel, the course included anchor texts selected with the partnership of Toshi’s community collaborators. Comm 665 also featured guest lectures, performances, and opportunities to engage with community collaborators outside of the classroom. Centering on performance as analysis, collaborative art-making, and public sharing, the course culminated in a performance by its students, presented as part of the Department of Communication’s Process Series. 

Other collaborations on the horizon of Toshi’s residency at CPA include facilitated conversations on critical issues in the Black community, as well as a “creative exchange” program in which a Triangle artist will be connected with a New York-based artist, for a partnership intended to result in events curated by Toshi in both locales.