Shelby Handler

As Teen Artist Program Manager, Shelby is excited to support the growth of Youth Speaks Seattle and honor its history of community resistance. With their roots in the Denver Minor Disturbance Youth Slam, Shelby is dedicated to carving out authentic political art spaces. Outside Arts Corps, they bring this dedication to arts and movement building to their work with the Coalition of Anti-Racist Whites.

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Vicky Edmonds

Vicky Edmonds is a poet and teacher who uses the art & practice of writing to bring the deepest and most authentic parts of ourselves to the page and to the world. Over the last 22 years she has worked in hundreds of facilities at the elementary, middle and high school levels, with at-risk populations, arts organizations, teachers and parenting groups.

Her published books include Inside Voices, used to the dark, once drunk / opening, unpredictable as breathing, lucid moments and the first two volumes in the Writes of Passage series. She has also been published in numerous other books and anthologies nationally and has compiled over 250 books of the poetry of the children and at-risk youth she has taught.

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Meredith Arena

Meredith is a writer, visual artist as well as a teacher/facilitator from New York City. As a teacher and artist, she is interdisciplinary, making work that ranges from photographic imagery to drawing to sound collage. She has also dabbled in some performance. She is interested in creating work that can tickle a range of senses and fluidly move between the abstract and concrete. This is because she is deeply aware of both the poetic/silly nature of life as well real suffering caused by social injustice. This makes her work with youth able to be at once playful, engaging and critical. Meredith creates and implements curricula that develop life-skills, creativity, social consciousness and mindfulness using movement, writing and visual arts.

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