Prior to co-founding JXTA, Cummings served as a program officer for the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council and as a senior administrator for the Council on Black Minnesotans, since renamed the Council for Minnesotans of African Heritage.Ĭummings has served on the Bush Foundation’s board of trustees since 2013. Established in 1995 as an after-school program in the North Side’s Sumner-Glenwood neighborhood, JXTA has become one of the most important cultural institutions in the Twin Cities. Cummings is also a co-founder and former CEO of Juxtaposition Arts ( JXTA), a social enterprise business in north Minneapolis that trains and employs historically underestimated youth as a springboard to higher education and careers in art and design. For more on her personal praxis, see Jones’ TEDxMinneapolis Talk on Spoken Word as a Radical Practice of Freedom.ĭeAnna Cummings Arts Program Director, McKnight FoundationĭeAnna Cummings joined the McKnight Foundation in June 2020 as Arts program director. Jones has always had a passion for bridging arts & culture, civic engagement, and youth development. Former Director of the Brave New Voices international youth poetry slam festival, her work explores the ways in which art can function as a tool for social transformation, liberation, and education. Her work can be found in A Moment of Silence(Tru Ruts and The Playwrights Center, 2020), the Minnesota Humanities Center’s anthology entitled, Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2015), and more.Ĭurrently a Metropolitan Regional Arts Council Next Step Fund and Waterers Future Building recipient, she has been awarded fellowships from the Arts Matters Foundation, Springboard for the Arts, the Intercultural Leadership Institute, and more. She has performed poetry in venues throughout the United States.

Tish Jones Founder & Executive Director, TruArtSpeaksįounder & Executive Director of TruArtSpeaks, an arts & culture nonprofit based in Saint Paul, MN, Tish Jones is a poet, educator, cultural strategist from Saint Paul, Minnesota.

We need to go deeper ep1