Marck “Flaco” Best has been teaching popular forms of cultural social dance since 1997, with a focus on rhythms that allow him to embrace his Cuban heritage.

He is a tenured instructor with the Mt. Airy Learning Tree. After being trained by Monsieur Pierre Dulaine in his method, Flaco became one of the original teaching artists for Dancing Classrooms Philly, sister to the program in New York City used in the film Mad Hot Ballroom.

Maxine’s journey began in Newark, NJ, where step dance became her earliest and most powerful form of self-expression, allowing her to build community and discover the performing arts in a neighborhood with limited creative outlets. Maxine is committed to using step as a storytelling and community-building force. In 2005, she founded Soul Steps, and she has toured all over the world, bringing “step” with her. She is dedicated to creating space for young people to see themselves represented and find the confidence to tell their own stories.

A 2023 Delaware Division of the Arts Master Fellow in Oral Literature, TAHIRA is a storyteller, musician, vocalist, and songwriter. She brings messages of courage, hope, and triumph to her audience.

In 2021, TAHIRA was awarded the New Jersey Governor’s Award for Distinguished Service in Arts Education. Schools praise TAHIRA for her high-energy, interactive programs that foster meaningful connections with young people and their academic learning.

Karen “Queen Nur” Abdul-Malik is a nationally renowned storyteller and teaching artist. Queen has performed in venues such as the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Equity Theater on Broadway, National Black Storytelling Festival, National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro. She has been the recipient of MidAtlantic Artist as Catalyst Grants for her work with Teens-at-Risk and Women’s Shelters as well as the National Storytelling Brimstone Grant for her innovative community-based programs.

Queen Nur has recorded 2 CDs. “Sweet Potato Pie and Such,” is an IParenting Media Golden Award Winner.  “Live and Storified” for teens and up was recorded at the Walt Whitman Cultural Arts Center in Camden, NJ.

Erik James Montgomery, owner of EJM Photography, is a self-taught fine art photographer who creates relevant, thought-provoking, visually unique imagery. His viewpoint is from a photojournalistic standpoint, where his imagery tells a complete story in one photograph.

In 2011, Erik founded the Erik James Montgomery Foundation, which is dedicated to instructing youth in the artistic development of professional photography. His students learn the fundamentals of the craft as well as being introduced to entrepreneurship. The Foundation also creates public works of art for impoverished neighborhoods in order to transform blight into beauty.

Rebecca Kelly is a multidisciplinary artist. She is a storyteller, textile and book artist, and curator. Her students’ Book Arts work was exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum’s Learning through Art Exhibition, and Rebecca curated the traveling exhibition of the award-winning Bucks County Community College ARTMOBILE: transFORMations; Making Art with Recycled and Reused Materials. Rebecca is an experienced educator and holds a Master’s Degree in Child Development from Sarah Lawrence College.

April Zay‘s passion for art began at age three, and when April was in 4th grade, her class had a visiting artist in residence. This visit inspired her to pursue her own career as an artist, traveling to schools and working with young students. Living in many parts of the United States growing up, April has fostered a love and connection to many art forms. April is currently the owner, and founder of Hummingbird Arts Studio, taking commission work with a specialty in pet portraits. Expanding on her training as a traditional oil painter, she began creating origami jewelry, and experimenting with paper and mixed media. In 2021, April became part of the Princeton Makes artist co-op.

Alex Shaw is a Philadelphia-based percussionist, sound artist/composer, cultural producer, and arts educator working in the field for over twenty years. Intercultural, interdisciplinary collaborations and compositions merging diverse percussion traditions, vocal textures, field recordings, and digital imagination encompass his current artistic focus.

Kate Marie Sclavi is a teaching artist, art education coach, and visual artist. For more than two decades, she has led collaborative art projects for schools, museums, businesses, and other institutions as a teaching artist. Through a custom-designed collaboration process, she guides groups to create singular works of art that foster connection, healing, and new perspectives on organizational missions. With expertise in murals, mosaics, and giant weavings, she incorporates social-emotional learning and arts integrative goals while producing community-based, collaborative works of art.

DunyaPAC’s artistic, aesthetic, and philosophical approaches pull heavily from African traditions, such as polycentrism and polyrhythms. Polycentrism acknowledges that one entity can have many centers, mirroring my own identity—rooted in folk art, oral storytelling, social justice, ethnography, and African/African diasporic dance and drum traditions—with each center being intrinsically interconnected. African polyrhythms function as a mechanism for inclusion. When two or more rhythms are played at the same time, they manifest the ability to connect people, make space, and create a sense of belonging for all.