Narrative 4 is a global network of educators, students, and artists who use art and storytelling to promote empathy and understanding. During Arts Week, Narrative 4's Chattanooga Artist's Network teams up with Festive Evolution: Art & Activism in the 21st Century to discuss ART IN UNCERTAIN TIMES. Join us as we explore the power of narrative in such times as these and introduce Narrative 4’s core methodology - the Story Exchange - to local artists of all disciplines (as well as anyone else who is interested). Come one, come all!

About the facilitators:

The Narrative 4 Chattanooga Artist's Network is comprised of artists from a variety of disciplines, including visual arts, performance, and writing, who believe in the power of story as a means of creating connection, empathy, and community engagement for positive change.

Facilitators for this event are:

• As a lifelong dancer, Ann Law has always been interested in how dances speak to us, allowing personal stories to organically move us in present day life. For over 30 years, she has been the executive director of a nonprofit arts organization that gently facilitates all conversations in honest and meaningful ways at Barking Legs Theater. Through this lens, she continues to explore and address barriers that disenfranchise and separate our community.
• Sara Sharpe LaMance is the founder of FESTIVE EVOLUTION: Art & Activism in the 21st Century. Sara has been an artist, activist, and coach for over two decades, and she has created a vast body of work that meets at the intersection of art and change-making with a particular focus on women and the global women's movement. As a playwright, award-winning actor, and certified Trauma-informed Mindfulness Coach, Sara believes that storytelling is in our DNA. Stories teach us, persuade us, define us, move us to action. They link us to our past and to our future and, most of all, they link us to each other; because stories are personal but they’re also, always, universal.
• Gwen Mullins Alegre is a writer and educator who knows that the stories we tell, including the stories we tell ourselves, can change the way we interact with each other and the world around us. Her fiction and essays explore relationships from the weird to the quotidian in the Southern Gothic tradition. Gwen has worked as a writer, teacher, and leader in various capacities in the Chattanooga community for the past 25 years.
• Kate Rudder works withNarrative 4 to bring the Story Exchange methodology to Chattanooga. Her studies (English, Anthropology, Public Administration) and her 20 years of work in international humanitarian aid introduced her to the transformative power of stories.