Join us for a timely panel discussion "Telling Our Stories". Local creative voices from multiple arts genres will discuss why we tell our stories and the importance of remembering and embracing our narratives.
The program will feature panelists Bob Campbell (Writer, Author – Flint, MI), Mario Moore (Visual Artist – Detroit, MI), Tunde Olaniran (Multi-disciplinary Artist, Musician – Flint, MI), and Shani Womack (Professional Storyteller, Counselor – Flint, MI) and be moderated by Lisa Ze Winters (Assoc. Professor, African American Studies and English, Wayne State Univ. – Detroit, MI).
"Telling Our Stories"
Thursday, August 14, 2025 @ 6:00pm
Doors @ 5:30pm, Refreshments Provided
MW Gallery
815 S. Saginaw St. Flint, MI 48502
Entrance on E. Court St.
Free Event
810-835-4900
m-wc.org/programs-events
Every culture has a story to tell, and the arts have long been a means for telling those stories. Whether communicating history and world events or the day-to-day activities of ordinary people, narratives define our existence; they influence society, shaping opinions, imparting values, stirring imagination, and creating communities. The artists appearing on this interdisciplinary panel will share how they utilize narratives in their art practices to connect with and uplift their audiences.
Presented in conjunction with MW Gallery’s exhibition "Figuratively Speaking", on view February 14 through August 23, 2025. This exhibit, drawn from the Mott-Warsh Collection, highlights artists’ use of the human form to communicate identity, social commentary, and shared emotions and experiences. Relying on body language, gestures, and facial expressions, these artists convey narratives that are fully realized and others with endings to be completed by the viewer.
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About the Panelists
BOB CAMPBELL is a writer based in Flint, Mich. His debut novel, “Motown Man”, was published in November 2020 by Urban Farmhouse Press. His creative nonfiction, essays and novel excerpts have appeared in “Michigan Quarterly Review, Belt Magazine”, “Forge Literary Magazine”, “Hypertext Magazine”, “All Write in Sin City” (podcast) and “Gravel Magazine”. He is a contributor to Belt Publishing’s “Midwest Architecture Journeys”, published in October 2019. His essay is titled “The Flat Lots of Flint: A Liminal State of Mind”. Additionally, Bob is the author of “Flint to Shay: History of a Black Resort in the Middle of White Michigan”, a 6,300-word essay to be included in “Exploring Mideast Michigan’s Empty Spaces: A Traveler’s Guide”. The project was inspired by the regional guides produced in 1930s America by the WPA/Federal Writers' Project. “Exploring Mideast Michigan’s Empty Spaces” is slated for publication by Michigan State University Press in early 2026. Most recently, he was the 2022-2023 Writer-In-Residence for the Buckham Fine Arts Project at Buckham Gallery in Flint. His creative nonfiction compositions written during the residency have been compiled in a book, titled “Observations, Volume 3”. Bob was a staff writer for the “Flint Journal”, “Lexington Herald-Leader” and “Detroit Free Press”. He was also an electrician at AC Spark Plug, formerly a division of General Motors, before moving into journalism.
MARIO MOORE, a Detroit native, received a BFA from the College for Creative Studies, Detroit, MI in 2009 and an MFA in Painting from the Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT in 2013. He is a recent Kresge Arts Fellow (2023) and a recipient of the prestigious Princeton Hodder Fellowship (2018-2019). He also has been awarded residencies at Duke University, Josef and Annie Albers Foundation, Fountainhead, and Knox College. Moore’s work is in the permanent collections of but not limited to the Detroit Institute of Arts, Princeton University Art Museum, and The Studio Museum in Harlem. Moore’s work has been widely exhibited, including at the Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, IL; Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans, LA; The Cleveland Museum of Art, and Colby College Museum of Art. “Mario Moore / Enshrined: Presence & Preservation” exhibition—Moore’s largest survey of work to date—opened at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Detroit in June 2021 and traveled to the California African American Museum (CAAM) in March 2022, [his first solo exhibition on the West Coast]. Moore’s most recent traveling museum exhibition, “Revolutionary Times” opened at the Flint Institute of Arts in January 2024 and closed at the Grand Rapids Art Museum in August 2024. Mario Moore currently works and lives in Detroit, MI.
TUNDE OLANIRAN is an artist based in Flint, MI, whose work spans the worlds of music, dance, film, literature and performance art. Their debut and sophomore albums led to critical praise from The New York Times, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, NPR, The New Yorker and countless others. They have produced globally-impactful work in collaboration with many artists including Mona Haydar, adrienne maree brown, Nick Cave, Esperanza Spalding, and Yo-Yo Ma. Olaniran is a 2017 Art Matters Fellow, 2019 United States Artist Fellow, and 2020 University of Michigan Artist-in-Residence. Tunde’s work for PBS won a 2021 Regional Emmy. In 2022, they created an experimental short film/exhibition entitled “Made A Universe” as well as a companion performance installation entitled “Everything Is a Portal”, commissioned by Cranbrook Art Museum, with support from John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts.
ROSHANDA "SHANI" WOMACK has two bachelor’s degree in psychology and sociology from Grambling State University. She has a master's degree in counseling from Spring Arbor University. She is an ordained elder, in the Church of the Nazarene. After almost 20 years working as a school counselor and as a contractual therapist, she was clear about one thing, “The stories we tell ourselves, shape our lives.” Shani Womack is known for bringing excitement, humor, wisdom, and music everywhere she goes. She is passionate about using her art to bring positivity into the world. Because she was living in her hometown of Flint, Michigan during the water crisis, she became an “artivist” who now uses singing and storytelling to shed light on environmental racism and other social justice issues. With help from a few friends and fellow Flintstones, she produced her second album titled, “To Flint With Love” in 2017. In her one woman show, “Becoming Marvelous” which debuted in August 2024, Shani encourages everyone to pursue their most audacious dreams. Along with performing, Shani has created and manages two “out of school time” programs that support youth literacy, “Literacy Matters” and “Story Explorers.” Finally, Shani and her husband Todd Womack recently received a grant from the Ruth Mott Foundation to expand on a program curriculum created in partnership with U of M-Flint called “Healing Through Your Story,” that helps incarcerated women and those returning to the community overcome trauma. Shani has had the honor of speaking and performing for the BASF Corporation, Beaumont Hospital, University of Michigan-Flint, Central Michigan University, Mott Community College, Grand Rapids and Detroit Public Libraries, Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, The Women’s Storytelling Festival, St. Louis Storytellers Festival, and the National Association of Black Storytellers Conference and Festival, just to name a few. Shani was selected twice to participate as a fellow of the Wilmington, Delaware Black Storytellers Residency in 2023 and 2024. She currently serves as the Resident Storyteller for Flint Community Schools.
LISA ZE WINTERS, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of African American Studies and English and the Associate Chair of English at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Currently, she is consumed with the day-to-day practice of mothering a Black girl in the time of now, and her current research interests center on Black motherhood and Black radical love and the possibilities therein in for imagining and enacting freedom for Black children. She is the author of “The Mulatta Concubine: Terror, Intimacy, Freedom, and Desire in the Black Transatlantic”.
Also check out other Arts events in Flint, Literary Art events in Flint, Exhibitions in Flint.
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