The community is invited to attend and participate in Making Accessible, a panel discussion centered around accessibility to creative and cultural institutions and experiences. Exhibiting artists George Hughes and Jodi Lynn Maracle, along with Savion Mingo, co-founder of D.O.P.E. Collective, and Maria Ta with Frontline Arts Buffalo (FAB) will discuss some of the social, economic and physical barriers they have experienced as artists.

George Afedzi Hughes was born and raised in Ghana and studied painting at The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, College of Art (1985–1991) where he earned a BA in Painting and Drawing and an MA in Art Education. He relocated to the United States in 1994 and earned his MFA in Painting from Bowling Green State University (2001). Hughes is currently an Associate Professor of Painting at SUNY Buffalo. 

Born and raised in what is currently considered Buffalo, NY, Jodi Lynn Maracle is a Kanien’kehá:ka mother, artist, teacher and language learner. Maracle utilizes Haudenosaunee material language and techniques in conversation with sound scapes, projections, video, and performance to interrogate questions of place, power, erasure, story making, and responsibility to the land.

Savion “Quaran” Mingo is an arts organizer from Buffalo, NY and co-founder of D.O.P.E. Collective, Dismantling Oppressive Patterns for Empowerment, which is a community bulletin board and project-based collaborative. Currently Quaran is an agency graphic designer and has several initiatives such as Artbox and Buffalo’s Annual Cree Summer Chalk Walk.

Maria Ta is on the Steering Committee of Frontline Arts Buffalo (FAB). FAB seeks to support frontline arts and cultural organizations and artists in Buffalo in their transition from conditions of precarity to viability. Maria is also the founder of the Ta Collective, LLC where she works to provide operational and administrative services to creatives in order to clear pathways for their best creative work.