About
Our Background
Our Mission
To cultivate literacy, leadership, and social justice through the study & application of Spoken Word and Hip Hop culture.
Our Vision
To foster a global community of diverse voices committed to advancing justice and equity.
Our Core Beliefs
Story
We believe in story as a bridge, a shared method of communicating and a vehicle through which history is kept, told, shaped, shared, challenged and re-imagined.
Community
TruArtSpeaks reflects diversity and fosters a community of artist who reach across rigid lines of identity, demographic boundaries and other social constructs toward authentic relationship building, self-exploration and expansion, by providing safer spaces to explore, articulate and navigate differences while simultaneously creating deeper connections.
Hip Hop as a Tool
We believe that Hip Hop culture provides the community that we serve with a means to express themselves through afro-centric and culturally relevant methodologies rooted in gaining an understanding of self and the world around you, while also providing them with positive tools and avenues to study, challenge and critique through liberatory pedagogy, community and youth development.
Intergenerational Spaces and Mentorship
In a society in which it is rare to learn about craft from an experiential or practitioner-centered space, outside of an institution, we are committed to providing mentorship, intergenerational exchanges, and contributing to the legacy and continuum of these artforms and practices.
Quality & Craft
We believe in quality productions, instructions, and craft. We create space for participants to discover their creative voice, study, shape, practice, and apply it and from there publicly present and transform the world around them.
Meet The Crew
Executive Team
Founder & Executive Director of TruArtSpeaks, Tish Jones is a poet, narrative strategist, cultural producer, and educator from Saint Paul, MN, with a deep and resounding love for Black people, arts & culture, youth development, and civic engagement. As a performance artist her work has been shared in venues throughout the United States. Her writing can be found in We Are Meant to Rise (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), 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.
Currently serving as a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow and an Arts Matters Artist2Artist Fellow, Jones is grateful to have been supported through grants, fellowships, and awards from The Intercultural Leadership Institute, Springboard for the Arts, Minnesota State Arts Board and more. The generous support that she has received over the years has allowed her to excavate the kind of stories that chart new worlds— she is eternally grateful.
Currently serving as a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow and an Arts Matters Artist2Artist Fellow, Jones is grateful to have been supported through grants, fellowships, and awards from The Intercultural Leadership Institute, Springboard for the Arts, Minnesota State Arts Board and more. The generous support that she has received over the years has allowed her to excavate the kind of stories that chart new worlds— she is eternally grateful.
tjones@truartspeaks.org
Leadership Team
Hip-Hop Artist, Educator and Entrepreneur.
mally@truartspeaks.org
Slam poet and practicing artist interested in rhythm, seperation, and the ways in which art interprets history. Her work culminates most commonly as three minute poems.
kann@truartspeaks.org
Eshay Brantley (she/her), a multidisciplinary artist born in southside Chicago, moved to Minneapolis in 2004. Social justice advocate, teaching artist, and mother. Brantley’s artistic work commenced in a ritual-based performance. She is dedicated to nurturing the narratives of Black folks, Black womanhood, and Black maternal. Over the past ten years, she has worked with Children’s Theater Company, TruArt Speaks, Minneapolis Community Ed, Park Square Theater, Washburn High School, PBS Twin Cities Public Television, The University of Chicago, Guthrie Theater, Ambiance Theater, Exposed Brick Theatre, Tangible Collective, and Women for Political Change. Brantley served as a Spotlight Education Teaching Artist in Residence at Hennepin Theater Trust in 2022-2023, ECI’s emerging curators fellowship in 2023, and Ife Lab Fellow in 2024. Eshay is committed to the work she does in the Twin Cities arts community and continues to plant seeds for a better future for Black babies.
ebrantley@truartspeaks.org
Board of Directors
Reverend Anthony Galloway holds a BA degree in Ethnic Studies from Metropolitan State University and is a Senior Partner at Dendros Group, a firm dedicated to cultural change in organizations towards equity.
He is also the Executive Director of the ARTS Us Center for the African Diaspora and a founding member of the Award winning ``Counterstories`` Podcast and “Bearing Witness with Anthony and Georgia,” part of the Racial Reckoning project with AMPERS radio.
While studying abroad in South Africa during the 10th anniversary of the end of apartheid, Anthony developed a passion for critical discourse pedagogy leading him to become the co-founder of “Dare 2 Be Real” an anti-racist student leadership framework with a growing network of over 27 sites and 1200 students engaging nationwide.
This work deepened when his highschool classmate Philando Castile was killed by a police officer 6 blocks from his house and further still when George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis reminding everyone that we have a lot of work to do in regards to racial reconciliation and justice.
In addition to his company and community work, Anthony currently serves as pastor of St. Mark AME Church in Duluth. In his free time, he enjoys pc gaming with his family and anything involving fishing and camping.
Tai is a multi-hyphenate, working as a Creative Marketing, Project Management, and Operations consultant as well as a Community Impact planner in the fashion, sport, and tech industries. She's also the co-founder of a home design product line, PIECES.
Danez Smith is the author of four collections including Bluff, Homie and Don’t Call Us Dead. They have won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and have been a finalist for the NAACP Image Award in Poetry, the National Book Critic Circle Award, and the National Book Award. Danez's poetry and prose has been featured in Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The New Yorker, GQ, Best American Poetry and on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Danez is a member of the Dark Noise Collective. Former co-host of the Webby nominated podcast VS (Versus), they are the recipient of fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, Princeton, United States Artists, the McKnight Foundation, the Montalvo Arts Center, Cave Canem, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Danez has been featured as part of Forbes’ annual 30 Under 30 list and is the winner of a Pushcart Prize. They live in Minneapolis near their people.