Wendy Jane Bantam works internationally as a musician, storyteller, painter, and teaching artist. She lectures on creativity and critical thinking.  Her lectures are found on TEDx and IGNITE! Wendy holds a MFA in painting and is an Artist-in-the-Schools-and-Communities with the Nebraska Arts Council, the Lied Center for Performing Arts and lecturer on Arts Integration Learning for the UNL College of Education and Human Sciences.  She trained with the Peace Corps and served AmeriCorps through Washington D.C. by creating public art projects to bridge communities and fight poverty.

Wendy partners internationally with artists, teachers, communities, and schools to bring creative curriculum and interdisciplinary arts experience to the forefront. Combining storytelling with visual art, she engages communities by helping guide them in the story of their identity(ies) through the verbal and written word. Wendy assists teachers and students in turning their story into a creation of visual art using paint, textiles, or clay. These projects can be expanded upon by partnering with other classroom teachers and teaching artists (music, poetry, and movement). Final pieces are then presented in schools and communities through permanent installations or culminating events of music, art, and storytelling.

For more information about Wendy Jane Bantam, please contact:

Email: wendybantam@gmail.com

Phone: 308.222.0242

LEARN MORE

Liz Shea-McCoy earned her BS in Education and MA in Textile Design from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Liz is a professional/exhibiting artist and has been published and recognized on local, regional, and national levels in a variety of media (textile design, printmaking, photography, painting, collage, and assemblage techniques). Liz has a rich teaching background, including nearly 30 years of service with the Nebraska Arts Council as an Artist-in-Residence and visual teaching artist with the Nebraska Rural Teaching Artist Initiative, a program of the Lied Center for Performing Arts. She uses her extensive experience in printmaking and, as a teaching artist, encourages students to use their imaginations to think more abstractly to create their own one-of-a-kind symbol that reflects their creative individuality.  By looking at primitive and contemporary symbols, she hopes to engage all students to reflect on themselves or their environment, and ultimately create their own piece of nonverbal communication.

Liz has directed many community public arts projects:  Tour de Lincoln (Lincoln, NE, 2003), Star Art:  Star City Art Project (Lincoln, NE, 2006), aCross Lincoln (Lincoln, NE, 2008), An Enchanted Arboretum (Nebraska City, 2013), Illuminating Lincoln: Lighthouse (Lincoln, NE, 2015), Nebraska by Heart (Lincoln, NE), 2017 and Serving Hands (Lincoln, NE, 2019).

For more information about Liz Shea-McCoy, please contact:

Email: lizwshea@gmail.com

Phone: 402.430.5923

Traci Schacht is a performance poet and storyteller currently living in Council Bluffs, IA. She is employed by the Nebraska Writers Collective, where she is a Coach for Louder Than A Bomb (LTAB), Nebraska’s high school slam poetry program. She also serves as the core teaching artist, overseeing LTAB’s middle school program. Traci is a teaching artist with the Nebraska Arts Council’s Poetry Out Loud where she visits schools around the state coaching students in performance of classic and modern poets’ work. A former foster youth, she enjoys working with Project Everlast’s poetry program for youth aging out of foster care. As an above knee amputee and burn survivor, much of her work is centered around positive body image and healing using raw and humorous writing. Traci graduated from Nebraska Wesleyan University and spent time teaching in Oakland, CA. She is the winner of the 2018 Omaha Entertainment Arts Award for best performance poet and can be found performing at venues throughout the region.

For more information about Traci Schacht, please contact:

Email: redontherocks@gmail.com

Phone: 402.838.9648

Mike Wolfe resides in Lincoln, NE and is a newly enrolled member of the Northern Ponca Tribe of Nebraska (since 2018). Mike grew up on the Omaha Reservation where he learned his Umoⁿhoⁿ cultural ways, graduating from the University of Nebraska Lincoln with a degree in Education. Mike began work in schools in 1986 as a para educator with the Omaha Nation Schools. Since then he has worked in a variety of educational settings where he shares his culture, language, and artistic skills; he has developed and taught learning experiences/curriculum that incorporates culturally relevant and age appropriate lessons. He has also worked with social service agencies across the state, including the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska, The Indian Center, etc. In these roles, Mike has been a Cultural Practitioner teaching American Indian Life Skills, providing American Indian youth with knowledge, skills and the tools needed for continued personal development, to overcome obstacles and succeed at home and in school. Mike is also trained in evidence–based/practice-based teaching with a focus on cultural competence. His lessons lift up all people, primarily American Indian youth, by emphasizing the importance of holding onto one’s cultural identity, while maintaining both dignity and worth.

For more information about Mike, please contact:

Email: brotherwolf57@gmail.com