About Us

Artería Collective ignites social change through the power of the arts, culture, and restorative self-expression.

Founded in 2011, we are based in Asheville, North Carolina, which sits on the stolen,unceded territory of the Tsalaguwetiyi/ Eastern Band Cherokee, S’atsoyaha/Yuchi and Miccosukee peoples.

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Who Are We?

The Journey

How did we come here?

“We are a community of individuals who are interdependent. No hierarchy. Just a deep bond around valuing each other and our gifts. We are a majority of femme bodied queer abolitionists,with distinct talents and voices who stand very strong in our power to shepherd in something very different and new.”

Holistic Health Coordinator

Ember Rose Phoenix

Who are we?

Board of Directors

Marisa Blake, Chair

Sophia Rutherford, Vice-chair

Katie Latino, Treasurer

Shawn Winebrenner, Secretary

Mike Martinez, Member

How did we come here?

2011

In 2011, when we came into the world, we called ourselves Asheville Writers in the Schools. We unfolded in the terrain of public schools, knowing that the places where systems replicate for the benefit of maintaining oppressive structures is where our creativity, possibility and transformation was needed. We sought to Interrupt the inertia that can aid in the invisibilization of Black, Brown, Indigenous and non gender conforming bodies.

We co-created spaces of story, song, poetry, family, and community, with an emphasis on students in grades K-8, sometimes for multiple school years in one grade, other times with multiple years of summer programs for middle schoolers.

We curated an annual spoken word poetry show and smaller, similar events where young writer’s hearts could beat with the syllables of their truths.

And as the creativity, a force of its own, brought us to unfurl and expand in other community spaces, our name evolved to Artería Collective.

2016

In 2016, the program Word on the Street/Voz de les Jóvenes bloomed.

While working with Black and Brown teens and uplifting processes for building radical medicine and presence through art and togetherness, we began to navigate the practice of language justice, creating equitable, multilingual spaces where everyone could understand and be understood in ways that felt natural, expressive, and powerful.

We continued changing, adding, and evolving, finding and training BIPOC mentors to share their talents with music, visual art, puppetry, photography, video, radio, and writing. Our staff grew and how we did the work changed, too. We are now a group of individuals moving together without hierarchy AND with shared values, care and integrity. Individuals whose gifts, talents and opinions are honored while they maintain sovereignty and agency.

2022

In 2022, we searched to find our name again, to stay in integrity with the ways in which we are moving. We gathered with young people, artists, community, our staff and Board, almost all Black, Latine, Indigenous or People of color, honoring the transformation of this healing justice process, sharing feelings, visions, and language. Swirling in Spanish and English words until they came to settle.

TODAY, WE ARE
ARTéRIA COLLECTIVE.

ARTÉRIA

Artery. In Spanish. Artéria. Arteries (Arterias) Artéria: our creative community of artists, Culture Bearers, healers and activists. Artéria: Carrying the blood, the vitality, the energy into the rest of the body from the heart.

COLLECTIVE

Like dandelions spreading into constellations, each precisely becoming that which will awaken us, touch us, keep us awake through and through, igniting social change.

From the heart, back and forth, Artéria Collective flows in collaborative community interconnections to distribute art-based experiences that celebrate BIPOC culture, while cultivating radical imagination and healing.