The School of Making Thinking challenges disciplinary conventions of art-making, thinking, and living. 

VISION
We envision a world in which historically marginalized artists build flourishing creative communities across disciplines and cultures. In this world, the arts and experimental pedagogy play a key role in stewarding the social justice and economic transitions most needed for a sustainable and equitable society.

​MISSION
The School of Making Thinking creates responsive, field-influencing arts programming in pursuit of equity, justice and sustainability. We do this by cultivating a peer-led community of practice between artists, researchers, and activists.

Our programs ask: How does art deepen thought and provoke questioning? How is thinking enacted through creative mediums? And how can an environment be structured or resist structuring in such a way that these questions can not only be asked, but be lived as well? 

SMT was founded in 2011 and is a federal nonprofit 501c3.

Board of Directors

Akeema-Zane, Board Chair
Audrey Evans, Vice Board Chair
Thea Fitz-James,  Treasurer
Matt Pearson, Secretary
Clay Scofield

Staff

Sophie Traub
Artistic Executive Director


Our Founders, Former Staff & Emeritus Board.

Sophie Traub 
Artistic Executive Director

Sophie Traub is a queer performing artist and performance creator with extensive strategic, artistic leadership and facilitation experience through their work designing and running residencies for The School of Making Thinking since 2013. Sophie is invested in impact-focused arts programming, facilitating individual and group transformation through creative processes towards social change.  Sophie completed their Masters in Theatre and Performance Studies from York University in Toronto in 2019, focusing on the politics of cultural production and group dynamics in collaboration. In recent years, Sophie was an Associate Curator for the Canadian National Arts Centre’s Cycle on Climate Change, and worked with ToasterLab on GROUNDWORKS Performance Project at Alcatraz led by Dancing Earth, the California-based pan-Indigenous dance company. Since 2019, Sophie is a lead contributing artist to Beyond Boom & Bust, a performance company with a mandate of cultivating economic and social resilience through performance in rural southern Oregon, where they now live. Sophie has trained extensively in movement theatre techniques such as Viewpoints, Suzuki, and Grotowski, and holds a long background of working in experimental devised theatre productions and in film in the US and Canada, to much acclaim.

Thea Fitz-James
Treasurer, Board Member

Thea Fitz-James is part academic and part theatre practitioner. She holds a PhD in Performance Studies at York University, where she wrote about queer performances of textiles in activism and performance art. Thea is a theatre maker and performance artist, having created work with FADO in Toronto (Daughter’s Disease), Secret Theatre in Halifax (No Filter), and Summerworks (Naked Ladies). Her solo performance piece, Naked Ladies, made international news when it was banned in Singapore in 2017, and her other solo show Drunk Girl has toured internationally to the US and Australia. She has curated performances for the Cucalorus Festival, co-founded and ran the queer performance cabaret, Dark Day Monday, and worked as a digital program manager for Artscape Toronto Inc. Her current research focuses on queer performance and communities of accountability in the Canadian Fringe touring community. Thea is currently teaching theatre history, theory and administration at Queen's University as an assistant professor.  Thea Fitz-James identifies as part of the queer  community (as a pan/bi sexual), and part of the ‘Mad’ community, and is a white, cis female settler. 

www.theafitzjames.com

Cam Mbayo
Board Member

Cam is Congolese-born Brooklyn-based engineer storyteller working at the intersection of art, tech, culture, and education. In pursuit of beauty and right relationships with land and each other, Cam can be found following her breath, dancing, napping, adventuring, giggling and introducing a little bit of chaos with a whole lot of love to moments. Cam lives fully and in the poetics of living there is an attempt at peace of mind in this maddd maddd world.
 
“Every age gets the lunatics it deserves.” i.e: This world is already my hell, I don't have to play by the rules. 
 
camkmbayo.com/

Kiley Brandt
Board Member

Kiley Brandt (MFA) is a video artist from North Carolina. In her work, Brandt attempts to inspire empathy through sound, poetry and immersive installation to better communicate dissatisfaction with the current political climate and the uncertain displacement many feel within it. Her research areas include diaspora, adoption, immigration and Mexican/American Border politics. She was a 2019 New Media Caucus: Border Control Presenter in Ann Arbor, Michigan and currently teaches as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art- Digital Media at Clemson University, SC.

“My art is inherently political due to the nature of my identity. I am a transnational adoptee, and I am exploring in my research the boundaries between home, created space, mythology, ritual, and site...”

kileybrandt.com

​​Akeema-Zane
Board Chair, Board Member

​Akeema-Zane is an artist and researcher whose practice centers the literary, music, cinematic and performance traditions. She has been artist-in-residence, student, fellow and performer at Groundation Grenada, Cave Canem, The Maysles Documentary Center, Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism, and The School of Making Thinking. At The School of Making Thinking, she was a part of the 2018 Immersion 2.0 cohort, where she designed her first Virtual Reality experience which featured herself. She is currently serving on the Board of Directors of The School of Making Thinking. As a native New Yorker she is proud to have spent many years working at The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture where she worked as an archival curriculum researcher for her last post there. Collaboration is a major tenet of the artists’ practice and one of her collaborative works “Sonic Escape Routes: Shall We Fly Or Shall We Resist” was featured in the 59th Ann Arbor Film Festival. Her published writings include: There’s a Monopoly on Change, Interlude, When Money Can’t Buy You Home and Basil Grows from Mother Earth.

akeema-zane.com

Audrey Evans
Vice Chair, Board Member

Audrey Evans is a librarian, researcher, and community builder based in the Hudson Valley and NYC.  Most recently, she lead network engagement strategy at Data & Society Research Institute where she designed programs to engage artists, academics, computer scientists, advocates, activists, policymakers, and individuals from impacted communities to grapple with the social, political and cultural implications of technology in society. The aim of this network building practice is to deepen the public’s understanding of issues arising from data-centric and automated technology, to  work towards building collective approaches to  hold power accountable, and to ensure that technologies are developed, governed, and used in ways that promote justice and fairness. 

Her work as a research practitioner bridges various fields and modalities: archival studies, ritual studies, oral history,  genealogy, doula work, facilitation, and embodied, somatic practices.  

Audrey received a Bachelor's Degree in Philosophy and Religion from Hendrix College, a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science (MLIS) from the Palmer School of Library and Information Science,  and an End of Life Doula certificate from the University of Vermont (2023). She is excited and curious to integrate her studies and personal experience with death, grief, and mourning into social change work. 

Philip Poon
Board Member

Philip Poon is an architect, artist, and writer whose work engages the complex dynamics of a changing Manhattan Chinatown and the relationship of Asian-American identity within it.
 
Informed by his background as a Chinese-American from New York City, his work as a registered architect, and his engagement with art and activist movements in Chinatown, his projects materialize issues at the intersection of space, race, and class.
 
He had a solo exhibition at the Pearl River Mart Gallery and has exhibited at La MaMa Galleria, WSA, Citygroup, and On Canal. His critical writing has been published in Untapped, Urban Omnibus, Other Almanac, and Best! Letters from Asian Americans in the arts, and his work has appeared in Art in America, ArtAsiaPacific, Chicago Review of Books, The Architect’s Newspaper, South China Morning Post, Sing Tao Daily, World Journal, Deem, and more.
​philippoon.com
www.firm-a.us

Matt Pearson
Secretary, Board Member

Matt Pearson is an environmental designer and musician whose projects range from performance to cultural exhibitions in science, beauty, art, editorial, and technology.
His work spans various settings and scales, including both civic and commercial, object and environment. He strives to convey intent and emotion through formal excellence in his work.
 
Matt currently serves as a physical spatial designer for RAANY, a multidisciplinary design firm specializing in exhibitions, museums, and educational environments, developing a new natural history museum and educational center in Abu Dhabi. Prior to that, Matt successfully collaborated with neurological researchers at University of Louisville to develop a seating device for children with spinal cord injury and win commercialization funding from NIH. For many years, Matt has consulted as an immersive scenic and interactive designer for HBO, Sundance Film Fest, Complex Magazine, Domino Park Brooklyn, Toyota, Cornell Tech, Adidas, Cucalorus Film Festival, and more. 
A trained singer and pianist of many styles, Matt performs with small groups specializing in the musical techniques of jazz through gospel and other devotional traditions. He teaches voice and music to children through the Maryland Fine Arts after school African Cultural Enrichment (ACE) program.

Clay Scofield
Board Member

Clay Scofield (they/them) is a nondisciplinary artist dabbling in a variety of media to find meanings that fall through the cracks of specialization. They engage in a process of transformational play across media. Their work includes (but is not limited to) performance, video, poetry, and essay exploring how to being, not-knowing, ambiguity, and refusal. They strive towards models of artistic engagement that prioritize world-building, self-making (or -being?), radical-imagining, connection, and process over production. 
 
Their work has been featured in publications including Number, Nashville Arts, Wussy, and Dinner Bell. They have performed and exhibited nationally. They have been an artist-in-residence with Cucalorus, the School of Making Thinking, Lazuli, and the JHU-MICA Film Centre. They received an MFA from Indiana University, Bloomington, in digital art, and a BA from Vanderbilt University. They are currently based in Iowa City, Iowa, studying poetry at The Writers’ Workshop and serving on the board of directors of SMT. They are 70 percent water, 100 percent heart. 

eclaytonscofield.com

Erin Howley
Board Member

Erin Howley is an artist, adult educator, and community-engaged facilitator. She is influenced by 15 years of frontline work spanning the US and Canada, collaborating through education and research with communities at the forefront of criminal justice and drug policy reform. Erin’s mixed-media artwork spans inner worlds and societal landscapes. Through installation, video, and performance-based inquiry, her creative practice activates material history to expose the social intimacies that lie at the core of public policy.  With investigative methods and material practices including interviews, character and plot, portraiture, textile, and digital media – she uses visual storytelling as a starting point to explore themes of justice and power. Erin has taken part in artist residencies and intensives with The School of Making Thinking, Whippersnapper Gallery in Toronto, and Ghost River Theatre in Calgary. She holds a Bachelor of Education in Adult Education and Organizational Development from Temple University in Philadelphia, alongside a Master of Environmental Studies from York University. Her research applied trauma studies and cultural studies towards exploration of arts-based psycho-social facilitation practices with drug use communities. Erin is a white, cis female settler with home bases in Texas and Toronto. She is motivated to apply her training and experience in intergroup facilitation, artistic collaboration, and learning design towards the evolution of SMT’s peer-based approach to arts programming.  

www.erinmariehowley.com