SMALL EXITS PRODUCING EXODUS
About:
Exodus School of Expression is a nurturing and empowering space designed specifically for BIPOC artists, educators, and organizers. We are dedicated to developing offerings and events that foster practices challenging the oppressive frameworks of domination and capital.
At Exodus, we believe that practice is more than just a method—it's an incubator where self-actualization, speculation, spiritualism, wholism, and reflection thrive. Our approach is grounded in creating an environment that encourages personal and collective growth, enabling participants to explore and expand their creative and organizational capacities.
Join us at Exodus School of Expression, where we push boundaries, build community, and cultivate a future rooted in equity and holistic development.
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Time Based: Exodus by definition speaks to a large event. The core curriculum centers on exits that we can make everyday. On a project basis this idea of an event becomes both a framework and the spirit for this project’s life cycle. Exodus is a conduit not an organization. This speaks to a larger desire to develop without institutionalizing.
​Exodus Core Curriculum: Designed to create an accessible starting point for anyone interested in developing a practice. The core curriculum does not use academic language and focuses on holistic practices and practice as a road to self-actualization.
Community Students & Educators:
The core curriculum is designed to attract non-traditional BIPOC artists at all levels of practice and background. Best for those looking to develop language or gain further understanding of why they practice, what their creative process reflect back to them, and how they can challenge traditional frameworks of practicing, organizing, and/or teaching.
Vision:
At Exodus School of Expression, we believe in the power of small exits and incremental change as pathways toward liberatory practices. We acknowledge the inherent interconnectivity of our actions and understand that transforming one practice can ripple out to impact many others. We envision Exodus as a time-based project and event that sparks a collective repositioning of how we navigate the arts, the roles we carve out for artists, and how we educate and organize. Our vision is to create a dynamic space where innovative practices can flourish, fostering a community dedicated to holistic and equitable development.
We Uplift:
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Reciprocity between Educators & Students
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Neurodiversity & Accessibility in education & community settings
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Expansive understanding of what an Educator can be: in community, in Academia, in passing
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The intersection of lived experience, community understanding, and critical thinking as a source
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Validation of many types of sources (lived experience, writing, music videos, etc.), writings, and resources
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Holistic Understanding of Practice as it relates to selfhood and the world
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Experimental forms of research
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The understanding that sometimes the work is rest, connecting with a community, play, laughter, heady conversations, etc. - and the result does not always culminate in a physical manifestation or artifact of the process
History:
Exodus was founded in response to grieving the lack of space, active barriers, and systematic threats in Academia that prevent BIPOC educators & students from self-actualization. Self-actualization can be understood as the realization of one's talent. Exodus uplifts many things that are umbrellaed under a desire to make space for community members to self-actualize.
In Exodus, we define self-actualization as the continued expansion of one's sense of self and purpose concerning their community. It is a process that allows artists, arts organizers, and educators to develop an in-depth understanding of selfhood in relation to community, collective legacies, and practice.
Rooting in understanding self & one's unique expression is essential to sustaining traditional and untraditional practices. It's an act of charting, locating, and naming the magic and purpose in practice.
Throughout the development of Exodus, this quote from Bell Hooks, Communion: The Search for Love, played a pivotal role in understanding the importance of selfhood in practice.
"Searching for love, I found the path to freedom. Learning how to be free was the first step in learning to know love."
- Bell Hooks
It gives expression to the role of selfhood in the quest for freedom. We hope that the most expansive forms of love will find a home in this project and that our offerings help participants find deeper understandings of self.
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Our curriculum at Exodus is designed to empower artists and educators through a deep understanding of their practice's ecosystems. We believe in the transformative power of speculative fiction, deep reflection, and self-actualization. Through our curriculum, we aim to cultivate a community of artists who can shape and contribute to collective understanding.
Deep reflection plays a crucial role in our curriculum.
Curriculum:
Reflection as a Means of Expansion: We recognize that every individual's understanding is vital to collective understanding. Reflection allows us to push against linear explorations, develop expansive understandings of what practice can, and create space to identify the magic that is conjured through making. It broadens our perception by collapsing the boundaries between the past, present, and future. Reflection serves as an ignitor of world-building, enabling us to maintain collective understanding and promote equitable practices. It also helps us view our artistic practice in more holistic ways, connecting the threads to the larger narratives at play in our lives.
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Self-Actualization: We create space for by BIPOC artists to feel safe in moving through processes of Actualization and maybe bettered aligned transfiguration. We want artists to nurture their artistic practice, considering the tools, community, space, and personal needs required for their creative journey. To explore the deep connection between artists and materials, encouraging participants to reflect on their affinity for specific mediums and how they are intricately linked to their artistic expression. We view practice as an expansive vessel with room for both interpersonal and interpersonal relations to the world.
Speculative Fiction: The primary sources we use in Exodus's Core Curriculum Materials are works of fiction. This is done to challenge barriers or access and the often exclusionary nature of academic theory and language. We use theory, lived experience, and speculative fiction as valid sources. Speculative fiction, under the framework of Exodus, is a tool, act, or way of being that merges speculation and fiction, serving as an active portal to dream, locate, and merge both imagined and lived realities. Fiction can reflect aspects of our world, externalizing the reality we navigate.
Stewardship:
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Taylor Simone is a cultivator of community, design, art, and writing. Hailing from Metro Detroit, Simone incorporates peace, joy, and liberatory practices into all aspects of her work. In 2019, she received her MFA in Visual Communication from Virginia Commonwealth University. From 2019 to 2022, she held the position of assistant teaching professor at Bowling Green State University, teaching the foundations of design.
Simone views practice as an act of space-making, creating room that challenges frameworks of capital and domination.
She aims to disrupt with love and promote safety, enabling processes of self-actualization that empower individuals.
Her art practice allows for the embodiment of this magic. Through interdisciplinary explorations with mixed media, Simone seeks to foster an expansive understanding of selfhood. The work manifests in the process, with some culminating in physical artifacts and most remaining ephemeral. By adopting a spiritual lens on materiality, these inquiries blur the lines between self and environment, activating practice as a tool for expansive understanding and holism.
Through grassroots organizing, education, and design, Simone facilitates these spaces for others. Her work with the Design Justice Network began in 2015. This community of designers is united by a set of principles that prioritize those most impacted by design decisions, ensuring equity within design processes and frameworks. As a volunteer, she facilitates workshops, provides project management support, and co-organizes a conference track. Currently, she serves as the Special Projects Manager for the Design Justice Network, focusing on member experience and supporting the development of community and operational infrastructure, resources and tools, and network visioning.
Simone's design practice allows her to support others who align with her Principles of Practice. She has worked with clients such as Black Chalk & Co, Complex Movements (Beware of the Dandelions), The Carr Center, Allied Media, and more.