2026 Vision & Sound Symposium - Feb. 27th

Vision & Sound creates an educational experience and environment that broadens the understanding and appreciation of African American art, music, film, and literary works for multigenerational and multicultural audiences. Vision and Sound builds supportive relationships to encourage cultural equity throughout Arizona and beyond – recognizing that professional American artists of African descent are too often overlooked.

Keynote Speaker: Brett Cook

Brett Cook is an interdisciplinary artist and educator who uses storytelling to distill complex ideas and creative practices to transform outer and inner worlds of being.

His elaborate installations feature painting, drawing, and photography to tell pluralistic stories with broad representation. His public projects typically involve community workshops featuring arts-integrated pedagogy and contemplative strategies—along with music, performance, and food—to create a fluid boundary between art making, daily life, and healing.

Teaching and public speaking are extensions of Cook’s social practice that involve communities in dialogue to generate experiences of reflection and insight. He has taught at all academic levels in a variety of subjects, and published in academic journals from the Maryland Institute College of Art and Harvard University, among others. In 2009, he published Who Am I in This Picture: Amherst College Portraits with Wendy Ewald and Amherst College Press, and in 2015, Clouds in a Teacup with Thich Nhat Hanh and Parallax Press. He was formerly a Visiting Professor in Community Arts/Social Practice and Diversity Studies at California College of the Arts and Director of Social Practice and Pedagogy at San Francisco State University Healthy Equity Institute.

Cook has received numerous awards, including the Lehman Brady Visiting Professorship at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Richard Diebenkorn Teaching Fellowship at the San Francisco Art Institute. Recognized for a history of socially relevant, community-engaged projects he was selected as cultural ambassador to Nigeria as part of the U.S. Department of State’s 2012 smARTpower initiative. His work is in private and public collections including the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, the Walker Art Center, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Harvard University. He is a trustee of A Blade of Grass, an arts nonprofit dedicated to social engagement.

Workshop Presenter: Liz Lerman

Liz Lerman is a choreographer, writer, and educator, and the recipient of a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2017 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, and the 2002 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Award. Current projects include building the Atlas of Creative Tools, an online resource, her touring production of Wicked Bodies, and a new project, Legacy Unboxed, that includes a series of research performance events called My Body is a Library. Also coming soon is a collection of essays to be published by Wesleyan University Press. Liz founded and led Dance Exchange from 1976 until 2011. She is the author of Teaching Dance to Senior Adults, Hiking the Horizontal, and Critique is Creative, co-authored with John Borstel. Liz’s retrospective titled Brett Cook & Liz Lerman: Reflection & Action was featured at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts from October 2022 until June 2023. She is currently an Institute Professor at ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and a fellow at the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy.

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Host or Publisher Center for the Study of Race and Democracy