Political Office for Artists

Artists: your creativity belong in civic life. This workshop will walk you through the whys and hows of being an artist in politics.
About this Event

Communities across the country are desperate for leaders who know how to listen, tell stories, build coalitions, and imagine something better. Despite these being artist skills, they seem to be absent from elected office.

Dr. Quanice Floyd and Tom Tresser will walk participants through the civic landscape, where decisions actually get made, who makes them, and how to get a seat at the table. The session includes a culture-wars history exercise, a live Leadership Assets Inventory (mapping your network, public profile, fundraising ability, and storytelling skills), and a mock candidate rally. Along the way, participants will see how creative practices like iteration, empathy, and rapid prototyping translate directly into civic leadership.

This is a workshop built on the belief that artists' values like care, imagination, community, equity, belong in public life at every level, from school boards to city hall. Whether you've never thought about running for office or have always wondered if you could, this session is for you.
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Dr. Quanice G. Floyd (www.linkedin.com/in/qgfloyd) is an educator, scholar-practitioner, and cultural strategist whose work sits at the intersection of arts, culture, policy, and collective care. Over more than a decade, she has built and led national initiatives supporting artists, cultural workers, and community-rooted organizations, with work spanning public school classrooms, national nonprofit leadership, university teaching, and independent consulting. She is the founder of Pete-Flo Enterprises, an organization dedicated to building liberatory infrastructure through education, coaching, political strategy, and cultural organizing. Holding degrees in music education and arts management, with doctoral studies in educational leadership and policy, Dr. Floyd is a Visiting Professor, facilitator, and sought-after speaker who brings Black feminist, abolitionist, and decolonial frameworks into classrooms, boardrooms, and movement spaces. Across all of her work, she asks one guiding question: What kind of ancestor are we becoming? Her leadership is rooted in imagination, care, and the belief that thriving should be the standard.

Tom Tresser (www.linkedin.com/in/tomtee) is a Chicago-based civic educator and public defender with over fifty years of grassroots democracy experience who has started or led 14 nonprofit enterprises across the arts, community development, and civic engagement (www.tresser.com). A former Shakespearean actor and theater producer, he created the Chicago Young Playwrights Festival in 1986 (now entering its 40th season) and helped direct the League of Chicago Theatres' 1991 campaign to save the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2009 he co-led the No Games Chicago campaign that derailed the city's bid for the 2016 Olympics, and in 2013 he opened CivicLab, America's first co-working and maker space devoted to civics and social justice. His book on that campaign was published by Routledge Press in 2025 (www.nogameschicagobook.com). He has taught organizing, public policy, civic engagement, and leadership at six universities, trained over 5,000 people to lead in public life, and currently serves as Lead Organizer for the 100K Project, a national movement to equip servant-leaders from the arts sector to champion equity, science, and democracy in public life.
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Made possible by Elevar Design Group and The P&G Alumni Foundation