Artist

Bio

Tish Jones is a poet, emcee, and Hip Hop Theater artist from Saint Paul, MN, with a deep and resounding love for Black people. Her work explores themes of Black love, liberation, politics, and Afro-Futurism. Jones has exhibited her work throughout the United States, and abroad, as a public performance artist for over two decades. Her writing can be found in We Are Meant to Rise (University of Minnesota Press), A Moment of Silence (Tru Ruts and The Playwrights Center), the Minnesota Humanities Center’s anthology entitled, Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota (Minnesota Historical Society Press) and more.

Tish is grateful to have been supported through numerous grants, fellowships, and awards throughout her career. Including, but not limited to, a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, an Arts Matters Fellowship, a Springboard for the Arts Fellowship, The MN State Arts Board, and more. That generous support has allowed her to excavate the kind of stories and cultural and liberatory practices that chart new worlds. Jones also serves as the Founding Executive Director of TruArtSpeaks, an arts & culture organization in Saint Paul, MN. For all of it, she is eternally grateful.

Press Kit

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Leadership Bio

Founder & Executive Director of TruArtSpeaks, an arts & culture organization in Saint Paul, MN. Tish Jones is a poet, cultural strategist, and educator the Historic Rondo Neighborhood in Saint Paul, MN, with a deep and resounding love for Black people, arts & culture, youth development, and civic engagement. With over 20 years of experience in the classroom as a teaching artist, Jones is passionate about the arts as a tool for education, community building, personal and professional development, and social impact.

Former Brave New Voices Festival Director, Tish has a breadth of experience with large scale cultural production which includes managing teams of 75+ people, managing budgets of over $800K, securing corporate, government, and philanthropic partnerships and more. She has developed curriculum, published books and articles, served on panels, lectures; she has partnered, collaborated with, consulted with or facilitated leadership activities with The University of MN, The University of Wisconsin Madison, Words, Beats, & Life, Youth Speaks, The Kennedy Center, The Loft Literary Center, The Minnesota Department of Education, The McKnight Foundation, The Intercultural leadership Institute, and a host of other entities across the nation.

Her writing can be found in We Are Meant to Rise (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), A Moment of Silence (Tru Ruts and The Playwrights Center, 2020), the Minnesota Humanities Center’s anthology entitled, Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2015) and more. As a performance artist her work has been shared in venues across the United States.

Jones is grateful to have been supported through grants, fellowships, and awards from The Intercultural Leadership Institute, The Pohlad Foundation, Frogtown Neighborhood Association and 825 Arts, and more. The generous support that she has received over the years has allowed her to excavate the kind of stories that chart new worlds— she is eternally grateful.

  • I believe that Spoken Word allows me to be in Tha tradition of Black literary artists before me, who chose to wield their axe toward change— now it is my turn.

  • Artists are pivotal in all social movements, history has proven that. We are the messengers, the storytellers, the story shapers, and the story keepers.

  • My ancestors, my family, Black people throughout the diaspora, and children. Children continue to inspire me.