Kurt Peloquin is a poet, teaching artist, and multimedia producer from Brooklyn, New York who believes that everyone is an artist. Over the past 10 years Kurt has helped organizations including Humans Rights Watch, Microsoft, The Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation, and many more to tell their stories through the collaborative production of films and shared experiences. As an emerging performance poet and musician Kurt has entertained audiences at The Inspired Word, BK Voices, Queens Lit Fest, The Bowery Poetry Club, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Rockwood Music Hall, Just Beings: Stories for Humanity, The Secret City, and Oz Arts Nashville. In the fall of 2017, Kurt developed Thrive Poet, an arts education program that uses poetry and mindfulness to help people and organizations to to answer the question: “What does it mean to THRIVE?” In partnership with the arts empowerment organization Breaking Walls, Thrive Poet is currently in the midst of a 36 week empowerment program with young leaders at The Jill Chaifetz Transfer School in the Bronx, NY. In tandem, Kurt is honored to be a part of the 2017/18 class of Community-Word Project’s Teaching Artist Project, a rigorous 8-month curriculum rich in social justice-based pedagogy. Finally, Kurt is the Artist-In-Residence at the life and leadership consultancy Good Wolf Group, where he recently used his poetry as a tool to instigate and inspire the 2017/18 class of the Coro Foundation’s Leadership New York. Follow and explore at www.KurtPeloquin.com.
TAP Work:
“My experience with CWP’S 2017-18 Teaching Artist Project has been both eye and heart opening. Throughout the process, our instructors have helped us experience and design lessons and pedagogy development, while build community and having hard conversations about issues of race, gender, and inequity. Through my time interning with my lovely class at PS84, under the masterful guidance of CWP Teaching Artists Philip Berezney and Phillis Capello, I was able to apply the knowledge we learned in our trainings and experience the joy of connecting with students and contributing to their creative development. The elective seminars have been equally stimulating and, above all, I feel so grateful to be a part of a community that is committed to the arts, education, and social justice.”
Most Memorable TAP Moment:
“My most memorable moment at TAP was our conversation about a racist moment that happened during our training. Rather than steam through according to the agenda, TAP Facilitators Patti Chilsen and Karla Robinson allowed us to stay in the conversation and were masterful in holding space. While it was uncomfortable at times, it was the first moment I felt us connect on a heart level.”
Find out more about Kurt here:
Check out Kurt’s Lesson Plan he created in his CWP residency.
Interested in TAP? Find out more about our 2018-19 Program.
See more of our 2017-18 Graduates in the 2018 TAP Anthology!
