Our History |
In 2017, Arts for Art began Artists For a Free World (AFFW), a Marching Band which supported city-wide demonstrations through joyful noise and movement. It was an empowering experience. We saw the importance and power of music to bring people together. AFFW is a direct artistic response to oppressive fascist ideology and regime.
Artists For a Free World empowers all Positive Creative Healing Actions. We are committed to long-term engagement to ensure survival of our Shared Humanity. No one is free unless we are all free. |
Our Team |
FOUNDING DIRECTOR - Patricia Nicholson Parker
Patricia Nicholson Parker (she/her) is a dancer, poet, and organizer whose work in movement, music, and activism emerges from the avant–jazz improvised arts, grounded in spiritual and social responsibility. Whether through choreography, poetry, or organizing, her work is guided by an ethic of illumination.
As an artistic and community organizer, Nicholson Parker has had a wide-reaching influence. In 1981, she choreographed, performed, and organized A Thousand Cranes Peace Opera, bringing 1,000 children together in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza for the UN Special Session on Disarmament. In the 1980s, she helped organize the Sound Unity Festivals to address the marginalization of free jazz. In 1994, she convened fifty artists to form the Improvisers Collective, and in 1996 she founded Arts for Art and the Vision Festival, a highly visible platform advocating for equity, diversity, and fair pay in creative improvised music.
Patricia Nicholson Parker (she/her) is a dancer, poet, and organizer whose work in movement, music, and activism emerges from the avant–jazz improvised arts, grounded in spiritual and social responsibility. Whether through choreography, poetry, or organizing, her work is guided by an ethic of illumination.
As an artistic and community organizer, Nicholson Parker has had a wide-reaching influence. In 1981, she choreographed, performed, and organized A Thousand Cranes Peace Opera, bringing 1,000 children together in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza for the UN Special Session on Disarmament. In the 1980s, she helped organize the Sound Unity Festivals to address the marginalization of free jazz. In 1994, she convened fifty artists to form the Improvisers Collective, and in 1996 she founded Arts for Art and the Vision Festival, a highly visible platform advocating for equity, diversity, and fair pay in creative improvised music.
MUSICAL DIRECTOR - Elijah J. Thomas
Elijah J. Thomas (he/him) is a Black Philadelphia-born, Harlem-based flutist, multi-instrumentalist, educator, creative producer, and composer/experimentalist. His learning of improvisation, composition and music education he chiefly credits to Reggie Workman, Tim Warfield, Jr., Walter Bell, Dr. Cynthia Folio, Kevin Rodgers, Dr. Allison Reynolds, and Dr. Rollo Dilworth. He has held numerous teaching positions and has four recorded projects: enuff music, vols. i and ii, Our Search, and Three Contemplations for Jason Moran. Elijah proudly serves as Jazz Program Manager for the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music (BKCM), as an Assistant Line Producer for the world-renowned Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (LCPA), and as Musical Director of the non-profit performance-based organization Honk NYC!, whose mission is to “make events that reclaim, reuse, and redefine public space and connect communities through music-making, pageantry, audience participation, and education."
Elijah J. Thomas (he/him) is a Black Philadelphia-born, Harlem-based flutist, multi-instrumentalist, educator, creative producer, and composer/experimentalist. His learning of improvisation, composition and music education he chiefly credits to Reggie Workman, Tim Warfield, Jr., Walter Bell, Dr. Cynthia Folio, Kevin Rodgers, Dr. Allison Reynolds, and Dr. Rollo Dilworth. He has held numerous teaching positions and has four recorded projects: enuff music, vols. i and ii, Our Search, and Three Contemplations for Jason Moran. Elijah proudly serves as Jazz Program Manager for the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music (BKCM), as an Assistant Line Producer for the world-renowned Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (LCPA), and as Musical Director of the non-profit performance-based organization Honk NYC!, whose mission is to “make events that reclaim, reuse, and redefine public space and connect communities through music-making, pageantry, audience participation, and education."
ADMINISTRATIVE DIRECTOR - Elizabeth Frickey
Elizabeth Frickey (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate and MacCracken Fellow in musicology at New York University whose work explores the politics of sound in urban public greenspaces. Her dissertation, Our Garden Makes Us Strong!, examines how music, noise, and ecological life shape struggles over land, belonging, and audibility in New York City. A scholar-musician engaged in community arts, she frequently collaborates with the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space as well as the nonprofit arts organization Arts for Art, and their Intergenerational Ensemble. Her writing appears in numerous forums including Jazz & Culture, the Journal of Jazz Studies, Women & Music, and Journal SEAMUS.
Elizabeth Frickey (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate and MacCracken Fellow in musicology at New York University whose work explores the politics of sound in urban public greenspaces. Her dissertation, Our Garden Makes Us Strong!, examines how music, noise, and ecological life shape struggles over land, belonging, and audibility in New York City. A scholar-musician engaged in community arts, she frequently collaborates with the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space as well as the nonprofit arts organization Arts for Art, and their Intergenerational Ensemble. Her writing appears in numerous forums including Jazz & Culture, the Journal of Jazz Studies, Women & Music, and Journal SEAMUS.