Theater: a Tool for Dialogue, Inquiry, Action & Change.
Workshop Facilitator Activist Deviser Arts Educator
Working with young people her bridge building work focuses on stories of identity and social justice.
Arts Educator & Activist Over the past 15 years Jasmin has taught, directed and devised with community members, adults and youth throughout the city for Workers Resistance Theater (Co-Founder), Lookingglass Theater, Silk Road Theater Project, Adventure Stage Chicago, Lifeline Theater, Chase Elementary and at Carpenter Fine Arts, to name a few.
YOUTH ADVOCACY WORK: In 2019 she facilitated creative youth leaders from across Chicago's city and neighborhoods and organizations to create the 2019 Youth Speak: RIGHTS OF CHICAGOS'S CREATIVE LEADERS. This was in partnership with Chicago Park District's Arts & Culture Culture Unit, led be Meida McNeil, and youth leaders from Albany Park Theater Project, Free Street Theater, Kumba Lynx, Move Me Soul, YOUMedia, Columbus Park Inferno Youth Media Team, Free Spirit Media & the adults who support their learning, growing and thriving. Our gatherings were held at Chicago Parks across the city.
CIVIC ARTS ENGAGEMENT WORK: Using Theater of the Oppressed she uses the tool of theater for social justice work. With Pastor Phil Jackson she Co-Founded Ambassadors for a United Lawndale; working towards racial reconciliation between African American and Latino Youth on the SW side of the city. Supported by The MacArthur Foundation she traveled with 20 students to Mexico to learn about the African presence in Mexico.
SERVICE: She served on the Board of The Pedadogy and Theatre of the Oppressed (PTO). www.ptoweb.org and was the Lead Organizer of the 2011 International PTO Conference held in Chicago. Along with her students, recipient of the 2010 Public Square (Illinois Humanities Council) Award Art Urges, Art Voyages – Looking for Democracy Film Contest. Using her specialization in Creative Drama Jasmin has been teaching children, parents and educators (across the ages 0-100) of the many literacy benefits that can be experienced in bringing stories to life.
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of collaboration with
Chicago Workers Collaborative
Endorsement
Excerpt from Shanti Elliott's book,
"Teaching and Learning on the Verge: Democratic Education in America" Teachers College Press, 2015
In this final chapter, my focus is on the people who hold the space for democratic work, in individual schools, in policymaking, and in resistance movements. In each of the preceding chapters we encountered people who hold this space, who illustrate the manifold ways conditions can be created to affirm human dignity and enable collective powers to bloom. Like Jasmin Cardenas, who encourages students and teachers to explore how power impacts identity and relationships with their bodies and voices, they are storytellers.
Democratic educators inside and outside of classrooms hold space for young people, for the power and insight they bring to the world. They have to be deft and resourceful in holding this space - it is far more active work than conventional teaching.