Nancy Julia Hicks is our VALT Lead, they’re an artist and educator originally from Houston, Texas. They relocated to Minneapolis in 2014 to study Printmaking, Papermaking, and Bookmaking at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. While studying education, they were influenced by the writings of Paolo Freire, Franz Fanon, and Michel Foucault. Using a pedagogical approach adapted from these theorists, they embrace the knowledge of their students to educate alongside the youth’s established skills. Using one-on-one instruction, class conversations, and critique, they use the Visual Arts Literacy Training to help the students not only learn new technical skills but also new ways to approaching artmaking. 

As a working artist and educator, Nancy has taught at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Walker Art Center, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and in a variety on non-institutional settings. Working both in and outside of traditional arts institutions has given them tremendous insight into figuring out how to best adapt to student’s expressed needs and allowed them to prioritizes learning from youth while also guiding them to new ideas and skills. 

Nancy loves working at an organization that prioritizes multi-generational interchange of skill, life experience, and joy. Outside of teaching, they take their two dogs on hikes, build strange machines, wander through local galleries, think about volcanoes, listen to audiobooks, and (poorly) sing karaoke.