About

Rachael is an artist and facilitator dedicated to social and racial justice. She is passionate about community based creativity, healing, and transformation. Her dynamic style ignites the imagination and invites courage and vulnerability, connection and possibility. Rachael is currently a professor of theatre and social justice at Metropolitan State University and Aurora Community College. She co-founded Creative Strategies for Change (CSC), an arts and justice organization, serving in an array of roles for more than a decade, navigating the challenges of nonprofit administration and developing innovative programs and curriculum with her specialization in applied theatre, popular education, and restorative practices. The Social Imagination series is one of her cornerstone programs emerging from her graduate work at NYU, including a TEDx presentation. The process-based work gathers a collective of artists to devise a theatrical production addressing a relevant social issue. Social Imagination Productions include the original interactive performance event, Use Your Imagination: Dismantling Racism (2011), which brought together NYU students and community artists and organizations for an evening of dialogue and creative activation. The first production in Colorado was Race Matters? (2014), which included an original score and live hip hop music.  In[visible] Woman (2017), which developed from an original choreopoem and was presented alongside a devised youth performance. Place Matters(2018) took place in a range of locations bringing people together around gentrification and displacement in Denver’s Historic Five Points neighborhood, and Reckoning (2022) brought local artists together to process the dual pandemics and included mental health specialists in the hybrid production. 
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Rachael also serves on the advisory boards for Sol Vida Dance and Healing Arts and Scriblab. She holds a Master of Arts from the Gallatin School at New York University, where she received the Nia award for outstanding work in the arts and social justice. She also facilitated arts integrated intergroup dialogue through the commission on Gender, Race and Social Justice. Rachael has completed professional training with Bay Area Nonviolent Communication, Dominic Barter (Restorative Circles), Just Practice, Mariame Kaba, and the Center for Multicultural Education and Programs at NYU, as well as renowned artists including Anna Deavere Smith, Julian Boal, Youssouf Koumbassa, and Renee Redding Jones. Due to her highly adaptable approach, Rachael has worked with a range of communities and sectors, from small organizations, schools and universities to public health departments and city governments.