As part of the Anti-Racism in the EdTechnosphere Speaker Series
Listen to Laurie Townshend with host Dr. Keri Ewart as they discuss showing up authentically and with vulnerability to support IBPOC youth.
About Laurie Townshend
Writer-director, educator and photographer Laurie Townshend holds the belief that we shape stories; thereafter stories shape us. With this philosophical grounding, Laurie views the art of storytelling as a way to dream ourselves into being. With a thematic lens aimed squarely on acts of courage made visible through crisis, The Railpath Hero (2013) features a spellbinding performance by Stephan James (Selma, Race, Beale Street), in a story about the threads of resilience that hold a young athlete’s life together in the wake of childhood sexual abuse. Laurie’s take on human connectedness is explored in Human Frequency Streetdocs (2014). Award-winning Charley (2016) connects the work of late civil rights activist Charles Roach to today’s BLM movement. Currently, Laurie is in post-production on Away With Words (working title), a coming-of-middle-age saga that follows Staceyann Chin, Brooklyn’s most outspoken poet-activist and poster-mom for radical Black parenting as she raises her daughter Zuri, while investigating the past of her own mother who abandoned her as an infant. Through Staceyann’s efforts to raise an empowered Black child and heal her own childhood wounds, this film explores the ways Black women have learned to mother their children, their communities, and ultimately themselves.