Toni Blackman, a highly respected artist and social entrepreneur, is the first Hip Hop artist selected to work as a Cultural Ambassador with the US Department of State. She is currently an artist with the Carnegie Hall Weill Music Institute and a fellow in the Echoing Green Foundation’s Thought Leadership Cohort. Creator of Freestyle Union Cipher Workshop and Rhyme Like A Girl, for which she was awarded a prestigious Open Society Institute fellowship (Soros Foundation), Toni is one of the world’s foremost Hip Hop activists. This influence led to Toni being selected as a 2012 DOVE soap Real Woman Honoree. Working in over 34 different countries, touring Africa, southeast Asia, Europe, Canada and Brazil has positioned Toni to consult for festivals, conferences and she most recently curated SOURCE 360’s International Hip Hop Show as a part of the Barclay’s Center programming in a partnership with BAM. She has spoken at ASPEN Institute’s World Summit on Creativity in Oman, the Pio Manzu Conference in Italy, the World Social Forum in Barcelona, as a featured speaker at Chicago Ideas Week, at TEDx UMass at Amherst and most recently at Rockefeller Plaza for NBC Universal’s B.P.A. Conference.
Toni taught the art of emceeing as an elective at BCAM High School in Brooklyn, NY, she also taught a course on Hip Hop at Binghamton University, served a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, spent a year working with the Independent Living Program in Washington, DC,served as a teaching artist with WritersCorps (an Americorp program for poets), and has led workshops everywhere from Syracuse University, Spelman College and the Children’s AID Society to the Julliard School and the Smithsonian. toniblackmanpresents.com
With Poetic Theater Productions:
Featured Artist in Take Risks/Make Music: Open Mic Night @ NYTW
Host of Feeling Good: Pleasure as Ritual Resistance with Musical Theatre Factory
Featured Artist in Love, Redefined: Resilience
Participant in Meet & Make: Songsmiths October 2018 with Musical Theatre Factory
Featured Artist and Cypher lead in Poetic Lyricism in Poetic License 2017: RESISTANCE
“Conscious LYRICS” Panelist in Conscious Language 2015