This event is free, please reserve your seat by clicking book tickets above.

The event is full at 200 attendees, so please arrive early to guarantee admission. RSVP alone does not guarantee admission to the event, there is a limited capacity – first come, first served.

Please note that in order to create wider access to our work, BCS records each Baltimore Butterfly Session on film to be released on our YouTube channel.

Native American Lifelines (Key Partner)

Native American LifeLines, Inc. is a Title V Indian Health Services contracted Urban Indian Health Program serving the Baltimore and Boston metropolitan areas.

The Mission of Native American LifeLines is to promote health and social resiliency within Urban American Indian communities. Native American LifeLines applies principles of trauma informed care to provide culturally centered behavioral health, dental, outreach and referral services.

Tara Maudrie (Keynote Speaker) 

Tara Maudrie is an enrolled member of the Sault Ste Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and a member of the Baltimore, Detroit, and Minneapolis urban Native communities. Maudrie recieved her MSPH from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHBSPH), and is continuing her studies at JHBSPH as a PhD student in the Social and Behavioral Interventions Program. Tara is passionate about food justice, food sovereignty, Indigenous research methodologies, and urban Native health.

Backyard Basecamp (Key Partner)

Backyard Basecamp, INC. is a nonprofit with a mission to (re)connect Black, Indigenous, and People of Color to land and nature. With BLISS Meadows, their 10-acre land reclamation project, they provide various environmental programs and activities for families in northeast Baltimore City.

Atiya Wells – Executive Director, Backyard Basecamp

Atiya Wells is the Founder, and Executive Director of Backyard Basecamp, Inc. – a nonprofit with a mission to (re)connect Black, Indigenous, and People of Color to land and nature. By diving into research and history, Atiya learned that historical trauma is a key player in the lack of diversity in environmental programming. She has since dedicated her time to (re)introducing her community to nature by starting in their own backyards and eventually embarking on a journey into the many green spaces across Baltimore. 

Jordan Bethea – Production Manager, Backyard Basecamp

Jordan Bethea is a farmer, a home gardener and houseplant enthusiast. After spending years working in the food service industry and he began to volunteer at local urban farms. These experiences taught him of the immediate value of how individuals can bolster local food production production and and reorient access for fresh produce for communities that need them most. Access to beautiful, enriching natural environments for city residents has become very important to him. In time he hopes that with more time spent on the land, fellow citizens will learn a love of nature and the importance of stewardship of the Earth.“

Eze Jackson (Musical Guest)

Eze Jackson is an Emcee, Producer, and community organizer. He recently founded the record label/collective EPIC FAM. As the frontman of the hip-hop/fusion band Soul Cannon as well as a solo artist, he has toured the US and released 6 projects independently, bringing high energy and forward-thinking lyrics to almost any musical challenge. His most recent solo album, “Fool”, has been well received in Baltimore & surrounding areas with critical acclaim from Under the moniker “Ezewriter”, Eze’s prolific ability to tell stories and paint pictures has allowed him to stand out as a writer for all genres of local music, stage, tv & film projects. Eze is the Founder, Creator, and Chief Visionary Officer of EPIC FAM. EPIC FAM is a Baltimore-based Entertainment & Media company, unifying a collective of the City’s best multi-genre musical artists and arts & culture creatives. He is the proud and doting father of three beautiful daughters, Selah, Sarai, and Zadie.

Crankie (Puppetry Feature)

Performed by Cecilia Cackley and Nino McQuown
Written by Nino McQuown
Crankie by Laura Stinson

In the swampy landscape of the English fens, a faerie called Tiddy Mun controls the floods. Houses and fields drown or dry at his command. Over thousands of years, the people of the fens have learned to live with Tiddy Mun and the dark, wet, muddy, ecosystem of their homeland, but as developers move in to permanently drain the fens and turn them into more “productive” farmland, both the fenmen and their water spirits struggle to survive.

Nino McQuown 

Nino McQuown is an artist, writer, researcher, performer, and podcaster. They write and make art about dirt, death, apocalypse, and pop-culture. They host the podcast Queers at the End of the World, where queer and trans artists, scientists, activists, and scholars (re)imagine apocalypses and utopias, old and new. Find their poems, comics, and essays published with Edge Effects, Catapult, Electric Literature, Hotel Amerika, and Barrelhouse, among others. 

Cecilia Cackley

The Baltimore Butterfly Sessions: A civic dialogue series at BCS

Inspired by Citizen University’s Civic Saturdays, The Baltimore Butterfly Sessions will bring together music, poetry, literary excerpts and thought-provoking keynote addresses to catalyze conversation and build awareness around today’s most pressing issues. Tapping into some of the brightest voices around the nation and in Baltimore, each Butterfly Session will convene artists, activists, organizers and thinkers to unpack a civically resonant topic. Through the Baltimore Butterfly Sessions, BCS aims to create a space for civic dialogue & fellowship across differences and stay firmly rooted in our local community. Come for the music, come for the poetry, come for the conversation.

Why “The Baltimore Butterfly Sessions”?

A symbol of growth and emergence, transformation and borderless migration, butterflies remind us that tiny shifts in one place can set profound change in motion. Butterflies also have a special resonance in Baltimore. You may or may not know that the city of Baltimore is sometimes referred to as a “Black Butterfly and White L.” According to Dr. Lawrence Brown of Morgan State University, “Baltimore’s hypersegregated neighborhoods experience radically different realities.” Typically, Black neighborhoods fan out to the east and west resembling the shape of a butterfly while white neighborhoods run down the center of the city in the shape of an “L.”

Through the Baltimore Butterfly Sessions, BCS aims to create a space for civic dialogue & fellowship across difference and stay firmly rooted in our local community.