Community Open Mic + :Friday Drop Ins

an evening of creativity, storytelling, and community expression featuring a poetry workshop, open mic, and live musical performance.

Join the Urban Indigenous Collective for an evening of poetry, storytelling, live music, and community connection.

This special Pride Month gathering brings together creative expression, cultural celebration, and community care through a poetry workshop, open mic, and featured musical performance.

The evening will begin with a one-hour poetry workshop led by Joel Sedano (they/them), a queer and Trans poet-scholar of Mexican, P’urhépecha, and Wixárika descent. Joel's creative and academic work explores Indigenous, queer, and trans storytelling, community building, and alternative ways of imagining belonging, kinship, and relation.

Building on the powerful workshop they facilitated during the 2026 MMIWGT2S Summit, Joel will guide participants through writing prompts, reflection, and creative exercises designed to support self-expression, storytelling, and connection. The workshop welcomes writers of all experience levels and offers a supportive environment for participants to explore poetry as a tool for reflection, healing, and community.

Following the workshop, Axl and Seta will host a community open mic where attendees are invited to share poetry, spoken word, music, storytelling, or other creative works in a supportive and welcoming environment.

The evening will conclude with a featured performance by Emily Diana and her full band.

Emily Diana Via is a Peruvian-American artist of Quechua (Andean) and mixed descent based in Queens, New York. A multidisciplinary artist working across music and visual arts, her creative practice is deeply influenced by the Indigenous and diasporic traditions of Peru and Latin America. As a vocalist, musician, and bandleader, Emily performs Jazz, Bossa Nova, Salsa, and other global music traditions while creating spaces for reflection, healing, and community through art.

This performance is an invitation into an evening of music, connection, dancing, and shared experience. Through Jazz, Bossa Nova, Latin American music, and improvisation, the band explores themes of love, resilience, joy, longing, heartbreak, spirituality, and cultural memory.

In honor of Pride Month, the set will feature music written by or inspired by LGBTQ+ artists, composers, and songwriters whose contributions have had a lasting impact on Jazz, Bossa Nova, and Latin American music, despite often being overlooked during their lifetimes. The performance will also include a Quechua song honoring Indigenous Andean traditions, womanhood, storytelling, and cultural memory.

The repertoire moves between reflective and celebratory moments, creating space for both deep listening and joyful connection. The performance reflects the Indigenous heritage and diverse cultural backgrounds represented within the band while celebrating artistic expression, cultural diversity, visibility, and community.

Whether you come to write, perform, dance, listen, reflect, or simply enjoy live music in community, we hope you leave feeling more connected—to yourself, to others, and to the beauty of artistic expression across cultures and experiences