doubleXposure Podcast

Artists create work to express themselves, to communicate with an audience, and in the case of Jake Prendez and Angelina Villalobos, to sustain their culture.

This season co-hosts Vivian and Phillips and Marcie Sillman are exploring the ways that art can build community. Today, in the fourth episode in Seattle's South Park neighborhood, they talk with Prendez and Villalobos in front of a live audience at community-owned South Park Hall.

When Josh Grant and his husband Chris Montoya were looking for places to open a new Seattle dance academy, they didn't necessarily target South Park.

The neighborhood is far off the beaten track when it comes to the city's traditional cultural institutions. But that's exactly what attracted the couple. For Montoya, finding South Park was like re-entering his native Phoenix--with everything from Mexican restaurants to his beloved swap meets.

Co-hosts Vivian Phillips and Marcie Sillman talk with Montoya and Grant about their new school, the neighborhood, and what it means to find "home."

Jessica Pena-Manalo is an elementary school music teacher in Seattle's South Park neighborhood.

They're also a change agent.

Pena-Manalo's students are learning everything from cultural identity to how to collaborate successfully, through the lens of making art.

Vivian Phillips and Marcie Sillman talk with Pena-Manalo about the teacher's dedication to students, to social justice, and above all, to art.

NOTE: Jessica Pena Manalo uses they/them pronouns. In Vivian and Marcie's discussion, Pena Manalo is erroneously referred to as "she."

When Coté Soerens arrived in Seattle's South Park neighborhood with her family, she was drawn immediately to the community spirit.

Nine years later, Soerens has been instrumental in the move to not only preserve that spirit, but to carve out spaces that will honor and celebrity the neighborhood in all its diversity.

Co-hosts Vivian Phillips and Marcie Sillman talk with Soerens about what first attracted her to South Park, and the work she's doing to preserve and strengthen the area's unique cultural identity.

60 years ago Seattle hosted a World's Fair. When the last guests departed, the fair's buildings were turned over to a myriad of local arts and cultural nonprofits. What was a fairgrounds is now the Seattle Center, the city's largest and most vibrant cultural hub.

This season hosts Vivian Phillips and Marcie Sillman are exploring four neighborhoods that depend on creative activities to help define and strengthen their communities. After several visits to Seattle Center, they culminate the exploration with LiveXposure, a panel conversation recorded in front of a live, in-person audience on July 22, 2022.

For 25 years, the City of Seattle has sponsored a series of community festivals collectively know as Festal. The 24 festivals celebrate different ethnic and cultural groups from all corners of the globe.

A little over two years ago, just as the pandemic was gaining force, Heidi Jackson took Festal's helm, navigating the program through online and Zoom activities to the return of live, in-person celebrations

Co-hosts Vivian Phillips and Marcie Sillman talk with Jackson about the Festal program, and the essential role creativity plays in building and reinforcing community.

"The arts can heal," says Holly Jacobson, Executive Director of Path with Art, a Seattle nonprofit that works with people who are moving through trauma.

From its Veterans' Choir to fiber arts, Path with Art offers a range of arts classes. Jacobson says she's personally seen how participation has helped people dealing with mental illnesses, homelessness, or other challenging life crises. PwA offers an outlet for personal expression, but it also creates community.

Jacobson talks with co-hosts Vivian Phillips and Marcie Sillman about the power of both her organization and the arts in general.

The Northwest Folklife Festival has been a Seattle institution for more than 50 years. The annual free event brings together folk artists, musicians and audiences from a wide array of ethnic and cultural communities--from Northwest Indigenous groups to the descendants of the Scandinavian immigrants who call the area home.

Folklife Managing Director Reese Tanimura and Artistic Director Ben Hunter talk with co-hosts Vivian Phillips and Marcie Sillman about what it means to be a folk artist, how that definition has evolved, and about the role these artists play in sustaining their communities.

This episode is the first of four that will focus on Seattle Center, a cultural campus that houses everything from opera, ballet and theater to an under-appreciated public art collection.

doubleXposure's Vivian Phillips is more than a great podcast co-host. She's spent decades helping to nurture Seattle's cultural community.

Now Vivian turns her considerable passions and energy to ARTE NOIR, a new gallery/shop that will feature work by artists from the African diaspora.

ARTE NOIR is part of Seattle's Midtown Square, a residential/retail complex in the heart of the Central District, one of four neighborhoods we're featuring this season on doubleXposure.

In doubleXposure's second season, co-hosts Vivian Phillips and Marcie Sillman will explore the connection between arts, community and civic vitality. 

In this short preview, they visit the historic Seattle waterfront to talk with public programmer David Rue about how culture creates and fosters community identity.