Creating Change 2026: Community and Culture Shift

October 28, 2025

Count Basie Center for the Arts
Red Bank, NJ

The Creating Change Summit is an annual in-person gathering of the New Jersey arts and culture community focused on learning, inspiration, and action as we move together toward a more just, equitable, accessible, and anti-racist arts sector.

Creating Change 2026 will be a space for connection, learning, and practice of foundational skills for cross-sector partnership. The summit sessions will collectively offer a toolkit for building community, solidarity, and collective power in the arts and beyond. This year’s summit will prioritize relational tools that build connection to build collective power and push back against fragmentation, fracture, and isolation used by people and systems that hoard power and perpetuate oppression.

The Creating Change Network is a program of New Jersey Theatre Alliance in partnership with ArtPride New Jersey, with a mission to build a more equitable, just, accessible, and anti-racist arts community in New Jersey.

Guided by a steering committee of arts professionals and social justice leaders, the Creating Change Network offers ongoing opportunities for learning and collaboration to move the arts sector forward. The Creating Change Network is committed to the long-term endeavor of shifting culture, empowering leaders, sharing strategies, ensuring accountability, and sustaining hope so that individuals and organizations can progress in this work.

Register Here

Keynote Speaker

Emil J. Kang

Consultant, Strategist, Educator

Emil Kang advises leaders and institutions navigating bold transitions in the arts, education, and public life. With over three decades of experience across philanthropy, higher education, and the nonprofit sector, he helps organizations align vision with structure, values with strategy, and ambition with clarity. Whether stepping in as an interim leader or serving as a discreet advisor to CEOs, his work brings calm to complexity — and traction to bold ideas.

He is a nationally recognized leader at the intersection of arts, philanthropy, higher education, and cultural policy. Through strategic advising, leadership coaching, and institutional transformation, he partners with clients who seek to build future-ready cultural ecosystems that are equitable, ambitious, and sustainable.

Emil has held leadership positions at The Mellon Foundation, Carolina Performing Arts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He currently serves on the National Council on the Arts, and is a board member of Silkroad, GYOPO, National Sawdust, and Mutual Mentorship for Musicians. He is a member of the Council of Korean Americans. He was recently appointed Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Yale Ventures Cultural Innovation Lab at Yale University. Last year, Emil served as the Agnes Gund Visiting Professor of the Practice of the Arts at Brown University.

Learn More

Tickets

Individual Ticket
$100

Group of 5 Tickets
$400

Unaffiliated Artist Ticket
$35

Student Ticket
$25

A limited number of subsidized tickets are available for members of the New Jersey Arts and Culture Administrators of Color Network. For more information, contact Daria M. Sullivan at dsullivan@njtheatrealliance.org.

Purchase Tickets Here

Agenda for the Day

9:00 AM
Check-in and Coffee

9:30 AM – 10:15 AM
Opening Remarks and Welcome

10:15 AM – 11:00 AM
Keynote Address, Emil Kang

11:00 AM – 11:30 AM
Coffee and Connection

11:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Collective Listening Skills Session, Donna Walker-Kuhne

12:30 – 1:30 PM
Provided Lunch

1:30 – 2:15 PM
Programming Spotlight

2:30 – 3:45 PM
Breakout Sessions

4:00 – 4:30 PM
Closing Session and Reflections

In alignment with our values of disability justice and community care, we recognize the ongoing impact of COVID-19. Masks are not required at this event, but are warmly welcomed for anyone who chooses to wear one.

Creating Change Steering Committee

Donna Walker-Kuhne, Chair (New Jersey Performing Arts Center); Rachel Aponte (Visual Arts Center of NJ); Donia Salem Harhoor (The Outlet Dance Project); Vince Hall (ArtPride New Jersey Foundation); Jessica Gaines (New Jersey State Council on the Arts); Deonté Griffin-Quick (DGQ Culture); Chase Jackson (Ocean City Arts Center); Marshall Jones, III (Rutgers University); Eyesha Marable (New Jersey Performing Arts Center); John McEwen (New Jersey Theatre Alliance); Elizabeth Murphy (Stone Foundation of New Jersey); Erica Nagel (New Jersey Theatre Alliance); Adam Perle (ArtPride New Jersey Foundation); Gwen Ricks-Spencer (EY); Michael Roberson Reid (Young Audiences of NJ and Eastern PA); Daria M. Sullivan (New Jersey Theatre Alliance); Kayla Kim Votapek (Consortium of Asian American Theatre Artists); Talia Young (Newark Symphony Hall).