Oronike Odeleye
Managing Director

Oronike Odeleye is an experienced Arts Administrator dedicated to expanding public appreciation of the arts of the African Diaspora. A graduate of Syracuse University (where she received her B.A. in Film Studies) she has since worked with communities in the U.S., Panama, and Senegal to create and execute arts and culture programming. She is a founding member of the organization and spearheaded the rebranding of the founding organization, Taller Portobelo Norte, into its current iteration as Creative Currents Artist Collaborative.
 

Oronike has worked with organizations such as The Arthur Blank Foundation, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, and Wonderroot to manage community based public art projects and has served as the Public Liaison for arts projects with Possible Futures and The City of Atlanta Office of Cultural Affairs.   Oronike is a also published fiction writer who's work has appeared in the Callaloo Journal of Arts. She resides in Atlanta, GA.


Dr. Renee Alexander Craft
Program Director

Renée Alexander Craft is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a joint appointment in the Department of Communication and Curriculum in Global Studies. She is a performance studies trained black feminist writer, scholar, and educator interested in the power of creativity and imagination to build community, inspire collective action in the service of social justice, and call new futures into being.

 

For the past sixteen years, Alexander Craft’s research and creative projects have centered on the community of Portobelo, Panama and its carnival performance traditions. She has completed two projects, which reflect this focus: an ethnographic monograph titled When the Devil Knocks: The Congo Tradition and the Politics of Blackness in 20th Century Panama (The Ohio State University Press, January 2015) and an interactive digital platform called Digital Portobelo: Art + Scholarship + Cultural Preservation (digitalportobelo.org) that celebrates the town’s rich history and traditions and encourages interdisciplinary collaborations between local and global artists and scholars. She resides in Durham, NC.


Dr. Arturo Lindsay
Director of Strategic Alliances

Dr. Arturo Lindsay is an artist-scholar who conducts ethnographic research on African spiritual and aesthetic retentions in contemporary American cultures. He is a founding member of the Taller Portobelo painting collective in Portobelo, Panama. Lindsay’s work is represented in important private and public collections nationwide and abroad. As a scholar, Lindsay has lectured and published several essays on New World African religious, spiritual, and aesthetic retentions. As an educator Lindsay developed the Spelman College Summer Art Colony to provide college students and emerging artists an opportunity to live and work in the village of Portobelo, Panama each summer. He resides in Atlanta, GA.

 
Morolake Odeleye
Development Manager

Morolake Odeleye is a passionate development professional committed to growing sustainable revenue streams for exemplary nonprofit organizations. She has earned degrees in Fundraising & Grantmaking from New York University (MS) and Fine Art from the Rhode Island School of Design (BFA). Morolake is an advocate for social justice who firmly believes in the power of the arts, education and activism to improve our communities.  She has worked in Development for the NY ACLU and America Needs You non-profit organizations.  She resides in Brooklyn, NY.

 
Gustavo Esquina de la Espada

Program Coordinator

Gustavo Esquina de la Espada is an accomplished painter, poet and musician who has worked with Creative Currents to administer programming in Portobelo, Panama since the organizations inception. He has exhibited in Panama, Costa Rica, North Carolina, and Atlanta and taught painting at Spelman College in Atlanta, GA and La Casa Conga in Portobelo, Panama. Additionally, Gustavo is a singer/songwriter with the Portobelo carnival band, Barrio Fino.  He resides in Portobelo, Panama.