Interdisciplinary Arts and Community-Engagement Fellowship
CU Boulder Associate Professor of Theatre Kevin Rich and Otero College Theatre Faculty Director Heather Pidcock-Reed are co-developing a community-engaged class: Devising Community-Based Theatre. It will be taught at both campuses in Spring 2027, meeting concurrently on Friday mornings. Students will learn about and implement methodologies for devising theatre rooted in local stories, culminating in a performance of an original work. They will focus on the annual Tarantula migration in La Junta, CO and the community’s Tarantula Festival.
CU Boulder students will travel to La Junta at the beginning of the Spring semester for community-engaged interviews and research. Both classes will spend the semester co-developing a performance, relying on regular check-ins with La Junta community members. Otero students will travel to Boulder for a performance, and the script will be given to the La Junta community for future use within the annual Tarantula Festival.
The project draws upon both professors’ scholarship in applied theatre, utilizing the methodologies of Tectonic Theater Project, Augusto Boal and Michael Rohd, as well as Pidcock-Reed's connections in the La Junta community, engaging with community partners such as La Junta City Council, La Junta Tourism Board and the Picketwire Players Community Theatre.
Kevin Rich
Professor · Department of Theatre & Dance
Kevin Rich is an Associate Professor of Theatre at CU Boulder and Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance. He is also director of the CU graduate certificate program in Applied Shakespeare; his research interests include Shakespeare's original practices, the intersection of Shakespeare and civic engagement and the development of new work inspired by our classics. He works professionally as an actor and director for companies including the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Arvada Center and the American Shakespeare Center. Rich is currently a 2025-26 RIO Faculty Fellow and a recipient of a PACES Grant that generously supports Colorado Shakespeare Festival's Shakespeare and Violence Prevention Tour.
Heather Pidcock-Reed
English and Theatre Faculty · Otero College
Heather Pidcock-Reed is a faculty member at Otero College in La Junta, Colorado where she teaches Theatre and English. She is also the faculty advisor and director of the Otero Players, the student organization responsible for producing theatrical productions at Otero College. Pidcock-Reed's interests include community-engaged theatre, educational theatre, immersive theatre, and the exploration of different acting methods and techniques. She is an actor and director who works frequently with the Picketwire Players in La Junta. Some of her favorite roles she’s portrayed include Lucy Harris in Jekyll and Hyde the Musical, Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, Louise Maske in The Underpants, Lucy Westenra in Dracula and Miss Honey in Matilda the Musical.
The Radiant Blue Marble Film Festival was developed by Joy Armstrong, director, Ent Center for the Arts at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS) and CU Boulder Associate Professor of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts Erin Espelie in collaboration with Colorado Springs-based film organizations. The festival will take place at the UCCS Galleries of Contemporary Art in Fall 2026.
Grounded in environmental storytelling, climate resilience, and human relationships to land and place, the project uses short film as a curated public humanities platform to bring together community members, students, youth filmmakers, scholars and media professionals in dialogue about environmental health and collective futures.
Dr. Armstrong brings expertise in museum, gallery and public art curation; the intersection of arts and health; and community collaboration, while Professor Espelie contributes expertise in natural sciences, film scholarship, cinematic practice and filmmaker mentorship. They are working with UCCS Film Studies, Rocky Mountain Women’s Film Festival, Youth Documentary Academy, Independent Film Society of Colorado, and CU Boulder graduate film students to develop programming that is community‑responsive, ethically grounded and publicly accessible.
The Radiant Blue Marble Film Festival is designed, as a curated civic experience, which integrates film screenings, facilitated dialogue, youth leadership and public media to connect local environmental concerns in the Pikes Peak region with broader state and regional audiences.
Erin Espelie, MFA
Associate Professor · Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts
Erin Espelie is a writer, editor, and filmmaker whose work connects with current scientific research, questions of epistemology, environmental precarity, and fallout from an increasingly image saturated culture. Her poetic, nonfiction films have shown at the New York Film Festival, the British Film Institute's London Film Festival, the Whitechapel Gallery, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Crossroads Film Festival at SFMoMA, the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Imagine Science Film Festival, and more. Her feature-length film, The Lanthanide Series, premiered at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen and won the grand prize at the Seoul International New Media Festival in 2015; an interview about the film appears in The Sublimity of Document: Cinema as Diorama (Oxford University Press, 2019)
Joy Armstrong, PhD
Director, Galleries of Contemporary Art · Ent Center for the Arts at UCCS
Dr. Joy L. Armstrong is the Director of the Galleries of Contemporary Art (GOCA) at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS). She earned a B.A. in Media Communications and Studio Art from the University of Denver and an M.A. in Contemporary Art History and Criticism from Kent State University. In 2021, she completed a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership, Research, and Policy at UCCS, with a dissertation titled "History and Belonging: A Phenomenological Study of Participatory Public Art Murals in Colorado," exploring how public art fosters community and addresses social inequities.
Dr. Armstrong's career includes nearly two decades in museum, gallery, and public art sectors. She served as Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College, where she was recognized for creating immersive and interactive exhibitions. Additionally, she was Program Director at Inside Out Youth Services, a nonprofit supporting LGBTQIA+ youth in Colorado Springs.
At GOCA, Dr. Armstrong is dedicated to enhancing community engagement through the arts, aiming to make art accessible and welcoming to all. She emphasizes the importance of collaborative creative processes in building inclusive communities.
Michael Uy is interested in exploring collaborations with music and art-focused initiatives in Colorado communities beyond the Front Range, especially with Indigenous partners. He hopes to connect with faculty and projects at other higher education institutions in Colorado that intersect with these interests. Possible partnerships could include cross-programming efforts, archival preservation of musical materials and research projects. Above all, longer -term relationships built on trust, mutuality and respect are his goals.
Michael Sy Uy
Director · American Music Research Center
Michael Sy Uy (he/him) is associate professor of musicology, Joseph Negler endowed chair, and director of the American Music Research Center. His main areas of scholarly research are on philanthropy, patronage, arts education, cultural policy, expertise and connoisseurship. His first book—Ask the Experts: How Ford, Rockefeller and the NEA Changed American Music—was published by Oxford University Press in 2020. His second book—Endowing Equity: The NEA, Cultural Diversity and the Battle for Arts Funding—has been supported by an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) fellowship and will be published in early 2027. He is co-editor of the volume Musical Capital: Sound and Power in Washington, D.C. (Dumbarton Oaks: Harvard University Press, 2026) and co-series editor of Arts in Context: Critical Performance Infrastructures (University of Texas Press). His other published work appears in American Music, Journal of the Society for American Music, Journal of Musicology and Music and Arts in Action.