What would you give up to follow a calling no one else understands?

In Episode 2 of Season 2 of Life & Art, host Nicole Burgess sits down with Katie Wyatt, whose parents thought she was out of her mind when, in her mid-20s, she turned down a tenured viola professorship to spend 13 months touring Latin America, unpaid, with El Sistema, the youth orchestra movement born in Venezuela.

That decision became Kids Notes, the Durham nonprofit she co-founded, which grew into El Sistema USA. After a detour through the Weymouth Center for the Arts, Katie now leads the Durham Arts Council, the second-oldest arts council in the country.

Katie frames her work through the idea of stewardship, which her team distilled down to one value: service. She speaks candidly about the tension at the heart of arts funding, balancing donor passions, artistic excellence, and equitable access to limited resources, and about the pressure on artists to conform to whatever is selling. This is a conversation about sacrifice, purpose, and what it means to lift others up alongside you.

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A Blackbird Productions PodcastProduced and Directed by Sunlit Narrative

What happens when history forgets that its heroes were just kids?

In Episode 1 of Season 2 of Life & Art, host Nicole Burgess sits down with filmmaker Quinton Littlejohn to talk about “Aggie Pride,” his narrative film about the four North Carolina A&T students who launched the 1960 Greensboro sit-in movement. For Quinton, the heart of the story isn’t the single dramatic day at the lunch counter. It’s the months of quiet planning that came before February 1st, and the events, like the death of Emmett Till, that shaped a generation of teenagers before they ever set foot on campus.

Quinton is also unusually candid about the realities of independent filmmaking: proof-of-concept shorts, investors more concerned with making their money back than with the art, and the pressure to hand his own project to a bigger-name director.

Through it all, his creative philosophy stays simple: capture a moment, hand it to the audience, and don’t tell them what to feel. This is a conversation about courage, ownership, and the stories we choose to tell, and the ones we’ve been missing.

lifeandartpodcast.comInstagram: @lifeandartpodcast

A Blackbird Productions PodcastProduced and Directed by Sunlit Narrative

What does it look like to follow joy instead of obligation? Season 2 of Life & Art brings honest conversations about creating a life, not just a career.

Creativity doesn’t belong to a select few. It belongs to all of us. Everyone listening is creating something: a life, a business, a relationship, or a way of moving through the world that is entirely their own.

This season, host Nicole Burgess sits down with guests from worlds you might not expect. Some conversations will surprise you. All of them will stay with you.

Follow the show so you don’t miss a conversation.

lifeandartpodcast.com
Instagram: @lifeandartpodcast

A BlackBird Productions Podcast | Produced and Directed by Sunlit Narrative