A look inside of Genre: Urban Arts: Nakeysha

Nakeysha Roberts Washington, M.S. Ed is the Editor-in-Chief and Creative Director of Genre: Urban Arts (GUA), a platform where artists can become published digitally and in print. Genre: Urban Arts also provides exhibiting and performing opportunities for visual and performance artists via pop-up galleries. Nakeysha has been published in Routledge, other literary journals, and anthologies. In Spring 2018, she was honored with having a monologue performed in Brooklyn, New York, at the Billie Holiday Theater as part of a showcase entitled 50 in 50: What Place Do We Have in this Movement?  In June of 2018, a piece of creative nonfiction entitled, "No Cream" was published in Wisconsin's Emerging Writers: An Anthology of Nonfiction. Nakeysha’s writing focuses on social justice issues because she believes that it is a creative’s responsibility to interrogate and reveal the intricacies of social constructs through art.

Nakeysha spends much of her time preparing opportunities for creatives to share their art as part of the necessity for inclusion. All of this with the knowledge that working in the space of developing yourself as a creative is often seen as a privilege and the connections with a plethora of artists who work jobs that they do not love as a means to support their art. Pop-up galleries and performances organized by Nakeysha via Gene: Urban Arts allows everyone in the creative community the ability to develop themselves as artists, become published and showcase their art through performance and exhibition. GUA is now a playground for 60+ creatives, all who have their own medium in which they create— Their own Genre.

Genre: Urban Arts is turning the intangible into the tangible. GUA pop-up galleries uniquely organize and support artists who have an appetite to share art with the community. Genre: Urban Arts is a true friend to the creative, a support for the artist in a world that wants us to end our dance with our connection to divinity- end our connection with the most innate part of ourselves. Here we are protected & freed from the societal pressures of mundanity.