Northern Oracle reception with Heather Hart + Spoken Word Performance

Northern Oracle reception with Heather Hart and Spoken Word Performance with Adetola Adedipe, Wakefield Brewster, Tanecia Cromwell.

Please join us for a reception with the artist in attendance for Northern Oracle by Heather Hart.

Featuring performances from 3 Black Calgary Spoken Word Artists: Adetola Adedipe, Wakefield Brewster, Tanecia Cromwell. Reception at 5pm, performances start at 6:30pm in the IKG on the rooftop.

Adetola Adedipe

Photo Credit Esther Cho.

Nigerian roots. Raised in South Africa. Currently conquering the Canadian art scene. Starting off as a member of The University of Calgary Spoken Word Club, and is a 2019 Calgary Slam Champion. She has been a featured artist at: Raw Voices, Expressions, Ethnik Festivals, The People’s Poetry Festival, Woolf’s Voices, PitBull Poetry In The Park and The PitBull Poetry Reading Series. She is an Artist Facilitator of “Black Kid Joy”, a youth arts program that aims to empower Young Black artists In Alberta as well as an artist facilitator for Decolonizing Literacy with the University of Calgary Faculty of Education. As the Founder of Poetic Designers, an artist branding company, her goal is to use her experience to help other artists find their voices in the online marketing world. Through her experience as A Black Immigrant woman and sharing her anxiety, pain, laughter and love she aims to build a community that encourages everyone to love themselves and be unapologetic about it. 

Tanecia Cromwell

Originally from Nova Scotia and based in Calgary Alberta Canada, Tanecia Cromwell is an Afro-Indigenous spoken word artist, photographer, and public speaker with a focus on anti-racism and Canadian Black history. 

Her Poetry is inspired by moments of introspection, flavored by snapshots in time, and built upon the cornerstone of the Black Canadian experience. She plucks at your heart strings with notes on life, finding the familiar in rooms filled with strangers. Her words are a bridge to understanding that even when the human experience feels isolating, we are connected by moments of pleasure and pain that are more common than we sometimes realize.  

Over the last few years, Tanecia has spoken at numerous local Black and Indigenous lead event, including the June 2020 Black Lives Matter Rally at Olympic Plaza, as well as delivering the Territorial acknowledgements at the now nationally recognized Emancipation Day celebrations in 2021 and 2022. She joined the Calgary Black Network as Vice-Chair in July 2020. January 2021 she was nominated for a Calgary Black Achievement Award. February 2021, she launched the Black History and News Made in Canada page on Facebook Black History and News Made in Canada. 

Most recently Tanecia has taken to the stage as a feature poet at Pitbull Poetry in the Park series and the February in August poetry showcase. You can also catch her work on the Indie YYC online poetry community. 

Wakefield Brewster

In January 1999, Wakefield Brewster stepped onto his first stage as a Poet and Spoken Word Artist. Today, he is known as one of Canada’s most powerful Professional Performance Poets. A BlackMan raised in Toronto by parents from Barbados, he has resided in Calgary since 2016, and it is in the New West where Wakefield has been able to truly flourish as a Poet and as a Person. 

In 2019, he was appointed as the very First Resident Poet & Spoken Word Artist of The Grand Theatre House in Calgary, Alberta. In 2021, Wakefield joined The League Of Canadian Poets in order to become a more integral part of Canada’s Literary scene, while representing the standards of Diversity and Representation. Also in 2021, Wakefield joined the Board of Directors of the E.A.R. Society – Emergency Artist’s Relief Society, providing emergency relief funding and affordable Health Care for Artists.

After all that the stage has given him, he has discovered other ways that he may repay his beloved Poetry and Arts Communities by performing silently, backstage, for them. Wakefield finds that underneath the many hats and the many hoodies he wears, resides a wonderful life. He would like to sincerely Thank You all for being a part of it.

All images courtesy Elyse Bouvier