The Wallis Names Imani C. Holingsworth New Director Of Education

The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts (The Wallis), the leading arts cultural center in Beverly Hills, has announced Imani C. Hollingsworth to serve as the organization's new Director of Education. She will lead the established and esteemed GRoW @ The Wallis: A Space for Arts Education, and joins a team headed by Executive Director & CEO of The Wallis, Robert van Leer.

Hollingsworth, a passionate writer, performer, arts educator and arts administrator, has a decade's worth of experience and an established track record of success in arts education, leading programs for concert venues, museums, library, education nonprofits, and school districts. 

Hollingsworth's arts education career began as a hands-on teaching artist who regularly visited middle and high schools throughout the San Francisco Bay Area to teach spoken word poetry. Since then, Imani has taught hundreds of elementary, middle and high school students across the country and developed educational programming and teaching artist trainings for dozens of arts education nonprofits, including YouthSpeaks and SFJAZZ in San Francisco and Split This Rock in Washington D.C.

Hollingsworth's expertise in adult education led to teaching a variety of classes with Brooklyn Poets, and Grubstreet (Boston), and programming at a number of universities, museums and writing centers including Georgetown, American University, the Museum of African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco and the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington, D.C.

GRoW @ The Wallis, an umbrella for the robust slate of education, community, and outreach programs offered by The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, is committed to sharing the arts with learners of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities. 

GRoW supports lifelong learning and reflects the full breadth of the Los Angeles community, from partnerships with some of the most under-resourced pre-K-12 schools in the region, to helping older adults bring their personal stories to life. Using the power of the arts, GRoW addresses important social issues and responds to critical community needs, sparks creativity, and creates community connections across demographics.

GRoW programming includes special student matinee performances at The Wallis, in-school arts education, masterclasses for early career artists in theater and dance, regular free and interactive arts programming for families, and courses in creative writing, dance and movement, and theater for older adults.

van Leer said, “Imani has a passion to bringing the arts to students of all ages. She brings a wealth of diverse experience to The Wallis – as a teacher of elementary, middle and high school students, and developing teaching artist programs from dozens of arts education non-profits.  She has a proven track record of overseeing organizational budgets, raising funds, and producing events for communities to gather around the arts – and has a truly holistic understanding of the nuances of effective, sustainable arts education programming.”

Hollingsworth said, “I am thrilled to join a dynamic, passionate organization such as The Wallis and am delighted at the opportunity to interact with audiences of all abilities, ages and interests. The arts education programming we provide at The Wallis is crucial to developing well rounded, complex members of the community, and our team is committed to supporting people of all backgrounds in leading a lifetime of engagement with the performing arts. I look forward to applying my experiences with our resources – both large and small – to facilitate a variety of opportunities for all to interact with and explore their own creativity.”

More About Imani C. Hollingsworth

From 2016 to 2020, Imani C. Hollingsworth held various positions at SFJAZZ including Community Outreach Director and Teaching Artist Manager. For SFJAZZ Education, she acquired a $3 million dollar grant from the Stupski foundation and subsequently managed the budget, programmatic plans, execution, evaluation and reporting, which led to its renewal three years later.

In 2019, Hollingsworth was awarded the Writers Corp Teaching Artist in Residence (WCTAIR) grant by the San Francisco Arts Commission: a $120,000 award, disbursed over three years, to develop spoken word programming for high schoolers in collaboration with the SF Boys and Girls Club. In 2022 she was appointed to the board of Performing Arts Workshop in San Francisco and in 2023 was appointed The Hurston/Wright Foundation's Writer in Residence, a $15,000 award that provides published Black writers with dedicated funding to focus on their individual writing projects.

As a Consultant, Hollingsworth's passion for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, especially as it relates to teacher-student interaction and the ways that Black and brown students are uniquely impacted by the institution, has led her to develop and facilitate professional development trainings and produce teaching materials on unconscious and implicit bias in the workplace and in the classroom. Imani's experience overseeing arts education programming from conception to design to implementation, has made her an invaluable leader and advocate for arts in education.

Hollingsworth holds a degree in Africana Studies from San Francisco State University.

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