Studio Visit appears first in print, in Sunday editions of The News-Gazette. Here, Melissa Merli visits with elizaBeth Simpson, a consultant, artist and musician. In the Feb. 12 newspaper, we'll have a visit with pedal steel guitarist Bob Watson.

Q: You do so much I don't know where to start. Do you consider yourself an artist-activist or do you hate labels?

A: The thing I've always said is that I'm finding out what it's like to be alive. I went to school and studied biology and music. People have a hard time taking things from different sides of a spectrum and thinking about merging them. People ask me, 'How can you do business consulting/strategic work and also do music?' I find it makes sense — and that people don't recognize their own capacities. My key aim is to help people and groups recognize what they want to achieve and what consequences they want.

Q: Do you bring art into it?

A: I do a lot of times. I find with art I can involve people who don't think of themselves as creative to make something and to make it as part of a collective effort. That's the heart of my political perspective, that people are brilliant, and a lot of times regular folks don't get recognized for their brilliance. I'm also a performance artist. I use vocal composition, puppetry, fire spinning, street theater and storytelling to collaborate with people who would not call themselves 'artists.' I also use stencils, silk-screen and stickers — things that can be reproduced.

Q: What's going on with your People's History of Urbana project? (http://www.ucpeopleshistory.org)

A: I just wrote another grant application for it, which I'll be hearing about in April. What happened was I got a lot of infrastructure built. I've got two posters done: one about Daniel Schreiber and the other about the Champaign-Urbana Tenant Union. I have material for many more posters. Those are connected with local folks and their experiences. Weiskamp Printing in Champaign was phenomenal in helping with the silk-screening.

Q: Did you design and make the posters?

A: I did design some but not the ones that were used. I gathered the materials and designed the specs, and (graphic designers) Miriam Martincic and Anastasia Tumanova implemented the images. This project is a key example of how to merge participatory art and social justice to illuminate our capacity to have the social world that we want.

Q: Did you make art when you were the peer mediation coordinator at Urbana Middle School?

A: I did Theater of the Oppressed, which is a fancy word, so I say 'embodied brainstorming.' We did theater skits. We made posters. We made buttons. We did radical cheerleading — there's a history of radical cheerleading in which you do cheerleading with a social message. We made a zine and did lots of bulletin boards.

Q: You were at the middle school for a while. What happened to the position?

A: Budget cuts and a lack of information about the program. I started working there in 2002. I left at the end of 2004 to move to New Orleans. After Katrina, I eventually came back here and returned to the middle school in the fall of 2006. The position was cut in '09. The program helped change the climate. One of the things about social art is it can change the climate of what people see as possible.

Q: What are you doing now?

A: I still do consulting work with individuals and groups to help them figure out what they want to make happen, through strategic planning, conflict resolution and group dynamics. I'm co-director of the Creative Intervention Agency, which uses tools from across the arts/organizing spectrum. I also do life coaching.

Q: So you're a facilitator?

A: That's what I am. That's the word. I make things possible.

Editor's note: Simpson may be reached at info@ucpeopleshistory.org.