Grateful to everyone who’s helped this grow from a pajama-brainstorm on Zoom into a global community.
Here’s to the next five.

#BIPOCCriticsLab #HowlRound #ArtsWriting #CulturalCriticism #Mentorship #EquityInTheArts #FiveYears

And to editors across all the arts: if you're looking for sharp, thoughtful writers with fresh perspectives, reach out. Our students are ready, published, and hungry for work.

To institutions, festivals, theatres, and publications:
If you believe in a richer, more plural criticism ecosystem, this is the moment to support the Lab. Host a workshop. Partner with us. Bring our critics into your conversations.

This five year mark feels like a reminder of what’s possible when we trust new voices, center care, and create spaces where critics can start from who they are not who the industry expects.

The Lab has always been a place where a review can become a collage, an audio meditation, a prayer, a video essay, or a joke. Criticism that breathes, just as alive as the art we cover.

In that time, 69 critics have come through the Lab, from four continents, multiple time zones, and wildly different artistic traditions. Somehow they all found their way to one digital room and made something bigger than any syllabus I wrote.

And I could not be happier for our girl.