Movement carried me here.
Now I carry it forward.
Michele Renee – Artist, writer, storyteller, founder.
I did not build this alone. I was carried here.
The Modern Underground Railroad in a sense is my own tapestry – the community I have always been building outside and within me.
By a grandmother who first taught me that my voice was an instrument worth tuning. By teachers who heard something in my pen before I trusted it myself. By mentors who opened doors I did not know existed and pushed me through them anyway. By elders who carried lineage, culture, and story like sacred things – because they are. By conductors of every background who believed in what I was becoming before I fully believed in it myself.
Every one of them saw something in me before I could fully see it in myself. Every one of them moved me forward.
That is what conductors do.
I am Kansas born and Oklahoma bred. My roots run deep – through family, through land, through the kind of community that shapes you before you have words for what is happening.
I am a Black and Indigenous woman. I know what invisibility feels like. I know the specific disappointment of watching our stories get whitewashed, diluted, and redirected by hands that were never meant to hold them.
So I built a railroad.
Not because I had all the answers but because I had a vision. A clear and unshakeable vision for the kind of art I want to see, create, and be a part of. Art that is rooted. Honest. Unapologetic. Art that centers Black and Indigenous voices and the urban communities that have always been our cultural home.
The Modern Underground Railroad is not separate frrom what I am.
It is an extension of me – a life’s work finding its form.
I built this because I needed it to exist – and I suspect you do too.
And like the original railroad – it moves because of many hands.
We are looking for conductors.
Artists. Organizers. Community leaders. Anyone ready to move this forward together.
This is not a new idea. It is an old promise – finally kept.
To Our Conductors
This organization was not built alone. It was built on the shoulders of every teacher, mentor, elder, artist, and community member who moved us forward. We carry you in everything we create.
You lit the way. We keep the light moving.
OUR PILLARS
- Liberation: Art has always been a vehicle for freedom. Every project, every partnership, every production is an act of moving forward.
- Collaboration: We do not partner for optics. Every collaboration is rooted in shared values, mutual respect, and the belief that the work is stronger together.
- Community: The communities we serve are not our audience – they are our co-creators. Their voices shape everything we build.
- Excellence: We hold every art form in equal regard. Music, visual art, spoken word, dance, theater – each discipline is a complete language and we speak all of them.
- Narrative: We protect our stories. We tell them on our terms. Always.
The Vision
A thriving ecosystem where Black and Indigenous art is not the exception – it is the standard. Where urban communities have the cultural infrastructure they have always deserved. Where every artist who has ever felt unseen may create their own railroad – propelling them forward. TMUR will keep building, keep collaborating, and keep showing up – because that is what conductors do.
This is for everyone who poured into me. And for everyone still waiting to be filled.
Michele Renee – Founder and Creative Director, The Modern Underground Railroad