Tickets Available!
Tickets for all events are available through Eventbrite. Purchase tickets for the Benefit Concert starting at $25 per ticket. Our CelebratingMaya@95 ticket package is also available for $95 which includes all of our month of April events excluding the Benefit Concert.
The 2023 Maya Angelou Birthday Benefit Concert
The Celebrate! Maya Project is proud to collaborate with UA-Pulaski Tech College to honor Dr. Maya Angelou’s 95th birthday with a benefit concert featuring the Rodney Block Collective Friday, April 7 at the Charts Theatre. Each year, the Celebrate! Maya Project creates a “Day of Remembrance,” paying homage to the life and legacy of the iconic literary artist who called Arkansas home. This year, the organization partners with UA – Pulaski Tech, one of the state’s fastest-growing higher education institutions that understands the importance of arts in education. Arkansas’ own Rodney Block will pay homage to this American legend and influencer who even today continues to transform the lives of women and girls with her words of wisdom.
The Celebrate! Maya Project is a youth-centered literacy, arts and history project that uses Dr. Maya Angelou’s edict, “When you learn, teach. When you get, give,” as a blueprint for its service to youth around the state with a special focus on the Delta region. This 501.C.3 nonprofit organization honors the memory and legacy of Dr. Maya Angelou who spent most of her youth in Stamps, Arkansas, and encourage youth through their work, to lift their voices and find opportunities to create the change they seek in their world.
Please join Celebrate! Maya Project and UA-Pulaski Technical College at the Charts Theatre, as we join Arkansas’ own native son Rodney Block in wishing America’s favorite poet a Happy 95th Birthday. This concert is part of the month-long Celebrating Maya@95, and the organization’s three-year capital campaign to renovate the future home of the Celebrate! Maya Project.
Happy Birthday Maya and Coretta! The Sisterhood and Social Justice Virtual Conversation and Gathering
Presented in collaboration between Celebrate! Maya Project of Arkansas and the Coretta Scott King Center for Cultural and Intellectual Freedom. This third annual gathering is in honor of Maya Angelou and Coretta Scott King, who devoted their lives to the humanities, social justice and the arts. The gathering honors these two iconic leaders through a conversation, music, and poetry that includes youth participation.
"The Journey Back to Now" Film Screening at Ron Robinson Theatre
A documentary about a group of young Cambodian circus performers rehearsing their way through the genocide of the past to understand their elders in the present.
THE JOURNEY BACK TO NOW chronicles a diverse group of young circus performers from the streets of Battambang, Cambodia, as they seek to discover for themselves the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime and the results of the genocide that still impacts their lives today. As they examine fragments of truth and lies—the remnants of the regime’s indoctrination—they interview former Khmer soldiers and survivors and travel backwards in time to inhabit the experience of their ancestors, combining their deft acrobatic skills and circus techniques into a groundbreaking stage production that gives metaphorical and physical voice to what often remains unsaid.
At once an exploration of the dangers of cultural silence when confronting a genocidal past and a profoundly powerful portrait of an ensemble of talented young artists learning to fully inhabit their bodies and voices, THE JOURNEY BACK TO NOW culminates in a performance of their show at a Congolese refugee camp in Rwanda. There, before an audience of other genocide survivors and displaced people, the troupe perform the story of their harrowing past with an eye toward hope for another new generation and its still-recovering country.
Celebrating Maya @ 95 Luncheon and Celebration
This year marks the 8th Annual celebration of Dr. Maya Angelou’s birthday since her death in 2014. The luncheon is an opportunity to honor the birth and the contributions of the great poet, author, artist, educator, and humanitarian Dr. Maya Angelou. This luncheon showcases youth artists and incorporates two of Maya Angelou’s greatest loves—music and poetry. A highlight of the event is the announcement of CMP’s Spirit of Maya award recipient, who is chosen based on their life work, which mirrors Dr. Angelou’s commitment to the arts, education, children, humanity, and social justice. This year’s entertainment will be Kami Renee, and poetry by members of the Writeous Poets. The event will be held Tuesday, April 18, 2023, 11:30 at Heifer International, 1 World Way, Little Rock, AR.
Celebrate! Maya Project & Central High School Neighborhood Alliance Community Festival
Open to residents of all ages, this festival marks Celebrate! Maya Project’s first annual community festival, in partnership with Central High School Historic District’s Neighborhood Alliance, and other community organizations. A day of fun, food, music, and poetry readings in Centennial Park. The event celebrates CMP’s future move to the Central High School community, and an opportunity to meet youth, residents, community organizations, churches, educational institutions, and others within the community. The Celebrate! Maya Project, a 501.c3 nonprofit organization, has served youth and worked with small communities throughout Arkansas since 2014. In 2022, CMP launched a capital campaign with plans to renovate a currently inhabitable home in the Central High School historic District, with hopes of moving in by Spring 2024. This event is scheduled for Saturday, April 29, 2023, at 10 am, at Little Rock’s Centennial Park, at 18th and Wolf Street.
