Listen to First-Gen narratives existing in the arts and professional practices with Mei Zheng’s thesis, ‘Once First-Gen, Always First-Gen: Listening to first-gen artstories and Responding with Teacher Action Pedagogy.’ Emerging from this research I acknowledge there are gaps in scholarly spaces that under-represent First-Generation experiences with the arts. The guiding question frames this work:

“How does access to art experiences provide first-generation, students and people of color space for personal and broader social impact?”

‘first-gen artstories’ features 11 conversations with Project Thrive, first-generation program at RISD, first-gen students, alumni, and educators unique artstories of financial, personal, and social hardships that defy the deficit mindset— collectively telling stories of belonging, mentorship, empowerment, and love.

This thesis explores the importance of reclaiming first-gen self-representation and arts mentorship in our communities, building inclusive anti-deficit mindsets, and seeing possible selves of professional practices.

Check out @firstgenartstories for more teaching resources, mentorship, and first-gen artstories!

My thesis project is titled ‘first-gen artstories’ where I will be conducting a series of eleven, one-hour individual interviews with first-generation college students, alumni, and educators to the Rhode Island School of Design on such topics of importance:

- What does it mean to be first-generation at a school of art and design?
- Experiences of students, alumni, and educators with the arts and its role in developing education models (such as educator experiences with the arts and how it informs their pedagogical and studio practices; student experiences with the arts and how it informs their developing contemporary artistic practices).
- Art's influence on one's broader societal impact, art as a catalyst for social and political clarity.

Art is the language I use to see the in-between, unresolved, imaginary. I remembered a drawing I had done of the American flag in elementary, a time where I was trying to understand amidst linguistic imperialism—lost in translation.

In 2013, I lost the sketch. It taught me to be political as can be. On March 3, 2024, I made a print edition in class taught by Lois Harada. I titled the work “I AM AN –AMERICAN,” depicting text in black on white 11 x 17 paper—distorted, aligned to stripes and shapes of red and blue with negative spaces of white, yellow, and blue stars.

I use art-based making to reflect the context of movements that challenge and contest white supremacist, imperialist, and colonial violence. To this day, I see this as a privilege to share my thesis as there are no universities left in Gaza.

The Maharam Fellowship supports a self-made internship focused on social justice and STEAM through collaboration with local and global communities.

In 2022, as Curriculum Designers and Educators, Mei Zheng and their partner, Carmen Belmonte Sandoval, join HYPOTHEkids’ and Beam Center in the Pathways to Graduation Program (an 8-week program for newly immigrated students with various levels of English proficiency to earn their GEDs) to design, teach, and practice topics from Biomed Engineering, Biomimicry, Product and Furniture Design. The cohort is made of 25 students, ages 16-23 years old, and four languages needs: English, Spanish, French, and Arabic. This program, supported by the NYCDOE, operated within two weeks rotations.

Our fellowship aimed to affirm and embrace the need for collective care in community building, re-designed pedagogy, and re-defined public(s) in STEAM education.

This summer of 2024, Mei will return to Beam Center as a STE(A)M Program Site Manager for their Connected Worlds curriculum.

This Fall 2023, I was a Teaching Artist and Educator at Project Open Door + Schools. I introduced students at Hope High School to topics of Artivism in local and global contemporary arts with different multi-media activities. This culminated in a final exhibition celebrating students and their wants for their show.

In Spring 2024, I taught a Professionals Practices Workshop introducing POD's Senior Saturday Portfolio program on seeing resume building through accessibility, strength-based lens, and possible selves. I appreciate how POD's community bridges and offers opportunties for students to find and nurture creative interest.

For whole year I was involved with New Urban Arts as a Multi-Media Artist Mentor supporting youth students in their full creative agency in projects. I've gotten to learn so much being in this space where students organize their own programs, lead interviews, and celebrate each other.

These spaces value mentorship, agency, and community building, it's so important.

In 2022-2023, I pursued the Studio Institute & RISD Museum Graphic Arts program as I was interested in communications design without having prior experience into graphic design.

Through this experience, I collaborated across departments like marketing and education on public SEI-focused design engaging intergenerational communities. I created four brand identities for the RISD Museum programs focusing on storytelling and collaboration from design-to-print.

Transitioning into TLAD in 2023-2024, I knew I wanted more experience with the RISD Museum and applied to be a Graduate Teens Program Educator with my friend, Ziare Greene. We both share an interest in community access and belonging within museum art spaces. This program has allowed us to share that by re-designing the Teen Art Adventures curricula to center student's interests with the museum collections and building a sense of belonging. I learned to be iterative, and create robust teen-centered experiences outside of the classroom.

In 2018, my mother told me, "in order to practice a love that I must find balance"—words I’d never thought to hear through reverberations of silence. The heteropatriarchal figure that is both father and his, made me aware at 16 what wonders she had once seen and lived. She'd mend my clothes with thread so thin, her patience could repair and strengthen the worn. I look back at family photos in fear of losing sight of this love she once knew that I started mending memories.

Screen printing is both art and method that allows me to practice intimacy with text & image, archive, and memory matters. My commitment to love is steady, finding family archival photos and videos to relive diasporic experiences. This edition of 21 with one Artist Proof has taken much care to move once still images—an effort to make sense of what she sees in us.
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Dear Project Thrive,

Through thick and thin. Thank you to everyone in this room with us today, and to all who’ve sent support. Friends, peers, mentors, faculty, staff many of whom are first-gen, and made this experience possible.

Ulli K. Ryder once told me, we, first-gens, are rocks. I interpreted this into my time here at RISD, we begin as pebbles, and move with each tidal wave, shift of soils, change in pressure until we become rocks. We know how things go. We stay grounded, until we have to move again. We are a resilient, powerful family. I could have not done this work without a family like you all.

This is a home, community, and collective.

Thank you.