Ro Adler facilitates art-making processes that reflect and affect the communities from which they stem. She works from the basic belief that all people – including young people – can identify what needs to change in their world, and can articulate their truths in creative and powerful ways. Her passion is to facilitate this by connecting people with tangible and intellectual resources for making change, whether it’s cardboard and hand staplers, new techniques, or space for storytelling.

Trained in paint and dry media, Ro got her first taste of community art through working on the Big Parade in Oberlin, OH, a scrappy community- and art-based parade celebrating Oberlin communities.  The resourcefulness and collaboration that parade-making requires meshed well with her social and political motivations for making art, and she worked on multiple projects for the parade including building a “community garden” parade float with the local social services organization.  The following year, she co-organized the parade itself, and engaged with it academically in order to contribute to the archive around radical community art.  Since then, she has participated in numerous collaborative public art projects, and continues to deepen her commitment to working at the intersection of art and social justice in the Philadelphia area.