Best Cultural Association San Bernardino Near Me

4worldlovers: Jennifer Kane is an artist, arts organizer, and teacher from Los Angeles, CA and currently resides in Joshua Tree. She serves as the Executive Director of Arts Connection, the Arts Council of San Bernardino County. Jennifer received her BA in Fine Arts from Mount St. Mary’s College and her MFA in Public Practice from Otis College of Art and Design. She is a recent graduate of Arts for LA’s ACTIVATE Cultural Policy Fellowship program.


Prior professional leadership roles include coordinating the Volunteer Art Program for The Joshua Tree Art Innovation Laboratory (JT Lab), an NEA-grant funded arts initiative, hosted by Joshua Tree National Park, from 2016-2018. During this time, she created the now permanent park program – Artists’ Tea.

Jennifer’s multidisciplinary practice approaches community engagement as a dynamic form of art: creating space and opportunities for people to gather in unexpected environments through diverse methods and mediums to promote broader understanding and connection to self, others, and place. Organizing community outreach events in Peace Corps Thailand from 2006-2008 helped generate her passion for this deeply relational work. Jennifer further developed her skills as a teacher of geology, human history, and ecology as a guide for over a decade in the Sierra Nevada range of California. It is her work here that roots her attention to our deep connections to the land and each other.

Jennifer’s writing has been featured in KCET Artbound and as part of the Mojave Project. Her paintings are held in private collections across the world. Jennifer is a proud board member of Californians for the Arts, the California Arts Advocates, and the Board of Advocates for the Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art (RAFFMA).

Saniyyah Thomas was born in Camden, New Jersey and raised in the Inland Empire of San Bernardino County. She attended San Bernardino Valley College in 2008 and graduated in 2012 with her Associate of Arts Degree in Liberal Arts in Social and Behavioral Sciences. During the past three years she has worked as a Behavioral Support Specialist for a non-profit company that assists adults with special needs.

As a resident of San Bernardino City, Saniyyah became civically engaged with a group known as San Bernardino Generation Now (SBGN) in 2013-2019, in the efforts to improve the conditions of the city. Within that time, Saniyyah co-founded and co-facilitated a community outreach program called Spirits and Arts, for three years, at the Garcia Center for the Arts. Saniyyah and her co-founders’ purpose for the program was to engage and provide an affordable and creative event for the patrons of San Bernardino, and they focused their efforts to encourage community involvement in the arts, for all levels of artistic ability, as well as to create a platform and venue for local artists to gain experience in teaching an art based class.

Marie Bobin is an arts management consultant and the Morongo Basin Regional Program Director for Arts Connection, the Arts Council of San Bernardino County. Before joining Arts Connection, she was the Creative Producer for the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles where she developed film, theatre and lecture series focused on fostering human connections and building a more just society.

Marie works to remove obstacles for artists and cultural practitioners, and prioritizes cultural projects, which support lasting positive social impact in local communities. Most recently, such projects have included developing and implementing an arts-driven community engagement outreach strategy in support of the 2020 Census and producing the National Endowment for the Arts “Big Read” program in the Morongo Basin for 2 consecutive years.

Marie holds a Masters Degree in International Arts Management from HEC Montreal as well as a BA in Theatre Studies from Emerson College. She serves on the advisory board of Mil-Tree Veterans Project and is grateful every single day to be living near Joshua Tree National Park, land of the Serrano, Chemehuevi, and Cahuilla people.

Regional Program Director T. Faye Griffin (pronounced “tee fay”) is a multi-hyphenated creative with an extensive arts management background in performance, literary, and visual arts. Her work in television as a writer-producer has earned her three NAACP Image Awards. She now leads Arts Connection’s regional outreach and program management in the High Desert.