Jordan Lee Thompson is a media/narrative art worker and educator of mixed ancestry based on occupied Dakota and Anishinaabe land known to many as Minneapolis, Minnesota. Having practiced many mediums, he currently works in video, audio, animation, and performance to combine his passions of participatory art, microsociology, and speculative storytelling towards the goal of envisioning and creating the future he wants to live in. He seeks to co-create a choir of storytellers crafting new possibilities - futures separate from the ones being imagined for us by tech barons and other war profiteers.
Jordan is the Founder and Director of the Institute for Manufactured Futures (IFMF) and co-produces an ongoing body of work of improvisational audio futures called Canopy Archive. He also serves as the Executive Director at Listen Up Youth Radio, where he shares control and responsibility of the organization with his much younger colleagues. Prior to that work, Jordan was Coordinator for Mizna's Arab Film Festival, Environmental Justice Track Manager at the Science Museum of Minnesota, Creative Director for Dance & Other Behaviors, and directed award-winning programming for youth filmmakers and animators at Nine North.Jordan owes his skills to time spent supporting local artists and activists through collaboration and video documentation, as well as constant learning alongside peers, mentors, and mentees. Jordan has produced, performed, directed, or projected at the Guthrie Theater, the Cowles Center, the Southern Theater, Intermedia Arts, the Phoenix Theater, O'Shaughnessy Auditorium, Public Functionary, and the University of Iowa Museum of Art, among others. Jordan has worked as an artist and/or educator with Mizna, the Arab American National Museum, FilmNorth, ArteEast, New Arab American Theater Works, Wilder Research, Iraqi & American Reconciliation Project, Afghan Cultural Society MN, James Sewell Ballet, Minnesota Opera, Umbrella Collective, Italian Cultural Center of Minneapolis/St Paul, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, Twin Cities Media Alliance, SPEAK MPLS, Minneapolis Television Network, Saint Paul Neighborhood Network, Monkeybear’s Harmolodic Workshop, and other organizations. Jordan holds a BFA in Painting, a BA in Art History and Arts Management, and a certificate in Museum Studies from the University of Iowa.
Thank you!