Culture Mill

Culture Mill is a performing arts laboratory based in Saxapahaw, NC building a creative and inclusive artistic ecosystem in rural North Carolina through the cross-pollination of artist residencies, educational outreach, and groundbreaking immersive artworks from local, national, and international artists. Culture Mill is co-directed by artists Murielle Elizéon and Tommy Noonan, and supported by staff member Cailtlyn Swett.

Culture Mill was in residency from 2021 – 2026. They used their residency to explore issues of race, labor, community, and embodiment via a deep dive into both the history of the University’s built campus and the ripples of this complicated history. They sought to uncover and honor the stories of countless known and unknown Black artisans and laborers who built the University’s buildings and brick paths. With this practice, they aimed to demonstrate how historical knowledge empowers us to reckon with larger forces in our lives, both on and off Carolina’s campus. Doing this work in community through somatic practices was fundamental to how Culture Mill operates.

Prior to Culture Mill’s Southern Futures residency, they participated in Audience Advocates, where they workshopped ideas that would evolve into Eclipse, their participatory, site-specific work that debuted at CPA in April 2022. Culture Mill oversaw and collaborated with the Eclipse Cohort, a group of local artists, activists, poets, and farmers that grew organically out of the group that collaboratively created Eclipse. This diverse group of movers and thinkers brought their practice to Val Hanson’s Restorative Justice Class in the Department of Public Policy, co-taught a semester-long class in the Geography Department with Dr. Betsy Olson, participated in the 2022 Universities Studying Slavery Conference held at UNC, and curated the Commons Festival: Southern Futures in the spring of 2023. Culture Mill has used each of these moments as an opportunity to continue their practice of listening to unheard voices from the past, and to expand a collective somatic understanding of their surroundings. In each of these efforts, and in their daily work, Tommy and Murielle have stressed the relevance of history, while striving to transcend mere exploration for exploration’s sake. They were invested in fostering a more holistic understanding of how our shared histories can impact the present realities of people—especially BIPOC—in Chapel Hill, and in the South as a whole.

In addition to their own residency, Culture Mill partnered with CPA to co-design all other Southern Futures residences. As part of this effort, Tommy and Murielle worked alongside local collaborators (such as CJ Suitt and Val Hanson) to create residences that were grounded in close listening, restorative justice, and collaboration. Relatedly, Southern Futures residencies have largely been prototyped through Eclipse, which was workshopped by community members through CPA’s Institute for Performance in 2020.