About Me
 

I’m Kali Ferguson and I’m a bilingual storyteller, performance poet, songwriter, coach & cultural educator. Embodying these roles (and others) is the way I contribute to learning, joy, and change in our communities. 

I have always been a performer and an educator. I started out performing with my mother’s children’s theatre and since 2004, I've been a cultural educator throughout the Southeastern USA.

I've been teaching workshops & telling stories in classrooms and on-stage at conferences museums, non-profits, festivals, and more.

My teaching artistry is for people of all ages, though I'm known to engage children from ages 8 - 14. They especially love my signature Big Black Feminist Fairytale, Blancaflor, La Negra!, which will be finished when it is a sophisticated animated musical movie. 

Across the last decade, I’ve spun stories on stage, in classrooms, in recording studios, at conferences and for small groups. 

My gift as a performing storyteller, story coach and cultural educator is seeding transformation, inspiration, confidence and self-knowledge using story. 

I believe we can harness the cultural wisdom in our stories & use the lessons we learn to grow ourselves and take care of each other, today. 

 If you have questions about my storytelling or projects, email me directly at Kali [at] Kali Ferguson [dot] Com & let’s connect! 

Listen

Formal Bio

Kali Ferguson is a bilingual storyteller, songwriter, cultural educator, coaching artist and poet living in her hometown of Charlotte, NC, after much travel. Whether she’s breathing life into folktales or singing original Spanish lyrics, Kali passionately shares cultural literacy through Latin American and African Diasporic traditions. She has been a consultant, curriculum creator, and facilitator with the American Friends Service Committe (AFSC) since 2010. She created the African American Latinx Bridge Building & Awareness program (AALBBA) with AFSC staff in 2015, and it has been a hit with young people throughout North Carolina. “Blancaflor: La Negra” is her latest musical fairy tale project. It is her Personal Parable, and it explores race, gender, beauty, and freedom. 

Since 2004, this “Swiss Army Knife of Culture” (with her nimble use of myriad creative expressions) has performed at the Levine Museum of the New South, Myrtle Beach’s Museum of Art, and many schools and organizations in NC, SC, Florida, Alabama, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. She’s studied and traveled in South Africa, Panama, Costa Rica, the United Kingdom, and Spain always seeking to learn more about our world. She's been teaching what she's learned since the age of 16, and aims to empower everyone to value and share their stories.

Previous Shows

Experience: Performer  & Multimedia Artist

Multimedia Artist, "Your Place Or Mine": Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, Appalachian State University (Boone, NC), 2019

Multimedia Artist, Obra Collective @ c3 Labs (Charlotte, NC), 2018

Storyteller/Culture Educator/Teaching Artist in Schools, Various Arts Councils and School Districts, 2011 - 2018

Singer/Songwriter/Storyteller, Ruby Slipper Fringe Fest debut performance of long-form Black feminist musical fairytale, Blancaflor: La Negra, 2016  

Featured Singer/Storyteller, Tammy Baldwin Willard’s “Stories and Visions: The Collective Works,” 2016  

Featured Storyteller, Durham County Library Storytelling Festival, 2016 & 2017  

Featured Storyteller, Myrtle Beach Museum of Art Day of the Dead Festival, 2015 & 2014  

Featured Storyteller, Speak Up Union County, NC, 2015  

Featured Storyteller, Carteret County, NC Summer Reading, 2015  

Featured Poet, Levine Museum of the New South bilingual event: The Changing South: Women in Poetry, 2014  

Featured Singer/Songwriter/Poet/Storyteller, PoetSHE Greensboro, NC, 2014  

Storyteller, Love for Reading Brunch, 2014  

Griot, Mint Museum Bilingual Stories (in conjunction with Kuba artifacts in permanent African Art at Randolph Branch), 2013  

Singer/Storyteller/Organizer, Summer Stories + House Concert Series, 2013   

Singer/Songwriter/Storyteller, Mint Museum FOOD Stories (in conjunction with F.O.O.D bilingual exhibit), 2013  

Singer/Performer/Co-Creator, Charlotte Symphony MLK Week – with composer David Crowe & symphony quartet to create and perform tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, 2009  

Singer/Poet, Community Building Initiative Stakeholders' Breakfast, 2008  

Storyteller, Latin American Festival 2006  

Singer/Storyteller, Pura Vida Worldly Art Summer Series’ 2005 – 2006