Sydney Porter Williams is a community-based teaching artist in Salt Lake City who utilizes art as a form of transformation in classrooms and communities. She is an Adjunct Professor of Art Teaching at the University of Utah, and holds a Master of Fine Arts in Community-Based Art Education and an Honors BFA in Art Teaching, both from the University of Utah. She has extensive experience facilitating community artmaking and collaboration, and received the Utah Art Education Association’s Preservice Educator of the Year Award in 2022.

Porter Williams was awarded the University of Utah’s University Teaching Assistantship for the 2023-2024 school year to design and teach ART 4805: Art for Critical Consciousness, an academic course that critically explores social structures through the arts. She also received an ACME (Art, Community, Museum, Education) grant from the Utah Museum of Fine Arts to co-create an interactive, education exhibition with the students from her class, which will open October 2024.

Porter Williams’ pedagogical practice is interwoven with her multi-disciplinary studio practice, where she offers interactive opportunities for vulnerability and connection through unraveling and exploring her history. Her scholarly interests include art for social transformation, youth activist art, and artmaking as a dialogical and therapeutic practice.