Let’s Make learning easier and more meaningful.

Toni Wynn brings a poet’s truthtelling and an educator’s respect for learners to her work.

MEDIA EPISODES

CURRENT WORK

DIX PARK | BROCADE STUDIO

One of the largest new public park projects in the country, Dix Park is an emerging 308-acre public space in the heart of Raleigh, NC. The land has a layered history — of hunting, gathering, and potential cultivation among Indigenous people, of enslavement at a major plantation, and as the site of the state’s first mental health facility. In partnership with experience design firm Cloud Gehshan, Toni is working with Brocade Studio to develop the park’s cultural interpretation plan for the City of Raleigh.

Lewis Latimer House Museum

PAST WORK

OLD SLAVE MART MUSEUM | WRITER

This daring museum is celebrated for its unsentimental telling of the story of Ryan’s Mart, a slave market, from the perspective of the enslaved persons, the buyers, and the brokers. The exhibits interpret the domestic slave trade as it thrived at that site in Charleston. 

august wilson house; BROCADE STUDIO | interpretive planner

The childhood home of Pulitzer-Prize-winning American playwright August Wilson will be an arts center, performance venue, and historic house. August Wilson House chose Brocade Studio to guide interpretive planning. Inspired by Wilson’s non-traditional education in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Toni and her colleagues at Brocade mine the goodwill and rich tradition of the arts in Pittsburgh to help create the visitor and user experience. Our charge is not only to be useful, to use Wilson’s words, but also to engage, enrapture, and nurture artists — and keep the flame lit for generations to come. The Carver [ON] Record project is seeding ideas for the arts-based, layered experience of August Wilson House.

“Cultural Expressions”, national museum of african american history and culture | exhibition developer and editor

As a member of the content development team, Toni worked with curators and historians on continuity of themes, developing voice and tone, and writing and editing text to give shape and voice to the museum’s permanent Cultural Expressions exhibit. The “Gestures of Solidarity” label won an American Alliance of Museums text award. Toni maintains ongoing editorial consulting with the museum’s Office of Strategic Partnerships.

GATEWAY ARCH MUSEUM | WRiter

Toni's Word-Burning Stove team developed the exhibit script for the 45,000 square-foot renovation at the Gateway Arch National Park.

TWIN MEMORIALS AT EMORY AND OXFORD COLLEGE | COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

hearth: memorial to the enslaved | storytelling

Toni developed the narrative across the landscape for Hearth: Memorial to African Americans Enslaved by William and Mary, a site constructed on the Williamsburg, VA campus that honors the women, men, and children the university held in bondage. She conducted literary research and contributed original writing to the memorial.

AFRICAN BURIAL GROUND national monument | writer

Lead exhibit text writer for the Interpretive Center at the cemetery’s site in lower New York. With input from archaeologists and historians, Toni interpreted in writing the rediscovered history of the 17th and 18th century Africans who helped build New York.

*Excellence in Exhibit Writing Award, American Alliance of Museums

“The bias inside us” | exhibit developer, writer, editor

Scriptwriting and editing for The Bias Inside Us, a science-based exhibition that serves as a centerpiece for bias awareness work at public centers across the nation.

ARTS EDUCATION PRESENTER/FACILITATOR

Reconnecting learners and teachers with their curiosity.

MASS Action

facilitator |

This resourceful community works for systemic change and institutional transformation. Toni is a contributor to the Toolkit, a guide for inciting and managing growth and equity in museums. With Swarupa Anila and Janeen Bryant, Toni facilitated the “Things Fall Apart” workshop at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Ecollective