Meet Angela Tillges

The daughter of an educator and a builder, Angela Tillges has been passionate about “exploring the space between hands-on art, aesthetics, teaching, building, community organizing, and service” ever since she can remember. When she was 10, she was the organizer of a programming-rich summer camp for kids in her neighborhood. As a high school student, she was issuing tickets to her family for basement performances, where she was producer and performe rolled into one. As a theater major, she spent most of her undergraduate life shuttling between the costume shop and the scene shop, creating dynamic, immersive art environments.

Subsequently, her experiences have included working on Sesame Street Live through an entertainment company in Minneapolis, running theater programming for a Jewish Community Center, working at a Muppet factory, using theater to help autistic preschoolers communicate better, leading students on “international, experiential-learning, summer bicycle tours,” and even exploring the possibility of becoming a prosthetic physician. “But finally, while in Chicago working for a theater company, I figured out the kind of educator I wanted to be,” says Angela. “I wanted to be a teaching artist with the ability to combine all of these different interests to create public, large-scale, community-mobilizing art. And HGSE’s Arts in Education was the perfect program to get there.

“HGSE has created a clear pathway to my future success. It has given me the breadth and depth of cross-disciplinary understanding and skills I need. It has shown me the critical role and vitality of the arts within education. In addition to the program’s flexibility and opportunities to connect with diverse fields across Harvard, it teaches you best practices when it comes to organizational leadership and collaborative educational efforts. In fact, I just helped create a city-wide event, a Youth Spectacle, that had 750 young artists from public schools across the city convene at a public location to present their art.”