Our Story
We began our creative explorations in our hometown of Austin, Texas; Jillian in filmmaking and Julia in visual arts. Our creative pursuits and passion for youth education brought us to New Orleans, where our paths finally crossed in 2015.
At the time, Julia was working at FirstLine Schools as the Communication Manager and was asked by Jillian to be a guest speaker in the Photoshop class she was piloting as the lead teaching artist for NOVAC. This would pioneer the program that would become NOVAC’s flagship youth offering. Julia went on to become the Program Manager for NOVAC’s Youth Media Program (Born Digital) and Jillian taught youth classes and managed the programs in the organization’s Baton Rouge office. We continued to collaborate on programming and in 2020, designed an online version of the Photoshop Graphic Arts and Premiere Pro Video Editing curriculum to serve current and new students throughout the pandemic.
Drawn to Los Angeles to pursue personal creative projects, Julia briefly served as the Director of Education at Venice Arts, where we once again had the opportunity to work together on a report commissioned by Los Angeles County Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO) exploring the feasibility of apprenticeships in the film and entertainment industry. The success of the report garnered Venice Arts significant funding to pilot a pre-apprenticeship program to train opportunity youth as video editors — the first of its kind in California. Together, we designed a robust and innovative 480-hour curriculum aligned with employer needs and Arts2Work federal apprenticeship competencies.
We continue to work together to strategize and implement innovative and impactful learning design for digital media art programs and career technical education for creative pathways.
Jillian is a filmmaker and educator based in Louisiana. She currently teaches video editing to incarcerated students at
The Last Mile. Learn more about Jillian.
Julia is currently based in New Orleans as the Media Education Director at NOVAC. She also works as a freelance designer and illustrator. Learn more about Julia.