From Me to We
An Artistic Inquiry into Trust & Collective Meaning-Making
BELGRADE, SERBIA
October 1–December 15, 2026
What happens when strangers become co-creative collaborators in recovering a memory of our collective future?
I’m on a mission to unlock the creative potential that lives between us when we soften our defenses and open ourselves to radical imagination.
From Me To We has been selected for an artist residency in Belgrade, Serbia. My recent work in Bali around a 30-day collaborative experiment has become a living laboratory for this inquiry: https://antidotes.netlify.app/
What happens when strangers become co-creative collaborators in recovering a memory of our collective future?
I’m on a mission to unlock the creative potential that lives between us when we soften our defenses and open ourselves to radical imagination.
From Me To We has been selected for an artist residency in Belgrade, Serbia.
My recent work in Bali around a 30-day collaborative experiment has become a living laboratory for this inquiry: https://antidotes.netlify.app/
I believe that when people feel seen, recognized, needed, valued and capable, something in them comes alive.
We're currently living through a crisis of connection, intimacy and imagination.
In response, my practice explores the conditions that make different ways of being together possible so that we take more meaningful risks, listen differently, contribute to one another and imagine what might be possible.
For over twenty years, I have explored what happens when art becomes more than something we watch.
I call this social choreography
Composing people, place, sound, story, movement and ritual in real time, creating the conditions for unexpected encounters and collective meaning-making.
A room can become a stage.
A conversation can become choreography.
A song can become a doorway.
A group of strangers can become an ensemble.
The Vision & Gift
The goal is to discover what becomes possible when strangers come together around a shared memory, challenge, opportunity or vision, and are given the conditions to create together.
From these encounters, I want to develop a practice that can evolve and adapt across different cultural contexts.
In Belgrade, I will enter the city’s artistic ecology, meet local artists and communities, and experiment across disciplines, allowing place and relationships to shape what emerges.
Artists and non-artists become part of the composition through music, movement, visual art, storytelling, ritual, participatory performance and intimate gatherings.
At the heart of the research is a tension between structure and emergence: how much structure creates enough safety for creative risk, and how much freedom allows the unexpected to arise.
About Me
Tonya “TBird” Ridgely is a multidisciplinary artist, facilitator and cultural architect whose practice explores connection, creativity and collective transformation.
For over twenty years, she has worked across cultures and disciplines, creating participatory experiences that bring people into deeper relationship with themselves, one another and the world around them.
Her work spans performance, music, movement, storytelling and community-based practice, from Shanghai and Mexico City to Bali. She is the creator of the Transformative Arts Method™.
THANK YOU