The Response: Echoes beneath the rain | thursday, july 17, 2025

OLIVE TORAN: Olive Toran is a multidisciplinary artist and environmentalist, working with poetry, photography, storytelling, and music to explore the emotional and ecological landscapes of our time. Her work centers memory, connection, and renewal, inviting audiences into spaces of reflection and healing. Her works include Inner and Outer Transformations: The Climate Crisis, an immersive multimedia exhibit on personal healing and climate action. Olive’s work has also appeared in Culture Push Issue 21: Community and Climate Adaptation and is shaped by years of hands-on learning, including time in India exploring participatory development and waste management systems. Her art is grounded in over a decade of lived experience, working across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Caribbean in climate and health and climate adaptation. Olive created the People’s Toolkit for Flood Mitigation and leads networks to amplify community knowledge and climate action. She is a certified herbalist and board member of Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards (SAWS). She currently serves as the Atlas of Disaster Outreach Coordinator at Rebuild by Design.

Explore Olive’s work here>>

NATIE BARRET-MAS: A creole musician/singer-songwriter from Reunion Island, based in NYC. After a world tour in Beyoncé & Jay-Z’s band in 2018, Natie launched her solo career with the release of her music video “Identity” & her debut EP “In the Key Of Fall.” Through her music, Natie aims to share the experience of being creole (mixed race) and uprooted, with authenticity and grounding, in the hope of fostering more openness and belonging. With these values in mind, the artist has launched her own festival, Kréol Fest, an artistic celebration of creole culture from around the world. Her multilingual/soothing EP “Home: a place within aux parfums d’ailleurs” also came out last year with a stunning cinematic music video shot in both her homes, untitled ‘Ter La’. Natie’s recent performances include Global Fest with the Ragini Ensemble, Summerstage with Ganavya, and a solo performance for 100 Years 100 Women at Lincoln Center. She recently performed in her home island for the 20th anniversary of the festival Sakifo.

Instagram | Spotify | Youtube | Explore Natie’s work here>>

BRITTANY HARRIS: A Detroit native with dual Bachelor’s in Music Education and Cello Performance (Western Michigan University) and a Master’s in Film Scoring (NYU, 2022). Since 2015, Brooklyn-based freelance, recording, touring, and off-Broadway cellist. Performed at SNL, The Tonight Show, Carnegie Hall, The Apollo, Lincoln Center, and on tour with Escape The Fate and the Emo Orchestra. Brittany performs with FEMPIRE (with Sarah Overton) and as a solo artist, blending classical, rock, jazz, indie folk, and soul. Works as a TV/film/media composer, sound designer, studio/touring cellist, music copyist, arranger, transcriber, and music analyst for Ethos. Credits include work for Babyface, Loren Allred, Rob Lewis & Orchestra, Broadway/off-Broadway, Machinal (MTC City Center), and co-creating the podcast Good Night Black Child—a space for bedtime stories and meditations centering the Black and Brown diaspora.

Explore Brittany’s work here>>