About
Mark-n-Sparks helmed by ashley sparks and Mark Valdez, co-directors who have been collaborating since 2008. Mark-n-Sparks bring over 40 years experience working in and with communities, helping to lift up local stories and address local concerns while pushing aesthetic boundaries of community-based artmaking. Together, we operate on a spectrum of leadership, observing a practice guided by values more than a methodology.
Illustration: Single Family Home by Nephelie Andonyadis
Mission
Mark-n-Sparks builds people’s capacity to engage civic imagination and create spaces that expand communal understanding of what is possible. We co-create beautiful solutions to the complex social justice and policy issues facing our society through original performances, workshops and trainings, and innovative community engagement strategies.
Vision
Our 10-year art-based civic engagement project aims to shift culture and policies, making housing a guarantee by 2050.
Values
Radical hospitality: make people feel like they belong
Beauty and humor: make the work irresistible
Experimentation: to try something on and see how it works
Do nothing alone: collaborate and co-create
Racial and social justice: this is an ongoing, rigorous, practice that we commit to
Reach out if you are interested in learning more about what we do or possible collaborations!
“Valdez and Sparks have spent their careers working at the intersection of the arts, theater, cultural organization, community engagement and consulting — and are uniquely poised to use performance practice in service of effecting social, cultural and political change.”
The Los Angeles Times
The team
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ashley sparks is a theatre maker, engagement strategist, facilitator, coach and consultant.
ashley’s work bridges between projects that are hyperlocal and national, spans rural and urban locations, and has toured nationally.
As co-director of Mark-n-Sparks, ashley co-writes, co-produces, co-directs, and co-designs community engagement strategies focused on affordable housing.
With over 15 years of convenings experience, ashley’s co-directed/curated with Network of Energy Water and Health in Affordable Buildings (NEWHAB), the Network of Ensemble Theaters, Alternate ROOTS, the Highlander Center for Research and Education, and the Strong Prosperous and Resilient Communities (SPARCC). These cross-sector convenings frequently are in a festival/think-tank/learning exchange model focused on addressing pressing community issues.
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Mark Valdez became Mixed Blood’s artistic director in June 2022, becoming only the second Artistic Director in the theater's 47-year history. Mark began his practice as Associate Artistic Director for Cornerstone Theater Company, a Los Angeles-based ensemble creating plays in/with/for communities there and across the nation. At Cornerstone, he directed such projects as You Can’t Take It With You: An American-Muslim Re-Mix (a collaboration with LA’s Muslim community in the wake on 9/11), Tracey Scott Wilson’s Order My Steps (a collaboration with Black churches, looking at homophobia in the Black church), and Erik Ehn’s Mary Shelley’s Santa Claus (because, why not?).
He was the Founding Executive Director of the Network of Ensemble Theaters (NET), a national community of artists and organizations committed to collaborative creation. In addition to establishing new funding programs for artists aimed to encourage collaborations between artists, Mark launched the MicroFest USA initiative of hyper-local events exploring the value and impact of the arts and artists to communities.
Mark has authored and directed plays for Trinity Rep, Alliance Theatre, Native Voices, Teatro Vision, ChildsPlay, Guadalupe Culture Center, and more. He served on the boards of Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the Performing Arts Alliance, Arts and Democracy, and is currently the Board President for Cornerstone Theater Company. He holds an MFA in directing from the University of California, Irvine.
Mark is a recipient of the Zelda Fichandler Award and the Americans for the Arts’ Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities. In 2021, Mark was in the inaugural class of the California Arts Council’s Legacy Artist Fellows.
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Michael is an arts administrator and director that works along the intersection of community- and civic-engaged arts.
He’s currently working with theater artists Mark-n-Sparks on their project The Most Beautiful Home… Maybe, which examines affordable housing and the national housing crisis. He’s worked with Cornerstone Theater Company in varying artistic and administrative capacities for years, most recently as the associate director of What Happens Next, a collaboration with veterans, and for Native Nation, the culmination of a 2-year engagement process with native folks in the Phoenix metropolitan area, over which he also served as the Engagement Associate.
He recently joined the Cornerstone staff as Administrative Associate and also joined its ensemble of artists. In his work he’s traveled nationally and internationally, visiting elementary schools in El Salvador as the tour manager for the Urban Latin Dance Theatre company CONTRA-TIEMPO; and as a stage manager for an ice opera festival at The Royal Opera House in Muscat, Oman.
Another highlight was touring as stage manager for Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s /peh-LO-tah/ to the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Kennedy Center. He has a BA from the University of California, Irvine, and transferred there from Rio Hondo Community College. He lives in Whittier, CA.
Land Acknowledgement
As artists working nationally in housing, we recognize that the lands of the United States are the traditional territories of many Indigenous nations.
To reimagine and uproot the colonized systems of housing, education, health, and food that are not serving Native people we also recommend checking out and donating today to these organizations that create nationwide and systemic change for Native people: