Larissa Mukundwa: Reflecting on the 2026 MLK Student Leadership Conference at UIC
UPPF Graduate Mentor Larissa Mukundwa shares her reflections from the 2026 MLK Student Leadership Conference at UIC
On Saturday, January 31st, 2026, I attended the 2026 MLK Student Leadership Conference at UIC in the Illinois Room of Student Center East. The theme of this year’s conference was “Restoring Hope and Reclaiming Justice”. There was an opening African drumming and dance performance followed by a keynote rap/spoken word performance and life history interview. The conference then broke out into different sessions and finished with a poster presentation and panel by some UPPF Fellows. The conference was hosted by Student Leadership and Civic Engagement (SLCE) and co-sponsored by many other campus groups including UPPF.
The opening African dance and drumming performance was very exciting and enthralling. The performance was by a southside African art collective led by Victoria Boateng. She is an autistic artist who also runs a music academy called the Victoria Djembe Academy which helps those in the Autism community of all ages and women of color learn and heal through the art and therapy of Djembe drumming. She was accompanied by another drummer and by two dancers who danced in the West African tradition and also drummed. I also attended her drum circle session which was really fun. She is a great artist and teacher.
The keynote speakers were two women named Jacinda Bullie and Jaquanda Villegas who were lifelong friends and co-founders of Kuumba Lynx which is a Chicago hip-hop culture art collective that also cultivates healing practices and engages in grassroots organizing. Their keynote began with a cool spoken word performance by each of the women. They then sat down and conducted a Life History Interview with each other. I learned many fascinating aspects of their lives from both the performance and the interview. Jacinda is of Native American and White Southern heritage. She was born in Chicago and grew up in a household where her stepfather was a White member of the Black Panther Party and her mother would often host many members of her Uptown community for meals, art and camaraderie. Jaquanda was born in South Carolina and had many beautiful memories of experiences as a young child with her Southern grandmother that inspired both her spoken word and life history. Her parents were also healthcare workers who worked in Uptown as nurses which inspired her work as a Doula. One could see through their life histories how they connected through art and community to create their organization.
One of the sessions I attended was a healing circle exercise that used cool artifacts like sage smudges, as well as Lakota and Mexican articles of clothing as a sort of altar in the middle of the room of items that were meaningful to the facilitator. The circle cultivated skills in listening to others and letting them vent and embracing the silence as a means of learning about others.
I then attended the Art session which was led by Salena Peebles who is the Program Assistant at AAAN and the student group Khaos Creative Collective. The session was for artmaking. The Khaos Creative Collective had impressive hand-carved rubber stamps of Martin Luther King and some popular sayings associated with him for students to print onto different colored paper. Salena provided art supplies for students to create banners using words and images that inspired them for the day. There was R&B music playing with mats on the floor and different chair and table configurations so that students could be free with how they chose to work on their art.
The day finished with poster presentations and a panel by seven UPPF fellows. I was there as a GA Mentor for UPPF to table for the fellowship program as well as to support the fellows. The poster presentations were a good practice run for the fellows for their Symposium that is happening in April. Six of the seven fellows presenting were my fellows. They did a great job preparing for their poster presentations. Some had created posters and had books and artifacts on their table while others had printouts on their table. There was a lot of interest at their tables. I was impressed by how well the fellows did with their panel. They all gave great answers that taught the audience about their experiences at their internships and with their research projects. They also gave great answers about how Dr. Martin Luther King has inspired their work and interest in Civic Engagement. I was proud to see how the students have developed professionally since the start of the program.
The programming of the conference was great and really engaging. I encourage students to take advantage of other programs like this around UIC, especially the programming available this month for Black History Month which engage multiple groups at UIC with educational, art-based, and community-building driven activities.
