Sheila “Silly Sheila” gaskins is a Teaching Artist, Activist, Playwright, Stand-Up Comic, Arts Advocate, Cultural Worker, DEI Facilitator, and Healer. She is a native of Baltimore, Maryland and was awarded the Renaissance Woman of the Year by the Baltimore Art Scene in 2023. She is the author of her memoir of poetry and prose, A Whistling Girl and a Crowing Hen Never Comes to a Very Good End and Other Things my Mama Said. Recipient of The 2022 Grit Fund for Puppets, Masks and Crankies - Shifting the Story, the goal is to expose children and adults to the oldest forms of storytelling. Sheila has trained with Move Move Collaborative, Restorative Justice Circles (NYC/ DC Peace Teams),The Baltimore Improv Group (BIG), Re-Imagining Comedia (Centerstage), Puppets & Performing Objects (MICA), Urban Bush Women and Augusto Boal, Innovator of Theatre of the Oppressed. Sheila devises workshops and training curriculum for Alternatives to Violence Project, (AVP), Non-Violent communication (NVC), Heart to Heart (NJ), Clayworks,Theatre Action Group (TAG), ex-offenders, special needs children, gifted and talented, the elderly and life long learners. Sheila co-wrote the community based play, U Thought I was Him directed by Troy Burton in 2022 and is a 2016 recipient of Alternate Roots CAPP grant to produce, write and direct Last House Standing - A Play about the Highway to Nowhere.  Sheila was also featured in The Baltimore Sun’s 10 People Who Make Baltimore Better and received The Village That Vanished - Remember, Rekindle, Reclaim, Restore Award from the National Great Blacks In Wax Museum.