Director

Julie McLeod

JULIE McLEOD founded Art With­out Lim­its as a non­profit 25 years ago. It has come into its own time to serve the tal­ented young artists in Santa Bar­bara County now.

Julie was the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Santa Bar­bara Dance Alliance for 10 years and was on their Board since its incep­tion in 1979, serv­ing as Pres­i­dent and Vice-President. With SBDA she pro­duced and devel­oped the annual Teen Chore­o­g­ra­phers Show­case (fea­tured in Feb 2004 Dance Mag­a­zine); BASSH: Ball­room, Argen­tine Tango, Swing, Salsa & Hip-Hop; NEW WORKS: Santa Bar­bara Chore­o­g­ra­phers; Santa Bar­bara Dance Day and the Multi-Cultural Dance & Music Fes­ti­val.  She also devel­oped their Schol­ar­ship Award pro­gram which gave 114 awards in 6 years to tal­ented young­sters to con­tinue their stud­ies locally.

She sits on the Artis­tic Advi­sory Boards of The Granada The­atre Project, Sum­mer­Dance, and Mar­jorie Luke The­atre, and is a past mem­ber of the Santa Bar­bara Arts Advi­sory Coun­cil. Julie served on the Per­form­ing Arts League for 6 years serv­ing as Pres­i­dent for 2 terms.

Julie was the owner of Dance Ware­house for 20 years, a 4 stu­dio com­plex hous­ing 20 instruc­tors in all forms of dance and pro­duc­ing stu­dio con­certs and weekly guest artist classes. She directed and chore­o­graphed for her dance com­pany Improv, Inc. She was the S B News Press dance critic for 18 years, and has writ­ten for “Dance Teacher” and “Dance Magazine.”

She has a multi-decade back­ground in dance as a per­former. In New York she stud­ied at Juil­liard with Martha Gra­ham, Jose Limon, Doris Humphrey and Anthony Tudor.  She worked with Jerome Rob­bins in the orig­i­nal Broad­way pro­duc­tion of “West­side Story”, and toured with Yul Bryn­ner in “King & I.” She was on con­tract nego­ti­at­ing teams with Actor’s Equity in New York. She was flown to New York in Decem­ber 2009 to per­form on Broad­way, with Chita Rivera and Carol Lawrence, as an orig­i­nal mem­ber of the cast of West Side Story for their 50 year reunion.

A pas­sion­ate arts ‘rab­ble rouser’ her involve­ment in the arts includes man­age­ment, advo­cacy, teach­ing, and chore­og­ra­phy. Julie has served on City Arts Advi­sory com­mit­tees, is a found­ing mem­ber of the state wide Dance Alliance – Cal­i­for­nia Dance Net­work – and was awarded the first Santa Bar­bara Dance Alliance  Life­time Achieve­ment Award, in 1979, for her con­tri­bu­tion to dance in Santa Bar­bara and was hon­ored as a Local Hero in the Inde­pen­dent in 2005. She reg­u­larly serves on Task Forces for the bet­ter­ment of arts and artists in Santa Barbara.

Art With­out Lim­its is her cur­rent non-profit project that is in its sec­ond year. It is devel­op­ing one– on-one long term men­tor­ships with pro­fes­sional artists paired with emerg­ing artists in all of the arts; per­form­ing, visual, lit­er­ary, media and admin­is­tra­tion. They will work with their men­tor on their art form, go to con­certs, gal­leries, learn to cri­tique, do out­reach projects and will attend sem­i­nars with busi­ness related experts in arts law, con­tracts, grant writ­ing, fund find­ing and have a chance to have their work seen, all equip­ping them for a suc­cess­ful career. Other pro­grams have been devel­oped includ­ing shorter men­tor­ships, high school peer to peer men­tor­ships, fis­cal spon­sor­ship for artists and col­lab­o­ra­tions with other orga­ni­za­tions for the annual Art Career Day Con­fer­ence. She is cur­rently act­ing as the exec­u­tive direc­tor, find­ing tal­ent and men­tors in all fields, as well as fund­ing development.

Julie firmly believes that with the guid­ance and sup­port of a men­tor and the tools, tal­ented artists can believe in them­selves and have a suc­cess­ful career.

With guid­ance we can develop tal­ented and con­fi­den­tial artists in many fields.