Erica Larsen-Dockray is an Animation and Media Artist, Educator, Playworker, and Activist. She is an occasional adjunct faculty at her alma mater, California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), in the Film/Video School’s Experimental Animation program. Erica’s class, The Animated Woman, was covered by the Associated Press and Agencia EFE, and featured in over 1,000 news outlets including the LA Times and the New York Times. In 2020, Erica finished a 9 year tenure as a teaching artist at Inner-City Arts in downtown Los Angeles where she ran the Saturday Middle School and High School Animation courses.

 

In 2013 she founded the Calibraska Arts Initiative, a cross-cultural summer program bringing artists from California to her hometown in Nebraska to teach multi-generational workshops in their métier. In 2017 the initiative received a $25,000 grant from the Johnny Carson Foundation which was used to purchase 5 animation backpacks allowing the program to expand into a state-wide initiative. Erica also is a Co-Founder of SCV Adventure Play Foundation with her husband Jeremiah, creating play spaces for children and adults, which facilitate and support self-directed and unstructured play.