Saturday, April 25th
ACCESSIBILITY NOTICE: all of Saturday’s sessions will have live ASL interpretation available.
NOTE: If you have registered to attend, and have not yet received a message from us through Eventbrite with access to the Welcome Packet and Session Links, please check your spam folder. You will need this information to access Saturday’s Zoom rooms. If you still have not received the message, please email Hanako, hanako@artsconnectinternational.org.
Sessions are organized under three strands to help guide learning and engagement. We invite Summit attendees to use the strands as a guide in choosing which sessions to attend.
#AES2020 learning strands:
Structures for Success: Building Equity in Your Organization. Conversations and trainings surrounding visions of equitable organizations and steps we can take to get us there.
Innovative Creatives: Building New Systems. Conversations for those interested in, or currently building equity in entrepreneurial ways, including new approaches and methods, systems, or structures.
Celebrating Resistance: Centering Community. Conversations celebrating equity work already taking place, with the aim of empowering others to continue, strengthen or start similar work.
Opening Keynote (9am - 10:30am EDT)
Welcome by ACI Executive Director Allegra Fletcher
Opening Address by Mark Charles
“Celebrating Resistance Through Arts” - Talkback with Social Practice Artists
Nayda Cuevas, visual artist
Wallace Juma, visual artist
Yara Liceaga-Rojas, poet
Cindy Lu, mixed media artist
Edafe Okporo, theater artist
Gallery “Walk” & Break (10:30am - 11:30am EDT)
Explore the work of AES2020 visual artists
Breakout #1 (11:30am - 12:30pm EDT)
Strand 1: Using participatory arts to open conversation on taboo topics and promote inclusion in Malawi
Presenters: Rodger Phiri, Sharon Kalima Nkhwazi, Helen Todd
This session looks at how Art & Global Health Center Africa (ArtGlo) in Malawi is using participatory arts to ignite dialogue and action on sensitive issues, including LGBTI rights, sexual health and gender inequality. It focuses on case studies from two projects. 'Umunthu' applies the pan African philosophical concept of humanity, in curbing health access disparities of LGBTI people through creative participatory arts. MASA Youth engages young people on exploring gender and sexual reproductive health issues, and last year won the UN SDG Action award- creative category.
Strand 2: Resistance in Arts Education Praxis through Inquiries, Celebrations, & Creative Constructions
Presenters: Danielle Schechner, Terrance Wong
Through interactive activities and creative process, Danielle and Terrance invite us to collaboratively reconfigure HOW we think about and do arts and education, core pipelines to arts participation and leadership. Decolonize our imaginations by dismantling and redefining rigor, ensure access to meaningful experiences which transgress Patriarchal-White Supremacy-Capitalism-Ableism, investigate and get inspired by exemplars for centering creative practices which are equitable by design and empower diverse ways of knowing and being in order to expand our palette for applying equity-research. Bring your own insights and creativity!
Strand 3: Building A More Equitable Future: The importance of youth empowerment in the arts
Presenter: Katytarika Bartel, Carlie Febo, Porsha Olayiwola, Anthony Febo, Roselle Carrillo, Althea Bennett, Andrine Pierresaint
As Boston finds itself home to a vibrant and ever-expanding arts community, it is essential to shift the conversation around equity, empowerment, and creative voice. This panel discussion will center the voices of young people and educators who are actively engaging in creative youth development programs that focus on the types of community engagement necessary to building a more equitable future.
Lunch Break (12:30pm - 1:30pm EDT)
Recharge and refuel before the next breakout session.
Breakout #2 (1:30pm - 2:30pm EDT)
Strand 1: Pick me, choose me, love me: Retaining Boston's Emerging Talent
Presenters: Juwonni Cottle, Jasmine Garcia, Neo Gcabo
Boston is home to some of the finest schools, cultural institutions boasts one of the highest concentrations of undergraduate arts-management programs in the world, and as such, has all the potential to become a cultural hub that rivals cities like Atlanta, NY, LA and Chicago. However, our creatives leave us, citing a lack of opportunities and resources to make careers and livelihoods in the city. Join us as we ideate on how to establish a more inclusive, equitable and creative Boston.
Strand 2: Steadfastly White, female, hetero, and abled-bodied: An international survey of the motivations and experiences of arts management graduates
Presenters: Antonio Cuyler
As the first of its kind, this study aimed to gauge the health of the field to inform future teaching and learning, as well as the strategic development of Arts Management programs globally. The implications of the survey center on the narrow demographics of the field and its impact on a lack of diversity in the sector in terms of employment, cultural production, and representation.
Strand 3: The Art of Centering Community
Presenters: Gracie Xavier, Rhonda Greene, Kalisha Davis
This workshop empowers people to start or continue anti-oppression work by exploring successful equity community work that decentralizes whiteness and other systems of oppression and re-centers community. Multimodal in format, this workshop taps into the wisdom of individuals and groups doing the work through model sharing of successful equitable cultural arts project; an interactive arts-based component based in poetry, visual arts and lived experiences; small group dialogue among creators; and large groups sharing of successes and commonalities.
Gallery “Walk” & Break (2:30pm - 3:30pm EDT)
Explore the work of AES2020 visual artists
Breakout #3 (3:30pm - 4:30pm EDT)
Strand 1: Older and Bolder: using taiko and other creative elements to organize and bolster unheard voices
Presenters: Karen Young
This workshop will highlight the elder organizing project Older and Bolder as an example of how artists can address issues of equity, and will center experiencing and modeling elder engagement.
Strand 2: Reimagining Redistribution
Presenters: Eva Rosenberg
The focus of this session is examining the role of artists/community members and of professional grant-makers in allocation processes, and the imagining how to make funding distribution in a variety of contexts more equitable and transparent. This aims to be a facilitated conversation about what it would take and mean to co-design arts grant-making practices.
Strand 3: Creating Equity in the Arts for People with Disabilities: the Berklee Institute for Arts Education and Special Needs
Presenters: Rhoda Bernard
In this roundtable discussion, Dr. Rhoda Bernard, Founding Managing Director of the Berklee Institute for Arts Education and Special Needs, will share lessons learned and lingering questions and issues in her work in increasing opportunities for people with disabilities to participate in arts education and in the arts.
Happy Hour & Networking (6pm-8pm EDT)
Join our fabulous co-hosts, Network for Arts Administrators of Color (NAAC), Arts Administrators of Color (AAC) Network, Women of Color in the Arts (WOCA) & the ACI Team for a Networking Happy Hour to debrief the day … or just to mingle! Social change and community go hand-in-hand, so let’s be in community with each other.
