Amplify & Ignite: Creative Practice in and With Communities

Buy a drink and a bite, support a local business and connect with other Symposium attendees.

Welcome Remarks:

• Alexandra Socarides, Emerson Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs 
• Alexis Truitt, Executive Director, American Alliance for Theatre & Education

Framing and Goal Setting, Symposium Co-Chairs Lizzy Cooper Davis and Dana Edell
Community Grounding and Activation: Elisa Hamilton and Gillian Epstein

Re-Emerging Together
Elisa Hamilton and Gillian Epstein created "Re-Emerging Together" in the Summer of 2021, funded by the Sketch Model program at Olin College of Engineering. After experiencing prolonged social isolation due to the pandemic, Elisa and Gillian felt that reconnecting in groups was particularly meaningful. They wondered if there was a way to mindfully come back together, as a way to honor the significance of the moment, peel a few layers past small talk, and get to know one another in new ways. "Re-Emerging Together: An Activity" was designed as a mode for activating conversations, as well as a way for participants to share what they wondered, learned, and celebrated in the course of their isolation and re-emergence. Four years later, Elisa and Gillian have adapted this model to speak to our current moment. While the original activity asked participants to look back and consider their internal experiences of the pandemic, the updated activity has a more outward focus on the present. We ask participants to consider and share what they question, embrace, and imagine in our current time of uncertainty. In this playful workshop, participants will ponder timely questions, share, listen, learn, and leave with a tool to engage others in meaningful conversation in the classroom and beyond.

Black women educators inspire this workshop. In Progressive Dystopia, Dr. Savannah Shange, moves out of her way when writing to ensure Black children SHINE, despite the violence of schooling upheld by adults and community. She has a way of painting a visual of their brilliance. Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings and Dr. Lisa Delpit reminded me during "play time", at a Sisters In Education Circle retreat, that hand clapping and oral rhymes are a Black tradition that we must keep alive in honor of Black children. All of them inspire me, as a theatre teacher, to create a workshop that celebrates what can be viewed as the grotesque, but is ACTUALLY THE BEAUTY OF BLACK YOUTH. From the way they look, the ways they move and dress, and sound…I love Black youth in all their fullness. We’ll celebrate Black youth, who are the creators and innovators of Black culture and world culture, and who are constantly stolen from and poorly replicated. We will design grills made of play dough, magazines, blocks, and all types of unconventional materials, create hand claps about Blackness, and discuss how folks can show up for and with Black youth in spaces that feel authentic. We’ll also talk about how to be in conversation WITH them about anti-Blackness and white supremacy delusion and how to continue or start the journey of releasing that from oneself. Most importantly, we will discuss how Black children show us time and time again how to be in joy, resistance, and our humanity.

How can we interrupt assumptions we hold that may hinder the growth of students, who are caught in a system rife with racial and socioeconomic inequities?  How do artistic processes and experiences intersect with equity practices?  Where are opportunities to activate artistic innovation and processes to create joyful & liberatory arts education? How do we build organizational practices that continually examine, reimagine, and sustain this work? These are questions we at ArtsConnection have been delving into deeply for over 8 years in order to ensure we intentionally uplift all the humans in our education and organizational spaces.  At the intersection of history and the advancement of humanity you will always find the arts. So, we have been facilitating ongoing practitioner research focused on how we can engage our humanity and bring equitable practices to the forefront of how we work by activating artistic processes. One result is our new framework which activates key artistic approaches to build belonging, agency and cultural humility. Another is the journey we took to collaboratively design and apply this framework organizationally. In this multidisciplinary arts filled workshop, Facilitators and Participants will experience, reflect on, and offer feedback on ArtsConnection's new research-based pedagogical framework for creating joyful and liberatory arts education. The goal is to work collaboratively to activate artistic practices, examine how working as an artist can disrupt classroom power dynamics, build student agency, and deepen student learning and motivation to learn.

Through gender play, object study, queer reflections, sense memory, and repetitious failure, Rezes offers exercises and techniques in performance expansion for all theatre artists and educators to employ in rehearsal, on stage, or in the classroom.PART ONE:To begin, Fractals: Nonbinary Acting Methods is a workshop led by Jo Michael Rezes (they/them), who works as an actor and transmedia artist in Greater Boston. This workshop offers a nonbinary approach to the creation of character for performers and educators of all ages—with special attention to professional development for early-career actors. At AATE, Rezes offers theatre educators and performers methods for understanding the fractal patterns of gender in rehearsal. Workshop highlights: Yale Dramatic Association (virtual, 2021), Vassar College (2022), Lick-Wilmerding High School (May 2024), Massachusetts GSA Student Leadership Council (Aug 2024). This workshop was sponsored in part by a grant from the City of Boston Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture and with support from the Education Department of Company One Theatre. This workshop is dedicated to actor training free from binary ways of thinking, doing, and experiencing theatrical labor in rehearsal and the classroom. PART TWO: Rezes currently serves as the Curriculum Developer for The Theater Offensive's nationally award-winning True Colors queer youth theatre program. Rezes holds a Q+A about the incorporation of gender expansive techniques into classrooms and rehearsal rooms for all age levels, with special attention to QTPOC youth, as they have just completed a redesign of education programs at TTO. How can we teach queer methods in censored spaces or within queerphobic legislation? How can we support gender expansive students through and within the theatre industry? Can theatre become a space for play and imagination outside of the binary?

IMPROVing Medicine: A case study on Afro-Latin youth-led, theatre interventions for medical students
Presenter: Josephine Ross
The positive impact of using improvisational theatre (improv) to improve social skills among medical professionals has been demonstrated consistently. However, no study has been conducted that investigates the effects of including marginalized youth as facilitators in leading improv exercises with medical students. In September 2024, a workshop was developed for medical students to directly engage with youth of color and to understand the lived experiences of the teens. In this initiative, six Afro-Latin youth were selected to work with Josephine Ross at Hyde Square Task Force (HSTF). The youth collaborated on the design and facilitation of an improv-based workshop for medical students. Data suggests that the empathy levels of these medical students increased through participation in improv exercises and direct involvement with the youth. Substantial change also occurred in the youth facilitators. Specifically, these areas of growth included their perceptions of themselves as leaders and artists. More importantly, this case study has implications for future DEI-focused work. By bringing two groups of people who do not typically engage with one another together, the teens and medical students learned about and developed understanding for each other. Knowing of its effects on social skill acquisition, improv became the foundation from which empathy grew. In this workshop, we will discuss the procedures and findings of the collaboration between HSTF and Tufts University School of Medicine. Following this brief presentation, participants will experience an hour-long improv intervention led by two of the Afro-Latin youth facilitators. Seeing how the improv games and scenarios focus on the lives of marginalized youth, participants will experience how this workshop design allows for medical students to have a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of teens of color. We will end the session with a discussion about future work and how these findings could impact future DEI designs.

Change Makers: Empowering Students as Leaders of their own Education & Activism
Presenters: Raquel Duarte Hunt and Mark VanDerzee

In this session, presenters will share the "Change Makers" framework, a flexible developmental framework that utilizes theatre as a powerful tool for developing students into change makers. Participants will learn about Company One Theatre (C1), a Boston-based theatre company whose mission is to build community at the intersection of art and social change; and its education work focusing on the evolution of the Change Maker framework as a curricular tool and the North Star for all its education programming. Participants will engage with the five skills of the framework: Empathy, Build Community, Critical Consciousness, Agency, and Social Justice through hands-on activities and embodiment through play. Participants will be invited to reflect on what is essential when activating their students to social action and envision how they (as educators) might empower them (their students) to that action by considering the classes they teach, the content they chose, the scaffolding they build, and how their students are positioned as leaders of their own education and activism.

Hearing Our History: The Sonic of Historic Sonic Happenings

The Society of Historic Sonic Happenings
Presenter: Adrienne Kapstein

This presentation will profile The Society of Historic Sonic Happenings (SHSH): an immersive, participatory performance and sound art project about the hidden histories of our surroundings. At its core, SHSH is a playful invitation for deep listening, inspiring curiosity for what came before us. The work occurs in partnership with the communities it seeks to serve, engaging audiences of all ages and abilities in thought-provoking dialogues and workshops that occur in situ before the work is presented. We are guided by the question: how can a radically inclusive understanding of a local community’s past help it unite and imagine its future?

The Search For Signs Of Meaningful Inclusion Of Disabled Students In The Public High School  Theater Universe
Presenter: Marianne Pillsbury

This paper seeks to illuminate qualitative research conducted on intentionally including disabled students, identified for special education services, in a public high school theater context. The findings are based on the experiences of a theater educator, artist, and scholar running a "unified theater" program where students with and without disabilities come together to create and present an original devised play. The author dramatizes what "meaningful inclusion" of students with disabilities (particularly autism, ADHD, and anxiety) looks, sounds and feels like by creatively interpreting field log observations and participant interviews in the form of an ethnotheatre-inspired play referencing popular theatre forms including musical theater.

Reimagining Technique: Teaching Theatre Skills in a Changing World
Nigel Semaj
 As we face an uncertain world marked by divisions and transformations, theatre education holds immense potential to bridge gaps, foster connections, and amplify community wisdom. Yet, we find ourselves at a crossroads: How do we teach foundational acting, movement, and voice techniques in ways that resonate with today's learners while staying attuned to the urgent social and cultural concerns of our time? This session invites theatre educators, artists, and scholars to collectively imagine new approaches to teaching theatre skills that are experiential, embodied, and rooted in the realities of our students' lives. How might our classrooms whether on campus, in community centers, or other shared spaces serve as places where techniques are not only learned but also practiced as tools for connection, reflection, and change? How do we engage Gen Z learners, who crave immediacy, application, and purpose, while nurturing their artistry and critical awareness? Through facilitated dialogue and collaborative inquiry, we will explore how reimagining the ways we teach and assess technique can better reflect the cultural brilliance found in classrooms, schoolyards, kitchens, and street corners. Together, we will grapple with questions about the role of performing arts education in movements for justice, equity, and community-building. This session is not about presenting answers but about sharing questions, reflecting on challenges, and envisioning possibilities. How can our pedagogical practices foster artistry that both honors tradition and amplifies contemporary concerns? What can we learn from the beautiful failures and inspiring successes in our work as we adapt to meet the needs of this generation and the communities we serve?

Black women and femmes who exist on dis bitter earth do not except that we must be the caretakers of the world and of ourselves without the communal support of our village. We deserve to do more than just survive. "In Danger Species/Baby Girl, How Does Your Garden Grow?", follows Patrica Hill Collins invocation to start with the self andour interpersonal identities. Rootedin Kemi Adeymedi's lean theory, the digital interactive theatrical performance included me embodying a sunflower and giving my audience the role of "community gardener" to "water me" when they think I need it, to see if I would be cared for if I were a sunflower and not an Afro-Indigenous woman. This performance uses my angularity to the ground to signal wilting and co-performative witnessing my D. Soyini Madison, inviting the audience to perform with me in their role of "community gardener". This project asks what care looks like and if there is an urgency behind that caretaking responsibility. I wanted to take this on because I must go through the world outside of being a sunflower. And when in the wrong company, I must protect myself from wilting.

As legislation across states like Florida, Texas, Utah, and others restrict conversations around equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), how can theatre education programs effectively train culturally responsive teachers? And how do we do this in our communities with the laws push against it? This session invites participants to collectively grapple with the challenges of fostering inclusive teaching practices within a rapidly shifting sociopolitical landscape. Through inquiry and visioning, we will explore how theatre education can remain committed to diverse voices and stories, even amid societal pushback and restrictive policies. This collaborative session aims to inspire actionable strategies and frameworks for addressing these pressing challenges. Together, we will explore strategies for equipping future theatre educators with tools to navigate and resist these barriers, including innovative curriculum design, advocacy approaches, and other ideas brought to the table by the folks in the room. I hope to explore ethical dilemmas and dream up possibilities for transformative education rooted in empathy, equity, and resistance. The session aims to create a space where educators, artists, and administrators can share experiences, learn from one another, and envision actionable strategies.

This session provokes questions about the roles and practices of researchers in educational and applied theatre. As members of a field that requires constant advocacy and justification, in this inquiry and visioning session we consider how philosophical and pragmatic priorities, expectations, and restrictions guide the ways we see ourselves and our work. We ask ourselves and session participants to navigate challenging questions about our own intentions, positions, capacities, and impacts to propose that we should consistently consider questions such as: "How can we identify research questions and explorations that benefit our communities?" "How do we determine if we are the right people to explore particular questions or the best ways of investigating them?" "How do we manage balancing research and advocacy?" We begin by reviewing the questions the session explores along with why we feel they are important to engage. To ground the session, we then briefly discuss using the questions to explore two of our own research projects: a study that surveyed the leaders of TYA theatres (Matt) and an oral history performance project, which explores the relationships between a university and the broader regional community that hosts it (Claire). At least half of the session will be an open forum for session participants to apply the questions to their own research studies and discuss the ramifications of posing such questions.

Theatre Education faculty and pre-service drama teachers will lead a gathering of educators and artists to collectively use drama processes and tools to play with Artificial Intelligence designed for the drama classroom. In our explorations we plan to use drama activities to identify the possibilities of developing drama curriculum co-created with our own minds and bodies and the popular but controversial technology. We are particularly interested in the ways that our collective embodied practice might inform our understanding of this new technology. We have planned a process driven investigation in which we will think about the ways that our bodies encounter the technology. Specifically, we will explore and use Artificial Intelligence tools through embodied engagement and active communication with AI together in real time. We believe that this will help us better understand the capabilities of this technology as we produce and refine drama curriculum. We also want participants to consider the ways that a GenAI-produced collaborative curriculum might function within the live space and place of drama classrooms. These constraints will inform our collaboration with the materials created using Artificial Intelligence. We hope that GenAI might amplify our curricular processes and products, but we also want to also maintain a critical awareness of the potentially serious ethical challenges present when using these technologies. To maintain creativity and critical alertness we have built in time for guided reflection that addresses the affordances and limitations of what we are making with ChatGPT. We believe that these reflective opportunities will help us to seriously consider the ways we might interrogate our curricular processes and products to better meet teachers' lived experiences in classrooms. Through our work together we hope to amplify creativity and collaboration as a means of reducing our community's concerns about the encroachment of Artificial Intelligence into drama spaces.

Data Theatre is a novel practice co-designed over the past two years by a multidisciplinary team at Northeastern University in collaboration with community groups in the Boston area. Our Civic Data Theatre process re-imagines what community meetings and data-informed democracies can include. In our process, community stakeholders collaborate with trained participatory theatre artists to examine, interpret, and create new information about a pressing local issue. Together, they translate quantitative data–a central language of government decision making–to stories, movements, feelings, and experiences that can be collectively examined by a broadly constituted group of community stakeholders. Read more about the project at https://camd.northeastern.edu/the-data-theatre-collaborative/.

Choreographing the Headwrap
Presenter: Joya Powell

Movement of the People Dance Company's Hair Ties is a multidisciplinary piece inspired by America's fear of Black power and beauty. Inspired by the innovative ways Black and Brown women ad(dressed) the Tignon Laws of the 1700s, which made it illegal for for them to have their hair uncovered in public in Louisiana, this evocative work is a celebration of Black beauty, creativity, and ingenuity in the face of perpetual oppression. In our workshop, participants witness the similarities between place and cultures through the pathways the arms take, the knots, folds and twists of fabric. In a circle, we start by introducing ourselves, and facilitate a name game with the prompt - how did you do your hair this morning? MOPDC shares the story behind our choreography Hair Ties, its connection to the Tignon Laws and reference to US Crown Act 2022. We lead everyone in a short warm-up garnered by vocabulary from Hair Ties. We ask participants about their references to headwraps, or covering their hair. MOPDC teaches our favorite headwrap styles, with participants doing them with us. We go around the circle, participants each share their own favorite style, teach it, and share their memories - where did you learn it, from who. We learn with the fabrics and then we collectively figure out the gestures that are created without the fabric, linking each person's movements together to create choreography and end by learning the MOPDC Shuffle. As a close out we share gems from the workshop and MOPDC's ritual of breathe and leave.

**Note: Please be prepared with a head scarf if you have one.**Designing Belonging: Somatic Scores for Reflection and Connection
Presenter: Jessica Roseman

This workshop investigates design principles for choreographed somatic scores that foster self-awareness and belonging. Grounded in my somatic research project, Nourish, this approach integrates personal reflection with responsive movement practices to promote agency through embodied themes such as breath, attention, and imagination. Drawing on expertise in Feldenkrais and GYROTONIC Methods, therapeutic massage, and Deborah Hay-inspired interdisciplinary contemporary choreography, I design culturally and abilities-inclusive scores that honor diverse individual needs. At Arrow Street Arts in Cambridge, MA, I engage in an autoethnographic process to design, document, and playtest Nourish scores. Participants in this workshop will engage in a series of guided movement explorations and then reflect through writing exit tickets, generating speculative insights into choreographic composition and somatic practice. Building on Haraes' participatory somesthetic design principles, this research explores choreographic composition as a site for relational engagement, offering adaptable frameworks for inclusive somatic practices. The workshop invites reflection on how embodied movement can foster belonging and contribute to personal and social transformation in contemporary choreography. 

The first radio broadcast of a president's inaugural address was on March 4, 1925, when Calvin Coolidge was sworn in for his second presidential term. To acknowledge the centenary of this broadcasting milestone, NYU's Verbatim Performance Lab (VPL) will explore how audiences perceive the inaugural addresses of US presidents when the words of the addresses are anonymized and presented as scored transcripts that reflect the speech cadence used by the presidents during their speech delivery. The workshop will use the 100-year history of broadcasted inaugural addresses to explore how identity impacts how an audience receives a president's message. VPL has experimented with a warm-up activity of sharing an anonymized scored excerpt of an inaugural address, asking participants to read it, and then sharing who they think was speaking. This workshop will expand upon that short activity and offer scored transcripts from multiple inaugural speeches from across the last 100 years for participants' consideration. Participants will interact with the anonymized transcripts in various ways, including selecting ones that resonate with them the most and then experimenting with speaking the text aloud. Participants will also explore how embodying the speeches using the scoring of the original speaker impacts their perceptions of the speech, its meaning, and its impact. The workshop will culminate in a reveal of each of the original speakers of the excerpts, followed by a discussion about initial perceptions from reading, discoveries from speaking aloud, and realizations once the actual identities of the presidents have been revealed.

Please join us for a pre-panel appetizer reception.

As we face an uncertain world with stark divisions and ruptures, what is our role as artists, educators, and scholars working with and across our multiple communities? How can and do the performing arts amplify community concerns, connections, and celebrations? How can we center arts and culture in movements for local and global change?

Join us for an inspiring discussion moderated by Michael Bobbitt, Executive Director of Massachusetts Cultural Council, and featuring:

• Giselle Byrd, Executive Director of The Theater Offensive
• Ronee Penoi, Interim Executive Director of the Office of the Arts & Director of Artistic Programming at ArtsEmerson
• Alison Yueming Qu 曲悦鸣, Co-Founder and Executive Director of CHUANG Stage.

Sponsored by the Dean’s Office at the School of the ArtsClick Here for Live Stream:
https://howlround.com/happenings/welcome-boston-keynote-panel-creative-practices-and-communities

(Re)Turning to Storytelling
Presenter: Alex Ates

The COVID-19 shutdowns, the violent political conditions in the United States, the corporate manipulation of social media, and the rapid rise of AI necessitate a return to the basics of theater pedagogy storytelling. In 2022, I introduced a new course, Storytelling and Performance, at Westtown School, where I was the director of the arts. The course was an introductory course to the grades 9-12 Theater program, designed to intrigue and attract students who might not typically foresee themselves taking an introductory theater course. It worked. Sixty percent of the students who enrolled in the course had never taken a Theater course or participated in a production. After a series of intimate, in-class "slams" (performances) of their stories, students compellingly performed themed stories for the enraptured school body. Performances were audio-recorded and evolved into an intentionally-produced podcast. Storytelling and Performance focused on the simple, innate human need and ability to share compelling stories that impact life experiences despite the "slings and arrows" of dehumanizing modernity.

Using Theatre Practices to Manage InfoWhelm
Presenters: Milly Schmid + Jackie Agliata
In the Spring of 2024, Jackie and Milly co-presented a six-session-long artist-in-residence program using exercises from Newspaper Theater to investigate media coverage of Climate Change and Climate Justice with 11th and 12th grade International Baccalaureate theater students at Snowden International School at Copley in Boston, MA. In this workshop, Jackie and Milly will highlight the moments of success and emerging tensions in developing the curriculum for the project and then lead symposium  participants through an embodied, Newspaper Theater-inspired devising activity. Session participants will unpack and reflect on the devised work and brainstorm applications to their own education or community context. Participants will receive a residency map and example exercises to explore media literacy with youth.

The Weathering Project: A Sensory Theatre Workshop for Connection and Inclusion
Presenter: Kaitlin Jaskolski

Step into a world where the senses reign, and connection takes center stage. The Weathering Project is a sensory theatre workshop designed to create immersive, inclusive experiences for diverse audiences particularly those often left out of traditional arts spaces. Just as weather can shift in an instant, this workshop invites participants to explore the fluid, dynamic nature of sensory theatre, where touch, sound, movement, and visuals combine to spark new forms of creative expression. In this workshop, we'll harness the elements of sensory engagement to foster connection over perfection. Participants will explore how sensory stimuli can be used to break down barriers, build bridges, and celebrate the beauty of shared experience. Together, we'll weather the storm of uncertainty, embracing the unpredictable and playful nature of inclusive performance. By focusing on creating experiences that prioritize connection between participants, their careers, artists, and teachers, we'll uncover how sensory theatre can encourage deeper, more meaningful collaboration. This workshop will also explore how these "weathered" experiences born from collaboration and sensory play can lead to transformative change in performance, community building, and education. Just as the weather can be unpredictable, the connections made in sensory theatre can surprise and inspire, creating powerful, lasting memories of shared creative moments. Participants will explore together new ways to amplify voices, celebrate diversity, and weather the elements of inclusion together.

Introduction to the piece and role of participants Practical Devising Exercises Warm-up Activity: Group movement or physical improvisation Story Creation: Participants will split into small groups and use improvisational techniques to explore themes, characters, or situations. Each group will then present a short piece of improvisation based on these ideas. Improvisation with Structure: Introduce a simple prompt or structure, such as a specific location, object, or relationship, and have groups devise short scenes within those parameters. Share out: Participants will share their short pieces Discussion and Reflection: How did the devised pieces evolve? What surprised the group in the process? Open Q&A where participants share their own experiences with devising or ask for advice on specific challenges.

Directions to the Elma Lewis Center (It is located on the same block as the Little Building.)
The Elma Lewis Center (ELC) is located at 148 Boylston Street, next to Piano Row. Look for large windows with plants and orange walls.  
We propose to invite participants into the Elma Lewis Center to breath and imagine together with us, a  group of community archivists and elder community members, about ways to meaningfully re-connect our Growing Up Roxbury (GUR) art and history installation with the flow of everyday life among  the intergenerational communities the ancestors created them for, decades and centuries ago. Currrently being tenderly and strategically cultivated by neighborhood and campus community members inside the Elma Lewis Center at Emerson, this GUR project involves the personal family archives of more than 150 elders. Many of them worked directly with Melnea Cass, Elma Lewis, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Nina Simone, Alvin Ailey, Talley Beatty and more. We will also facilitate discussions around what these archival practices offer community art practitioners, and what opportunities they present for the field of applied theatre. Participants are invited to bring their own ancestral memory or object to engage in an artistic memorializing activity, honoring people in their communities and/or their individual artistic and scholarly lineage. This pilot portal installation of more than 1,000 archival pieces, including photographs, sculptures, written word diaries, family albums, music recordings, paintings, essays and letters, itself is intended to be a three-dimensional experimental point of departure where families who are also in the photographs, community members who knew them most, and campus members can come together and concretely name meaning(s), what they want us to learn from the ancestors through these memories, and, what next?

I Got My Pride: How Exploring Identity Through Improv Can Increase Connection for Middle School Students
Presenters: Faith Soloway and Jaime Ullrich

In the dynamic landscape of middle school, connection is everything. The Urban Improv Residency Program has cracked the code, reaching over 1,000 Boston Public Schools students each year through a potent blend of music, improvisation, and meaningful dialogue. More than just an enrichment program, this innovative approach is a lifeline for young adolescents navigating the complex social terrains of middle school. By employing interactive games, nuanced role-play, and carefully crafted conversation starters, Urban Improv creates powerful moments of understanding, empathy, and personal growth. In this transformative workshop, participants will: Experience firsthand the techniques that help students break down social barriers Learn facilitation strategies that engage and inspire young teens. Discover how improvisation can be a powerful tool for social-emotional learning. Practice navigating challenging scenarios with sensitivity and creativity. Led by Urban Improv's most seasoned Teaching Artists, this session promises to be an immersive, eye-opening journey into the art of connection. Come prepared to participate, learn, and be inspired.

Their Issues, Their Voices: Creating Theatre of the Oppressed with Middle School Students
Presenter: Jordan Burnham-Bialik

How can Theatre of the Oppressed authentically address the systemic challenges middle school students face? In this interactive workshop, participants will explore practical techniques for helping young people create forum theatre about their lived experiences. Through hands-on activities, we'll demonstrate how to scaffold TO techniques that empower students to investigate issues ranging from academic tracking to family dynamics. Drawing from current examples of student-created forum plays, participants will experience a process that builds trust, maintains artistic rigor, and supports collective creation. The workshop provides concrete strategies for adapting Boal's methods to serve younger practitioners while honoring their capacity to analyze social systems. You'll leave with practical tools for implementing TO in middle school settings and approaches for helping students create theatre that matters to their lives. Come prepared to move, play, and discover how theatre can amplify student voices in your classroom. 

Hey you, yes You, watching Netflix, while scrolling through Insta, and checking your email, no worries; I do it too! You are invited to Laying Labyrinths: A Living Performance. A space to practice gathering. A place to participate in reconnecting to yourself, the earth, and the community we create. We will circle up, play, walk, dream, and remember how interconnected we are to everything! Laying Labyrinths is a participatory living performance in which the audience/ community that gathers will be invited to witness and play with the interconnections between ourselves, each other, and the earth. We will lay an ephemeral labyrinth together in collaboration with the space. That is the hope for each performance: that the community looks across the circle, sees each other, feels their feet on the earth, lays a labyrinth on top of it, and walks it together. As we re-emerged from the Pandemic, I found a deep desire to return and remember theatre's roots and connect back to the earth. From this desire, and my graduate research around improvisation, chaos and living systems theories, this performance was born. It is a space to practice gathering and activating communities.

Theater of Union: Our Stories as Life Sustaining Projects?
Presenter: Annalise "River" Guidry
As artists who inherit a lineage of empire, how do we create and cultivate life where systems of domination have left ruin? Inspired by mushrooms and informed by indigenous, feminist and anthropological notions of "knowing-with," and, "a love ethic," Theater of Union is a decolonized theatrical pedagogy and praxis- with love as the foundation and knowing as the practice- to contribute to life-sustaining, world-building projects with theater as the vehicle.

Storytelling as Empowerment: Voices from 'The Stories of Giving Birth'"
Bindi Kang

"The Stories of Giving Birth" (dir. Zhao Zhiyong, Beijing, 2019) is a groundbreaking theatrical production collaborated by professional artists and rural-urban migrant workers. Developed in a collaborative manner, "The Stories of Giving Birth" is a devised theatre work woven from archival materials gathered from more than 30 interviews with female migrant workers. This project illuminates the intersectional challenges faced by women at the margins of societal structures. Emerging from extensive community engagement organized by a local NGO Mulan Community Service Center, this production provides platforms for migrant women to voice their living experience that includes traumatic experience of abortion, persistent cycles of economic marginalization, and systemic familial and social neglect. Following the production's success, a subsequent interactive museum exhibition expanded the project's reach, designing immersive experiences that bridge diverse social backgrounds through personal narratives. After its initial success in the theatre house, in 2021, Mulan Community in collaboration with Beijing Yue Art Museum, launched an interactive art project called Personal History/Game Theatre + Exhibition The Story of Mulan Narratives of Grassroots Migrant Women Workers. This project featured the play, the women's stories, and their everyday items, documents, photographs, etc. Moreover, the creative team also designed an interactive game, inviting the museum visitors, to immerse themselves in the life journey of a randomly assigned female worker character. Through this method, the curators aimed to connect the experiences of the female workers with the largely middle-class and well-educated museumgoers. In my presentation, I aim to take this production as a case study, to survey how theatre serves as a consoling instrument among the members in the migrant wokers' community, as well as a communicative tool between this grassroots community and middle class art consumers.

This is My Body
Kimberly LaCroix

Working at the intersection of gender studies, theology, and philosophy, I am researching how applied theatre can be utilized to explore Judeo-Christian theology's influence on female embodiment. Then, in collaboration with the Gordon College theatre program in Wenham, MA, I will be working with a group of college students who both ascribe to the tenants of Christianity and identify as female. This work will culminate in an ensemble-devised production, performed on Gordon's campus, January-February, 2025. I hope this production will be a sort of Complete History of Female Embodiment, Abridged in the style of Reduced Shakespeare Company. In a world deeply obsessed with the differences between us- our gender, religion, political affiliation, all aspects of our positionalities- I am committed to joy, play, and common ground. This production aims to be a celebration of resilience, while likely also being a hobble through some difficult territory. ​​​​

In this Performance and Facilitated Panel Discussion, teen theatre-makers from Wheelock Family Theatre’s Teen Performance Ensemble will share excerpts from their upcoming production of The Lightning Thief, followed by a Panel Discussion as we invite the youth performers to reflect and unpack some of the actions and commitments that are necessary to create a Culture of Care. What is the impact on the individual, ensemble, and community? In what ways does how we work together impact what we create together? How do we balance the needs of the individual with the needs of the ensemble? What lessons can we learn about human value, interconnectedness, belonging, and collective creative vulnerability? Our young people are brilliant, and we are confident that listening to them will spark new questions, inspire new ideas, and reaffirm the importance of our work.

The Body Book
Presenter: Mariam Riaz Paracha

Body Book: A Performance of Stories, Spoken Word & Self-Reflection of a Desi Female Body is a 20-30 minute work-in-progress interactive performance blending personal narrative, poetry, and visual storytelling inspired by my MFA thesis. The project interweaves personal experiences, heartfelt conversations, and collected stories about growing up and living in a body subjected to scrutiny and patriarchal interpretations of religion. It reflects a journey towards reconciling cultural traditions with an evolving world. While some stories are drawn from qualitative research and interviews with women ranging from 18-60, the majority originate from my own life experiences, fostering honesty and vulnerability to bridge the hierarchical gap that can arise when facilitating workshops. The performance pieces explore themes of identity, family, and belonging shaped by the shared, multigenerational dynamics of South Asian cultures. Through spoken word, movement, and projected visuals based on the book's illustrations, it invites audiences into a playful and personal, yet universally resonant exploration. After the performance, participants will engage in writing, drawing prompts and performance exercises that explore their personal narratives through memory, metaphor, and sensory detail. This participatory process creates a space where stories, individual and collective are amplified through dialogue and artistic expression. Aligned with the theme Amplify & Ignite, the performance and workshop exercises highlight how reclaiming personal stories can inspire meaningful social change within communities by amplifying understanding, questioning, empathy, and advocacy through storytelling.

The Way Back Project 
Presenters: Brielle Fowlkes and Joye Prince 

The Way Back Project is a two-woman show comprised of autobiographical narratives as well as some fiction, and is designed to be accompanied by a post-show engagement workshop for audience members. The show chronicles a journey of shared exploration between the two women, as they seek to better understand themselves through remembering, grieving, and reckoning with their family lineages. The goal of this project is to investigate questions about how we, as individual artist-researchers, can tell the stories of our lineages and the stories that have been passed down to us, in a way that illuminates present and historic norms while also enacting a liberatory future through collective world-making. By positioning ourselves as microcosmic subjects of larger societal issues regarding race, womanhood, grief, and intergenerational trauma, we aim to open up dialogue with audiences that allows them to explore their own relationship to these topics. Hoped-for impact:1. For all audience members: Inspire dialogue rooted in ancestral inquiry and perpetuated narratives in order to provoke dialogue and collective dreaming 2. For audience members of color: Stir up a hunger to remember pasts we have chosen to forget as a trauma response, so that we may continue down a liberatory path of healing3. For white audience members: Initiate a process of reckoning with our harmful lineages as well as grieving what we have lost so that we may begin (or continue) down a liberatory path of healing 

Please make sure to add this session to your schedule if you intend to attend.

Communities of practice in drama education have been explored by Anderson & Freebody as sites that emphasize "the importance of integrating theory and practice to support the development of beginning teachers" (2012, p. 359). Professional organizations like the American Alliance for Theatre and Education (AATE), the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable, and the Educational Theatre Association (EDTA) consider their annual gatherings as a locus of professional development and networking, but in their relative infrequency, they provide only limited access to the potentiality of a true community of practice. So, drama educators often find themselves a department of one, set adrift to do whatever it is they do in the classroom without the benefit of a community of peers who can understand and support them in their work. They lack a true community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002; Wenger-Trayner, Fenton-O'Creevy, Hutchinson, Kubiak, & Wenger-Trayner, 2014; Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015; Wenger, 2020; and Tummons, 2022).

Through this workshop experience, drama educators will develop a community of practice through the implementation of a case narrative project, based on a format outlined by Norris, McCammon, & Miller in their text, Learning to Teach Drama: A Case Narrative Approach (2000). The main intent of the case narrative is to serve as a tool to assist the educator in better understanding their teaching practice and should be drawn from their own experience, offering the educator an opportunity to reflect on and examine a problem, dilemma, or crisis, or frame a new perspective that has occurred in their practice.

This workshop will move us through phases one and two of a three-phase process. In the session, participants will outline their own case narrative, share the outline with two peers, and then get formal feedback from each peer using a response protocol outlined in Norris, McCammon, & Miller's text in which they describe, analyze, and apply (2000, pp. 111-112). [paragraph break]1 - Describe: Read the assigned case narrative. Set a timer for five minutes and write a continuous response without censoring yourself to what you have read.2 -Analyze: Review what you wrote. Respond by uncovering the issues in the original narrative and make connections to educational theory and the teaching of drama.3 -Apply: Review both the initial writing (describe) and your initial analysis. Write concretely what the teacher might do to extend these ideas into practice. This writing could be in the form of a lesson plan, a list of teacher activities, or a general set of statements on the teacher's stance. Application is the goal, so you need to provide the teacher with actionable recommendations grounded in your teaching experience and what you know from research or literature. [paragraph break]In this way, each participant will receive actionable recommendations (interventions) from two peers. This initial workshop will be followed in one month's time with a Zoom check-in where each participant can report back about the intervention(s) they implemented and consider next steps.

Please make sure to add this session to your schedule if you intend to attend.

Lunch Provided: In this workshop, Imagining America (IA) staff will create space for co-learning and collective dialogue at the critical intersections of public scholarship, cultural organizing, and institutional change. Inspired by an IA action research report Critical Intersections: Public Scholars Creating Culture, Catalyzing Change, workshop facilitators will introduce creative tools meant to spark conversation and support action about the joys, contributions, and struggles of public scholars and artists: the IA Public Scholar Conversation Cards and the Organizing Culture Change Public Scholar Imagination Guide. This interactive workshop will then give participants a chance to play with and learn together from these tools. The card deck encourages public scholars to consider why their work matters and how it challenges academic culture and produces critical knowledge to tackle pressing public issues. The guide provides a variety of reflection and action activities for anyone trying to improve their own practice and for those interested in making higher education a more hospitable, caring, and creative place to nurture public, engaged, and activist scholarship, artmaking, and design. Through facilitated conversations, peer sharing, and play, participants will develop a more expansive understanding of what kinds of knowledge matters and how to nurture supportive relationships and environments for public scholars to thrive.

Participants will then be invited to use the blank cards included in the Public Scholar Conversation Cards deck to strategize and co-create a new set of prompts drawn from collective exploration in the session, from participants' individual experiences in the performing arts, and from the shared engagement at the Amplify & Ignite Symposium.

The three, sequential Communities of Practice gatherings are an opportunity to engage with a more intimate group of symposium attendees over the weekend. These lightly moderated sessions will provide space to grapple together with core questions, inquiries, reflections and curiosities that emerge for your own creative practice throughout the Symposium.

Though we acknowledge that so many of us have hybrid-hyphenated-intersecting identities related to our practice, we request that you self-select one of the following communities with to engage over our three days together:

K12 educators (Matthew Reynolds)
Community-engaged artists and practitioners (Jo Michael Rezes)
Researchers/ university faculty or staff (Jonathan Jones)

NOTE: All attendees will join a Community of Practice regardless of how many days you will be with us.

[PLAY]ING THROUGH OUR DIFFERENCES: How Creating a Fictional Play Can Open Real Community  Dialogue Presenter: Taylor St. John
"SHAVONNE: In case you haven't noticed we live in the same hood, Einstein. BAKARI: Nah, we in the same hood living two different lives." An excerpt from We All We Got: A Binghampton Play By Ann Perry Wallace Over the past two years, I have been leading a new community-playmaking program in one of Memphis, Tennessee's most diverse neighborhoods. Binghampton (pronounced Bing-HAMP-ton) is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Memphis (with over 27 languages spoken). It is also a neighborhood where national conversations about immigration, policing, gentrification, discrimination, and safety are all playing out daily on the streets. Through the duration of the project, community members shared hundreds of real stories about the beauties and challenges facing their neighborhood. These stories then inspired a fictional play, We All We Got: A Binghampton Play, written by local playwright Ann Perry Wallace that featured over 40 community members performing onstage. In this presentation, I will use this latest community-playmaking project to reflect on how working within a fictional context allowed a safe entry point that made it possible for participants from very different backgrounds to coexist along differences, build authentic relationships, step into other's shoes, and have discussions that simply may not have been possible within the limitations of "real life". In addition, I will provide analysis of the human, artistic, and operational challenges of engaging with multiple communities that often have conflicting needs. Finally, through stories from the project, we will explore the benefits of community-playmaking in neighborhoods.

A Collective Vision for a Future in the Arts through Community and Civic Engagement Programs
Presenter: Sharon Counts

The arts have the power to effect change and animate democracy by demonstrating the public value of creative work that contributes to a larger social good. In this accelerated moment of radical change, the arts are being more consciously used as a way to engage communities around achieving civic goals and to create positive connections. A major tension in the field right now revolves around how to galvanize our collective resources and knowledge toward building a more sustainable future for theater at large. This article centers the use of civic and community engagement programs as one prominent and effective method that can foster synergy with communities that arts organizations and theaters engage and seek to engage. Many theaters are using community engagement programs to ignite community conversations and address past inequities. A case study highlights how one regional theater, Mid-Sized City Theater (MCT), a pseudonym, used community and civic engagement programs to promote reimagining their organization as a civic institution and to rebuild relationships with their community. The pursuit to improve relationships between theaters and communities using community engagement programs is one way this sector is working to address historical inequities for cultural workers, artists, and participants in the arts.  

BBQ starter! This is to help us see each others humanity first and foremost as we create a safer container for each other. Breathing exercise and calling in of ancestors. Discussion of question "How much of your thinking is your thinking?"- Introduction of Internalized Racial Oppression and Indoctrination into the status quo's ideas of ourselves, and how that has shaped how we identify. Introduction of the 7 C's- Walk and Talks, shifting partners, as we discuss each of the 7 C's.7 C's protocol revealed and activated. What actions can we individually take to activate the 7 C's protocol? By when?Creating Accountability pods to help lovingly support each other in our commitment to building the NEW through our new learning. Closing circle 💜

Migration From. Migration Through. Migration To. Migration Back. This workshop will explore how applied theatre can be used to deepen learning around these themes of migration. The session draws on our experience developing and co-teaching a first-year college course at CUNY John Jay College called “Voices of Migration: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Global Movement.” Through embodied, on-your-feet learning, we will share best practices for how college classrooms can center student voices, familial histories, and cultural knowledge throughout the learning process. Throughout the session, we will guide participants in a series of applied theatre games and activities that can be used to explore key themes and questions related to migration and immigration. Together, we will practice creating lines of questioning that lead to deep conversation about those core class concepts. Participants can use these practices to explore the ever-more-important topics of migration and immigration in their classrooms and communities or apply them to other challenging topics. Whatever the case, this workshop will equip attendees with a set of concrete tools and strategies that can be used with young people and adults, in and out of school settings.

Limited Seats Available! Jump in and play with Central Square Theater’s resident performance ensemble, Youth Underground (YU)! Each year, YU serves an ensemble of economically and culturally diverse Cambridge & Greater Boston youth, ages 13-25, and provides opportunities for them to create and perform original theater that investigates social issues relevant to young people and our world.

In this workshop, co-led by YU youth and Teaching Artists, participants will learn about YU's approach to arts-based youth activism, get hands-on experience with some of YU’s activities and devising techniques, and see youth perform excerpts from their original work. The workshop will take place onsite at Central Square Theater, in the heart of Cambridge.

Limited Seats Available! Urban Bush Women (UBW) burst onto the dance scene in 1984 with bold, innovative, demanding, and exciting works that brought under-told stories to life. Originally founded by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, the company, now under the co-artistic direction of Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Spies, continues to weave contemporary dance, music, and text with the history, culture, and spiritual traditions of the African Diaspora.

A centerpiece of Urban Bush Women’s 40th Anniversary Celebration, This is Risk looks forward and back in celebrating four decades of operating at the vanguard of movement and social activism. This is Risk takes the audience through intentional storytelling to the next space of collective brilliance. This energetically charged evening includes iconic legacy works by founder Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Haint Blu, a transformative dance-theater work by Co-Artistic Directors Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Speis. Haint Blu is an ensemble dance-theater work seeped in memory and magic. Named for the color that Southern families paint their front porches to ward off bad spirits, Haint Blu uses performance as a center and source of healing, taking us through movement into stillness and rest. It is an embodied look into familial lines and the movements, histories, and stories of our elders and ancestors. It reflects on what has been lost across generations and what can be recovered.

A Girl Can Only Watch Fiddler on The Roof So Many Times
Presenter: Blair Bean
In a world marked by division and uncertainty, the role of artists, educators, and scholars in fostering community, connection, and change has never been more critical. This presentation is based off of my thesis that explores the intersection of Jewish identity, cultural storytelling, and theatre as tools for addressing contemporary societal issues, particularly the rise of antisemitism. As an assimilated Jew, I delve into the complexities of Jewish-American narratives in theatre, using autoethnography to examine my own evolving relationship with Jewish identity in the context of modern challenges. Diving deep into the idea of catharsis in communities and synthesizing widespread narratives. I look into Jewish immigration and generational trauma as the drive for this paper. I reflect on how these themes have shaped seminal works like well known Fiddler on the Roof among others and its relevance in today's cultural climate. I have explored the delicate balance between honoring painful histories and celebrating Jewish joy in performance, while questioning how these stories are adapted, interpreted, and portrayed for diverse audiences. As theatre is a source of cultural resilience and creative expression, this project is a personal and collective exploration of how Jewish storytelling can evolve. How do we bridge generational divides, and contribute to larger dialogues around social justice, identity, and cultural preservation? Examining the intersection of, Jewish heritage, and artistic practice, I aim to highlight the power of theatre to amplify voices, challenge preconceptions, and create space for meaningful conversation educational spaces during a time heightened division.


Beyond Belonging: Navigating Marginalization in Theatre Education
Sobha Kavanakudiyil
I would like to have the opportunity to share my research for my dissertation.  In the proposed research, I will examine stories of female-identifying performing arts practitioners from ethnically and racially minoritized populations. The impetus for this has been reflection on my experiences as a South Asian Indian woman in theatre education, and the lack of other South Asian Indian women in the field.  This has impacted my sense of belonging and my identity.  I  am interested in examining the moment of decision-making to continue a career in the performing arts or not and how cultural, social, and familial influences impact that decision. The hope is that the outcome of this research will illuminate the challenges many practitioners have experienced to help theatre teacher training programs better understand the barriers that exist for these populations to engage in the field.   Although my research centers on female-identifying artist educators from ethnically and racially minoritized populations, I acknowledge that many minoritized populations need to be uplifted. The research focus of this paper represents just one aspect of a broader dialogue on diversity and inclusion in the arts.My research questions are: What are the pivotal social, cultural, and familial experiences of female-identifying South Asian artist educators in theatre education?What personal and/or professional experiences have shaped the identities of female-identifying performing arts practitioners from ethnically and racially minoritized populations, and what has been the impact of their professional journeys?What are theatre education programs doing to increase access and opportunity for practitioners from ethnically and racially minoritized populations?


Work/Play
Presenters: Sara Berliner + Calvin Keener
"Work/Play" was a workshop series conducted in the Spring of 2024 at Emerson College focusing on using demechanizing exercises from Theatre of the Oppressed to identify challenges and opportunities for transformation in higher education workplaces. The workshops aimed to engage students, staff, and faculty in a collaborative artistic process to reclaim our collective humanity. While there had been robust union activity in the school year, these disparate groups do not consistently organize cooperatively together or share a vision for campus working conditions and labor organizing. While many undergraduate and graduate students are employed by the college in various capacities, they tend not to see being a worker as a salient part of their identity, nor do they typically identify with a larger labor movement, due to the temporary, part-time nature of their work and transitory relationship to campus. We hoped to enable participants to make connections with other workers at Emerson, to recognize commonalities between their needs and experiences, and to identify tools for changing conditions in the workplace.In this narrative, we will reflect on the challenges, discoveries, and lessons learned in using artistic techniques for labor organizing with participants who have a common employer but differing work identities.

OUR STORIES: We Can Be Heroes/Heroines
Presenter: Dylan Russell
OUR STORIES: We Can Be Heroes Utilizing Generative Theatre Practice as Mental Health Modality in Community Settings. We are at an emergent moment where arts in public health and the arts as civic engagement are being accepted and integrated into the fabric of community well being. From music therapy being utilized to heal Parkinson's patients to the Massachusetts Cultural Council's first statewide arts prescription program in the US, we are seeing the arts accepted as a treatment for physical and behavioral health issues. Five years ago, I created OUR STORIES  - a community arts venture between Orange County Healthcare Agency and Laguna Playhouse. This program was created as a response to studies showing depression and isolation experienced by youth 16-25 and a belief that engagement in the arts could make a difference in this health crisis. Participants will experience an OUR STORIES workshop utilizing storytelling and devised theater exercises to explore the lived experiences that form one's identity. Activities tap into memories and stories of our lives and are shared collectively. This act of having others witness your story creates a shared place where we can bridge isolation and the differences that often separate us from one another. We discover the hero/ine within ourselves. This theatre in health workshop will demonstrate the healing that emerges from storytelling. We will explore the ways this work can be used in formal and informal settings to support development of students' SEL and create connection. Together, we'll collaborate to define a core set of outcomes for this learning and ways to bring transformational arts to your community or classroom.


Exploring Mental Health Through Story Drama  
Michelle Gram Giesen
In this interactive workshop, attendees are guided through a Story Drama or immersive storytelling experience of the picture book Dark Cloud by Anna Lazowski. The main character, Abigail, suddenly has a dark cloud following her around.  Participants will predict, observe, and identify how the cloud affects Abigail's social-emotional and mental health, and determine potential strategies to support the young girl. Participants will use movement, tableau, writing in role, role play, improvisation, poetry, large and small group collaboration, and more to experience the story rather than listen to it as passive audience members. The drama unfolds as the story unfolds. This workshop illustrates how drama can be explored as an inquiry process. Dark Cloud will be read in segments, with periodic pauses to use drama, movement, writing, and music exercises to investigate key moments, evaluate character perspectives, question choices, build environments, and explore present themes. This workshop offers step-by-step guidance to successfully implement Story Drama into regular storytelling sessions for Grade 1-8. Additionally, attendees will be provided a collection of 15+ Story Drama exercises that elevate and activate storytelling using rich picture books, a sample unit plan, and various assessment templates.  

Over the past three years, the Student Voice and Engagement (SVE) program has undergone significant transformations to better serve the needs of students, teaching artists, and school communities. Funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Assistance for Arts Education (AAE) grant, SVE integrates theater arts and social-emotional learning (SEL) to enhance English Language Arts (ELA) skills and foster sustainable student engagement. As the only New York City-based program to receive the 2021 AAE Award, SVE has made a lasting impact in four schools in Brownsville, Brooklyn.This workshop will explore the evolution of SVE, highlighting the program's structural and creative adaptations over the past three years. We will examine how teaching artists and program leaders have responded to the unique needs of individual schools and communities, refining approaches to collaboration and engagement. Additionally, we will focus on the pivotal role of transformation in supporting students as they transition from 5th to 6th grade, using theater and SEL as powerful tools for growth and self-expression. Participants will gain insights into the challenges and successes of adapting arts-based education programs and explore interactive games and activities centered on the theme of transformation. This session invites educators, administrators, and teaching artists to reflect on the lessons learned from SVE's journey and consider how these practices can be applied to their own work to foster sustained student engagement and meaningful collaboration.

The three, sequential Communities of Practice gatherings are an opportunity to engage with a more intimate group of symposium attendees over the weekend. These lightly moderated sessions will provide space to grapple together with core questions, inquiries, reflections and curiosities that emerge for your own creative practice throughout the Symposium.

Though we acknowledge that so many of us have hybrid-hyphenated-intersecting identities related to our practice, we request that you self-select one of the following communities with to engage over our three days together:

K12 educators (Matthew Reynolds)
Community-engaged artists and practitioners (Jo Michael Rezes)
Researchers/ university faculty or staff (Jonathan Jones)

NOTE: All attendees will join a Community of Practice regardless of how many days you will be with us.

In this final full community gathering, we will reflect on the weekend and close our time together with celebrations and commitments for moving forward.