IA National Gathering Program

Friday October 20, 2023 (8:30am – 8:00pm)

Friday activities will be held at the Providence Public Library (150 Empire Street) and AS220 Main Stage and Gallery (115 Empire St). Creative works are planned throughout the day. The evening reception will take place at the Roger Williams Park Casino (1000 Elmwood Ave).

8:30-9:00am

  • Breakfast and Registration, Providence Public Library – Grand Hall

9:00-10:30am Opening Plenary

Ongoing – Creative Works (444 Westminister)

  • School Feels: This arts-based installation invites participants to contribute affective, collective memories of your own schooling experiences through image, narrative or audio recording.
  • Public School Architecture Explored in LEGO: The models all depict ‘overlooked’ buildings in Providence such as public schools and multi-family houses and invite the viewer to consider which structures we consider to be ‘historic’ and ‘landmark.’

11:00-12:30pm Concurrent Session 1 (PPL and AS220)

  • Projects and Practices (1) – AS220
    • An Ancient Lake Returns
    • Reckoning with Past and Present through an Augmented Reality App
    • A Cycle of Change in Theatre: grounding, burning, airing out, watering
  • Projects and Practices (2) – PPL
    • Invisible Architectures: Reflections on Truth and Reconciliation in Higher Education
    • Interrupting Privilege: Racism & Health
    • CREATE Connections: Collaborate, Reflect, Explore, and Teach Experientially
  • Poetry as Liberation (Workshop) – PPL
  • Gesturing toward the Undone as Creative Provocation – Rehearsals in Antiracism pt. II (Workshop) – PPL
  • Risk and Reckoning in Community-Institution Collaborations: An Exploration of Trust (Workshop) – AS220
  • Considering Rest as Resistance: Welcoming the Nap Ministry’s afrofuturist day dreams into community engagement (Workshop) – AS220
  • SPARC352: A Catalyst for Community-Engaged Research Drawing on the Elements to explore Place & Practice, Space & Imagination (Workshop)- AS220
  • Unfolding Earth Systems (Workshop) – PPL
  • Movement is the Method: Navigating Economies of Creative Care (Workshop) – AS220
  • Churning the Soil (Workshop) – AS220

12:30-1:30pm Lunch

  • Lunch, Providence Public Library – Grand Hall

1:30-2:30pm Concurrent Session 2 (PPL and AS220)

  • Lightning Talks – PPL
    • Alchemy, Elemental Art and Aesthetic Transformation
    • Using LEGO to Re-Imagine Neighborhood Space
    • Contextualizing Feminist Voices: Podcasting to Engage Broader Audiences From a Transnational and Collaborative Perspective
    • Unsettling Norms: finding unusual coalition between migrant Others and aging citizens
    • The Ripple Effect of a Local, Community-Engaged Mural Project: Mending Walls
    • Lines, Awash, and Fluidity in Salvador de la Torre’s “Todos Los Dias / 365 Days in an Immigrant’s Shirt”
  • Considering Practices for a Neighborly Campus: A Dialogue and Discussion (Dialogue & Discussion) – AS220
  • Orienting Community Engagement Towards Reparations (Dialogue & Discussion) – PPL
  • A slow burn: stoking and tending long-term academic-community partnerships (Dialogue & Discussion) – AS220
  • Reciprocity Rhode Island: Imagining Radical Change In Public Education (Dialogue & Discussion) – AS220
  • After the Flood: Artists as First Responders (Dialogue & Discussion) – PPL
  • Reckoning with Social Policy Histories in the Museum (Dialogue & Discussion) – PPL
  • Radical is Relative (Dialogue & Discussion) – AS220
  • Community Owned and Managed Space (Dialogue & Discussion) – AS220

3:00-4:30pm Concurrent Session 3 (PPL and AS220)

  • Projects & Practices (3) – PPL
    • A Part of the Conversation, Not Apart of It: Developing Generative AI Usage Policy with Students
    • Uncovering Hidden Histories in State Parks
    • Radical Reckoning Through Interdisciplinary Teaming: A Re-Imagined Project Design for Publicly Engaged Doctoral Students
  • Projects & Practices (4) – PPL
    • Handmade Comfort From Textiles: The Quilting and Knitting Ministries at Grace Church
    • Developing SENSES of Belonging: A Critical Soundscape Performance
    • Mapping the Margins of RePresentation: Data Transparency as Story Advocacy
    • Narrative Imagining: Storytelling to Understand the Past and Shape the Future
  • Body as Territory: Decolonizing our Relationships to Space and Knowledge (Workshop) – AS220
  • Contemplations and Conjuring Towards a Shared Liberation (Workshop) – AS220
  • Imagining New Futures through Creative Processes in the Arts (Workshop) – AS220
  • A State Reckoning: Advancing Health Equity Through Community-Led Solutions (Workshop) – PPL
  • From WaterFire to Earth and Air: Reckoning New Lines of Flight in Downtown Providence (Workshop) – AS220
  • ZODIAC REVOLUTION (Workshop) – AS220
  • Primordial Futurizing: Horseshoe Crab Holiday Activation as Cultural Intervention and Public Transformation (Workshop) – PPL
  • Imagining America Member Session (Workshop) – PPL

5:00-5:30pm Transit

  • Load transportation leaving PPL to the Roger Williams Park Casino (1000 Elmwood Ave)

5:40-6:15 Performance

  • Casino bandstand

6:15 – 8:00pm Evening Reception 

  • Food, drinks, music, and recognition of the IA undergraduate Joy of Giving Something Fellows and graduate PAGE fellows. This evening reception is generously sponsored by the Center for Indigenous Peoples Rights, the Manetti Shrem Museum, and the American Council for Learned Societies.
  • The IA National Gathering is coordinated along with the Center for Indigenous Peoples Rights (CIPR) Annual Gathering — a convening of Indigenous law and policy practitioners, community leaders, and culture bearers to highlight regional efforts, share best practices, and to elevate issues for discussion and action-planning. Their theme of Reclaiming + Repatriating refers to the law and policy efforts of Indigenous peoples and communities reclaiming their lands and identities, as well repatriating sacred objects and ancestral remains back to their respective homes. Imagining America is grateful for the opportunity to recognize CIPR and celebrate together at Friday’s Welcome Reception.

Saturday October 21, 2023 (8:30am – 5:30pm)

Saturday activities will be held at the MET High School (325 Public St). Community hosted site visits will take place throughout the city of Providence and surrounding region. Artisans, booksellers, and community information tables will be available throughout the day.

8:30-9:00am

  • Breakfast and Registration, MET High School Gym

Ongoing: Creative Works 

  • The Curse of Salt
  • What is a river?
  • Forgiveness

9:00-10:30am Concurrent Session 4

  • Projects & Practices (5)
    • Sensing the Wrack
    • A Public Art Program at El Campo Pesquero de Playa Bagdad: transboundary noise and a shared (outer)space
    • The WHAT and the HOW: Jumble Methodology as Radical Care
  • Projects & Practices (6)
    • Change your neighborhood. Change the world.
    • Green Corners: Slow Growth and Gradual Shifts
    • Composting in Community
  • Providence Queer/Trans Zinefest: A Dialogue on Collective Arts Organizing and Radical Publishing (Dialogue & Discussion)
  • Reckoning with Change: Book Spaces and Generativity (Workshop)
  • Economic Reckoning: Bringing Participatory Budgeting to Your Community (Workshop)
  • Work-time vs. potato-time: agendas beyond the clock (Workshop)
  • Amplify!: Co-creating a Journal of Writing-as-Activism (Workshop)
  • Speculative Design, Placemaking, and Third Spaces in the Classroom: Teaching and Learning for Transforming Higher Education (Workshop)
  • Water Kinship (Workshop)
  • Radical Reckoning in Higher Education: Unveiling the University (Workshop)

10:45-12:15pm Concurrent Session 5 

  • Projects & Practices (7)
    • The Power of An Art Atlas: Telling Foodshed Stories and Visualizing the Future
    • Art, Science and Community: Engaging The Elements to Traverse Divides in Times of Challenge and Change
    • Unhousing: claiming the human right to home
    • What the Guards Saw; Art Museum Counter-Narratives
  • Projects & Practices (8)
    • Cultivating Environmental Stewards: Reflection and Action Begins Around a Campfire
    • Reimagining High School Art Credits: Art that Reflects the Culture of the Community
    • Design Activism for Community Engaged Learning
    • From Pandemic to Protest, Harlem Remembers (in Augmented Reality)
  • Invoking the Elements with Digital Storytelling (Workshop)
  • Reckoning with Research: Embracing Participatory Methods for Collective Liberation (Workshop)
  • Finding Voice by Storying the Self: An introspective, reflective writing journey for radical reimagining (Workshop)
  • Invoking the Elements Together: Co-creating the Capacity for Transformation through Consultancy Protocols (Workshop)
  • From reckoning to realization: Leveraging reparative and restorative systems of assessment for social change (Workshop)
  • Finding Your Financial “Face” and Building Financially Resilient Spaces: Becoming Communal Agents of Economic Change (Workshop)
  • Watershed Moments: Publicly Engaged Design Education in Providence and Beyond (Workshop)

12:15-1:00pm Lunch

  • Lunch and Vendors/Booksellers, MET High School Gym

1:00-2:00pm Concurrent Session 6

  • Lightning Talks
    • PAGE lightning talks
  • Reckoning with LGBTQ+ Regional History: Dialogue and Discussion about Public History Case Studies from LGBTQ+ Community Archives (Dialogue & Discussion)
  • Black Feminist Worldmaking (Dialogue & Discussion)
  • Providence Arts and Letters: A New, Rhizomatic Journal (Dialogue & Discussion)
  • Each One, Teach One: Diversifying the Teacher Workforce (Dialogue & Discussion)
  • Supporting deep change: Living into approaches to evaluation that better align with our anti-oppression values, create meaningful, useful knowledge, and hold us accountable to our key stakeholders (Dialogue & Discussion)
  • Liberatory Learning in Carceral Spaces (Dialogue & Discussion)
  • Fostering Trust & Belonging through Creative Placemaking (Dialogue & Discussion)
  • From the Bottom Up: Philadelphia and the Politics of Placemaking  (Dialogue & Discussion)
  • Interdisciplinary Community Engagement Opportunities in the Arts, Humanities, and Beyond (Dialogue & Discussion)

3:00-5:30pm Community-hosted Site Visits

SITE VISITS ARE NOW CLOSED FOR ONLINE REGISTRATION. Some visits have spots remaining, so please visit the IA Gathering Registration Desk (PPL Grand Hall) on Friday October 20 at lunch (12:15-1:00 PM) to sign up. 

Site visits are open only to registered IA Gathering participants. Sign up for one site visit through a separate registration process starting October 2. These opportunities are first-come, first-served. Check your email often for updates from IA about site visit registration. 

  • Verde Visions at Southside Community Land Trust, Southside Community Land Trust (404 Broad St, Providence, RI 02907) Register
  • Everett: Company, Stage & School – Parables from Prison, Everett: Company, Stage & School (9 Duncan Avenue, Providence RI 02906) Register
  • Bannister Community Art Project, Providence Art Club (11 Thomas St, Providence, RI 02903) Register
  • Stages of Freedom African American Museum (10 Westminster Street, Providence, RI 02903) Register
  • Community Music Works: Collective Performance and Workshop with Phase II Youth and South African cellist and composer, TK Mhlambi, Southside Cultural Center of Rhode Island (393 Broad Street, Providence RI 02907) Register
  • Movement Education Outdoors + The Emergent Forest, West End Raices (47 Harrison Street, Providence, RI 02907) Register
  • Culturally Informed, Community Minded Memorialization in Providence’s City Cemeteries, North Burial Ground (5 Branch Ave, Providence, RI 02904) Register
  • Tomaquag Museum, Tomaquag Museum (390A Summit Rd, Exeter, RI 02822) Register
  • The Youth Are the Truth: Enacting Social Justice through Arts, Education, Civic Engagement, and Youth Development, with ARISE, AS220 Youth, New Urban Arts, and Youth In Action, (AS220 Black Box Theatre, 95 Empire Street, Providence RI 02903) Register
  • Nonviolence as a Practical Alternative to Violence, Nonviolence Institute (265 Oxford St, Providence RI, 02905) Register
  • College Unbound, MET High School Black Box Theatre (325 Public Street, Providence RI, 02905) Register
  • A Forgotten Neighborhood: The Resilient People of Smith Hill, Smith Hill Library (31 Candace St, Providence, RI 02908) Register
  • Haus of Glitter, The Historical Intervention of The Former Home of Esek Hopkins, Commander of the slavery ship “Sally” (Esek Hopkins House former home of The Haus of Glitter, 97 Admiral Street, Providence, RI 02908) Register
  • Radical Ris-ing: Risograph Poster Design Workshop at Project Open Door Studio, Project Open Door (POD) Studio (355 S. Water Street. Providence, RI) Register
  • Tigers and Portals, Joseph A Doorley Jr. Municipal Building (444 Westminster St, Providence, RI 02903) Register
  • Reclaiming + Repatriating Land: Potumtuk — with the Center for Indigenous Peoples Rights (250 Metacom Avenue Bristol, RI 02809) Register 

6:00-9:00pm Optional Evening Activities 

Sunday October 22, 2023 (8:00am – 3:00pm)

Sunday activities will be held at the MET High School (325 Public St). Artisans, booksellers, and community information tables will be available throughout the day. The closing plenary will take place at the WaterFire Arts Center (475 Valley St).

8:00-8:30am

  • Breakfast and Registration – MET High School

8:30-9:30am Concurrent Session 7 

  • Lightning Talks 
    • Healing Through Harmony: The Healing of an Urban Community Through Music
    • Transformative Teaching Starts with Inner Reckoning
    • Waves of Migration: Locating Asian American Radical Tenderness in Institutional Archives
    • Art-chiving the Now: Community Preservation through Storytelling
    • Water as shaper of landscape and community: Mapping the flows of research and resources in a university-led initiative
    • The Flood is a Ghost
  • Storying the Self; Re-Storying Trauma: Engaging With Storying as Guided by the Elements (Dialogue & Discussion)
  • Essential Engagement: Advancing the Public Purpose of Higher Education (Dialogue & Discussion)
  • Antilynching Counter-Archive: Confronting Lynching as a technology of Imperialism, Anti-Blackness, and Settler Colonialism (Dialogue & Discussion)
  • Our Fire Is on the Rise! Elements of Institutional Change and Black Studies (Dialogue & Discussion)
  • Harnessing the Elements to Envision Change in Museums (Dialogue & Discussion)
  • Reckoning with Interdisciplinarity: How Can We Foster Real Collaboration for a Shared Future? (Dialogue & Discussion)

9:45-10:45am Concurrent Session 8

  • Lightning Talks 
    • Reckoning with Access to Legal Education
    • Envisioning Elemental Care: Multimedia Messages of Community Health Workers
    • EmersonWRITES Boston: Our Youth Uncover Our Truth
    • It’s not a program; it’s a movement
    • Equity and Justice in the Workplace – Elemental Pedagogies
  • Reckoning the Airwaves: from Internet to Broadcasts (Dialogue & Discussion)
  • Broad Street Stories: Reckoning with the Legacy of Public Design Interventions through Community Owned Place Making (Dialogue & Discussion)
  • Social Impact Initiatives: a Thematic Approach to Interdepartmental, Collaborative Studio Course with Demonstrable Social Impact (Dialogue & Discussion)
  • Regenerative Practices Beyond Brown University’s Center for Public Humanities (2005-2023) (Dialogue & Discussion)
  • Fire and Water: Using Dialogue to Imagine Liberating Institutional Norms (Dialogue & Discussion)
  • Meaning of the Seed documentary screening & discussion (Dialogue & Discussion)

11:00-12:30pm Concurrent Session 9

  • Projects & Practices (9)
    • Walking As Reckoning: Grounding Education
    • Fifty-One Miles: A Walking Exploration of the Los Angeles River
    • Reckoning, repair, and regeneration: An elemental approach to mobilizing collective knowledge for land stewardship
  • Projects & Practices (10)
    • Spatial Justice: Interdisciplinary Collaboration for Equity
    • Schools and Communities Organizing for Racial Equity (SCORE): Community-based Research and Design for Educational and Racial Justice
    • Projects and Practices
  • Threat to Education and Positive Visions (Workshop)
  • Collaborative Artmaking as Ritual for Joyful Resilience (Workshop)
  • Encouraging Imaginative Futuring through Classroom Negotiation Simulations (Workshop)
  • Elemental Justice: How do we intersect the elements of nature and our work to redistribute power? (Workshop)
  • Alchemical Resilience: Co-creating Transformational Personal and Professional Pathways (Workshop)
  • Radical Storytelling for Collective Change (Workshop)
  • Inclusion, Play, and Ensemble as Higher Ed Superpowers (Workshop)
  • Liberatory Ancestral Social Justice Storywork: An Interactive Workshop (Workshop)

12:30-1:00pm Transit

  • Load shuttle buses departing MET High School to WaterFire Arts Center (475 Valley St, Providence, RI 02908)

1:00-3:00pm Lunch and Closing Plenary (WaterFire Arts Center)

  • “In Love and Struggle,” a conversation with Robin D.G. Kelley, Tracie Hall, and Adam Bush.
  • Watch recording: https://youtu.be/C4Xjxs2e4zI
  • Lunch provided by Sly Fox Den

Pre-Conference Summit: Thursday October 19

Measuring What Matters: Workshop on Equity & Assessment 

Hosted by College Unbound and AAC&U (American Association of Colleges and Universities), this summit will take place October 19, 2023, in Providence, Rhode Island, preceding Imagining America’s National Gathering (October 20-22, 2023).  This convening seeks to include academic leaders and administrators, CPL and other alternative assessment officers, faculty interested in integrating alternative assessments into the classroom, community partners, and anyone interested in engaging higher education to reconsider assessment practices.

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