The Split This Rock Poetry Festival explores and celebrates the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for change: reaching across differences, considering personal and social responsibility, asserting the centrality of the right to free speech, bearing witness to the diversity and complexity of human experience through language, imagining a better world.
Profiles - Projects
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Los Angeles, CA
A project everyone is invited to get involved with! OPeX studios, a child-centric architectural design company in Los Angeles, has initiated an innovative public exhibition project entitled Square Inches of Love, to weave the digital and physical worlds through the mediums of architecture and design into a demonstration of the effect the digital revolution and increased virtual world interactions are having on the very concept of “space” and its use.
Pittsburgh, PA 15201-1652, PA
Our vision is to transform a set of Pittsburgh city steps -- at the gateway to Stanton Heights as you enter it from Lawrenceville -- into a magnificent mosaic work of public art.
Artist Laura Jean McLaughlin has designed a whimsical, humorous, stunning image of diversity and nature that represents the essence of the neighborhood. The image will unfold on the outside of each of the 44 steps, and full image can be seen in one view.
Minneapolis, MN
Many storefronts on University Avenue are vacant, due in part to Central Corridor Light Rail construction. Increased vacancy rates create a downward spiral as the remaining businesses draw fewer customers. This has a negative impact on the surrounding community. We hope to help turn this cycle around, matching building owners of vacant spaces with people who are looking for “nesting” spaces – short-term opportunities to try out new businesses, galleries, or other types of workspace and event space.
There are lots of examples of digital storytelling being applied to cultural and social challenges: working with communities, documenting projects, gathering stories, and celebrating events. Often, however, these initiatives are one-offs and lacking strategies to aggregate content, build capacities, grow networks, share knowledge, and sustain activity into the future. Storytelling in the Public Interest engages with these challenges. Our aim is to embed digital storytelling into the communications culture of the community, and environmental, arts, and health sectors.
Los Angeles, CA
Center Theatre Group (CTG) is a place where artists, audiences, community members, and students and educators connect through the power of storytelling. Since 1967, our mission has been to serve the diverse audiences of Los Angeles by producing and presenting theatre of the highest caliber, by nurturing new artists, by attracting new audiences, and by developing youth outreach and arts education programs. This mission is based on a belief that the art of theatre is a cultural force with the capacity to transform the lives of individuals and society at large.
CA
The Student Voices Campaign is a creative way for young people to make their voices heard in their school district, and learn about and impact school policymaking.
Launched by the California Alliance for Arts Education, the Campaign invites students in grades 7-12 to create videos that show their vision for their school and their education to share with their local school board as part of the annual Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) planning process.
Chicago, IL
Street-Level's annual Summer Arts Apprenticeship Program (SAAP) is an intensive media arts internship program for youth ages 14 to 19. In SAAP youth: work with artist mentors to strengthen their skills in audio production, video production, graphic design, or photography; produce original work based on a theme that explores social, cultural, and political issues relevant to their lives; and collaborate to design and install a group exhibition at the end of the program.
Jackson, NJ
Using large sheets of paper, anyone of the 20,000 Race guests could draw their emotions about breast cancer, honor a survivor or remember someone who lost the fight. After all 10 sheets of paper were covered by our guests, I cut measured 1.5" lines on the back of each sheet, creating warp and weft lines. Komen volunteers gathered at headquarters to cut each sheet and begin weaving them into fabric. Working together, both at the Race, and afterwards in the weaving "circle", we created using single strips, strong fabric which represents the fact that we are stronger united than singly.
Fresno, CA
For its founders, Tamejavi symbolizes the remembrance of a public space in which a community gathers together to exchange goods, produce, crafts, important news, and to celebrate seasonal events. It brings to mind the place where community members speak about day-to-day happenings and oftentimes about more weighty matters, such as whether or not not public officials are complying with their civic duties. As the product of collective organizing among diverse Central Valley immigrant communities, Tamejavi Festival strives to create a public space for intercultural learning and expression.
Chicago, IL
In 2008, ten years after Tamms CMAX Prison opened, human rights advocates started a program to help those incarcerated there to cope with the long-term and inhumane conditions. Tamms Year 10 is a project created by human rights activists that allows the public to get insight into the negative effects of extended solitary confinement, and how it directly correlates with the inability for inmates to react to rehabilitation tactics and creates poor mental health. Tamms Poerty and the Photo Request from Solidarity are both projects that use the arts to help connect those in confinement with the
Teaching Artist Academy
Burlington , VT
The Teaching Artist Academy is a new project of the Orchestra Engagement Lab. In the first year of the Lab, we guided ten orchestras to create ambitious new community engagement projects in their home areas, in relation to a co-commission of a new orchestral work. This year we are adding a five day intensive Academy to train musicians in ways to design and lead ambitious community engagement projects. The project is led by Eric Booth and a team of experienced Teaching Artists.
Madison, WI
Tear Up the Front Page: Performance and Public Discussion combined statewide listening sessions in Wisconsin with the performance of a new play by Danielle Dresden focusing on media issues and the challenges faced by reporters in our contemporary socio-political climate. There were five statewide media listening sessions with follow-up visits to three of the sites.
Teatro Fo/ teatro ambulante/ theater on wheels
Dallas, TX
"The theater is a call to not lose goodness and in addition to pointing out the causes of what happens, it also shows us that it is possible to change…" (Luis de Tavira). Furthermore theater is born in the popular neighborhoods and cannot belong only to a section of the more privileged society.
Brooklyn, NY
The Teen Empowerment Mural Apprenticeship (TEMA) is an after-school program, modeled on a traditional apprenticeship, in which teens create public art for community-based organizations, working in Groundswell's studio with a particular emphasis on skills development. Youth in Groundswell programs develop and hone their skills in four key areas – creativity; collaboration; critical thinking; and compassion.
San Diego, CA
Telling Stories creates theatre from the life experiences of youth in the foster care system. Playwright Project developed the program in partnership with the LEAP (Leadership Empowers All Possibilities) Board of the San Diego Foster Youth Initiative, a group of young adults involved in advocating for changes to the system. The LEAP Board named the program after a sentiment frequently expressed by foster youth: “We go through many trials and tribulations and when we talk about what has happened to us, the response is ‘You’re lying. That didn’t happen.
New York, NY
Ten Days for Oppositional Architecture was a 10-day public event consisting of lectures, discussions, presentations, film screenings, and a range of participatory events, bringing together architects, activists, geographers, planners, economists, and the general public. The project was conceptualized by the biannual journal on architecture and politics An Architectur and was commissioned and hosted by Performa and Storefront for Art and Architecture.
Syracuse, NY
The Tenure Team Initiative (TTI) is one of the consortium's most important initiatives to date, and seeks to articulate and support the adventurous work of publicly engaged scholars and artists. Led by National Co-chairs, Nancy Cantor (Chancellor and President of Syracuse University) and Steven D. Lavine (President of the California Institute of the Arts), team members seek to develop a broad understanding of the university’s public mission and its impact on changing scholarly and creative practices in the cultural disciplines.
Scottsdale, AZ
The Terraced Cascade, which was commissioned by the Scottsdale Public Art Program and the City of Scottsdale Municipal Services Department, is an environmental artwork and theater garden that draws inspiration from water and manmade inscriptions on the desert. Expressed as both miniature watershed and abstraction of the human body, it provides a means for communtiy members to imagine their place within the larger Indian Bend Wash - a waterhshed with alternating conditions of drought and flooding.
San Francisco, CA
Tess Anne Sarbutt uses sculptural installation and video art to examine the loss of children through exceptional circumstances. Losses can manifest differently depending on the circumstances e.g. war, or cultural expectations e.g. gendercide. Her work is informed by and asks pertinent questions: How do our individual decisions inform our culture? What defines us as societies? How does this make our world? She offers a non-judgmental mode of presentation, inviting the participant to personal consideration and investigation.