PERFORMING OUR FUTURE:
I N S T I T U T E
jULY 14-18 2016 • WHITeSBURG, KY
In summer 2016, Appalshop hosted a five-day, hands-on workshop with 13 international teams of artists, scholars, and community leaders sponsored by Oregon State, University of Florida, Wilfrid Laurier University (Ontario), Iowa State, Ohio State, Cornell (Binghamton and Utica campuses), Virginia Tech, Syracuse, Arizona State, University of California Davis, and the eastern KY-based Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED). Participants explored the questions: How can arts and culture promote individual voice and collective agency, unbounding a community’s imagination and ambition in order to create the conditions for economic development? How can a community organize itself to build an economy that’s broad-based and sustainable?
This inaugural Institute is the first in a series of national investigative gatherings hosted at community-based partner organizations throughout the U.S.
This inaugural Institute is the first in a series of national investigative gatherings hosted at community-based partner organizations throughout the U.S.
Slideshow Credit: Holly Zahn, Imagining America
Institute activities engaged teams in:
- INVESTIGATING the history, animating ideas, and policy environments for arts- and culture-based economic and civic community development; and TRAINING in methodologies for economic development based on community cultural assets
- IMMERSION in Appalachian culture (including discussions with Appalshop’s filmmakers and radio journalists, visits to Culture Hub partner sites throughout Letcher County, and a square dance at the Carcassonne Community Center)
- ART MAKING, including a 23-hour production period in which each participant chose to create a short play, short film, set of photographs, music recording, or radio documentary in collaboration with Appalshop professional artists and their community partners
- COLLABORATING within their university-sponsored teams to generate arts- and culture-based development plans to take back to their home communities.
E X P L O R E T H E I N S T I T U T E
Credit 1-3: Lafayette College/Clay Wegrzynowicz '18. Credit 4: Michaela Miller
welcome packet |
itINERARY |