On April 5-7, 2022, Teaching Artists Guild, Arts Education Partnership, National Endowment for the Arts, U.S. Department of Education and Hewlett Foundation co-hosted “Our Shared Future: Imagining a New Landscape for Teaching Artists”, the first national convening for teaching artists. The following reports were created by 19 teaching artists across the country, each project created through their individual art forms.

Total Visitors
843
Visitors on Day 1
-189
Visitors on Day 2
-200
Visitors on Day 3

242

Repeat
Attendees

16.5

Hours of
Content

135

Minutes avg.
Attendance

48

States
Represented

10

Regional Events
Hosted During Conference

"This conference was a breath of fresh air for me!"

-Pamela O'Loughlin

OUR SHARED FUTURE GRAPHIC NOTES

The following graphic notes were created live during the conference by artist Jayda Shuavarnnasri. You can find more of Jayda's work on Instagram @vivrant_visuals.

OUR SHARED FUTURE NARRATIVES

Experience the conference through the narratives of the Teaching Artists who attended

VISUAL NARRATIVES

ADAM COLLET

Adam’s report is a two page project in comic form that relies on found language for the content. Subjects included are reflections on the conference, impressions, take aways, particularly around the sustainability of a teaching artists’ life and career.

ASHLEY PEREZ

@ashleypaints_

Ashley created a drawing for two session with work-in-progress style videos and accompanying pngs and jpegs. One is for the “Committing to Support Healthy Careers for Teaching Artists session” (“yellow”), and the other is for the “Engaging Racial Justice as a Teaching Artist” (“What We Have”).

JASON WYMAN

Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter:@queerlycomplex

Jason Wyman created a digital zine that map memories & curiosity inspired by a quote from the session “Making Meaning with Dr. Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio,” and the quote she shared by Mari J. Matsuda, “Imagination takes us into the future.” Jason wrote an accompanying blog post examining their process of creating the map and navigating the colonized mindset of perfectionism.

https://www.queerlycomplex.com/blogs/feel-it/mapping-memory-and-curiosity

JANELLE DUNLAP

Janelle Dunlap used stand out quotes from three different sessions and illustrated them with decorative fonts, incorporating the author of the quote’s profile picture.

KAY CLEMONS

Kay Clemons created a series of 1-2min social media stories that have pictures and text with a voiceover summarizing the highlights of the event on each day. Key phrases and positive affirmations or inspiring quotes from speakers are included in the content.

LAURA HALSEY BROWN

@senseofplace_lab

Laura Halsey Brown reported in a photo essay form, from the perspective of being a Teaching Artist in a small town in the Pacific Northwest.

http://senseofplacelab.com/project/photo-essay-from-teaching-artist-guild-conference-2022/

MANSEE SINGHI

Mansee Singhi created a dance using hand gestures and story narration with her experience to be shared in movement form. This unique concept will help the TA and other members to adapt this universal language of hand gestures to express ones emotions and feelings becoming diversely inclusive.

REBECCA CRENSHAW

Rebecca Crenshaw created a multidisciplinary project, determined by the specific conference experience she had. To exercise creative restraint, Rebecca came from the lens of a musician, movement specialist, and creative writer. As an ethnomusicologist, Rebecca is drawn toward participant interviews and interaction documentation (word clouds, jamboards, etc) as well as how conference takeaways feel and sound in the body. Rebecca believes embodying the conference in a creative way can help participants (and herself) reach deeper depths of learning and processing. Ultimately, Rebecca hopes her documentation will provide insight into the conference experience as well as encourage further inquiry into the topics and concepts discussed (in other words – live on past the conference itself!)

AUBREY DERRYBERRY

@aubreyderryberry

Aubrey Derryberry reported on the conference through a fusion of movement, personal fables, and imagery. Her focus was that the “Time of the lone wolf is over” for The Artist and how “Our Shared Future” connects us all. Aubrey’s outcome is a greater depth of connection of Artist to Artist, Artist to Self, and Artist to the Future.

AUDIO NARRATIVES

JASMINE HARRIS

Instagram: @dr_harris
Facebook: Dr. Harris

Jasmine Harris summarized and depicted the conference experience through social media clips and a photo essay that included prose poetry.

GUILLERMINA ZABALA

Instagram:@gisha108
Facebook: Guillermina Zabala

Guillermina Zabala conducted audio interviews with some of the speakers and participants and put together an audio piece highlighting some of the relevant issues of the conference.

Lance Rautzhan

Instagram: @lance_rautzhan

Lance Rautzhan created a summary sound collage remixing field recordings of the conference including but not limited to speakers, discussions and incidental sounds.

WRITTEN NARRATIVES

ALEX CHADWELL

Instagram - heyachadwell
Facebook - Alex Chadwell
LinkedIn - Alex Chadwell

“Beyond Teaching”” was written as a report out on the national convening focusing on teaching artistry, “Our Shared Future: Imagining a New Landscape for Teaching Artists” which occurred April 5-7, 2022 co-hosted by Arts Education Partnership and Teaching Artists Guild.

CYNTHIA AMOAH

Cynthia Amoah gathered a collection of responses, reflections, and words from participants and fellow teaching artists (in addition to their own) that attended the conference in order to write a community poem. Cynthia often finds that including the words of others leads to a different, more inclusive, experience of embracing poetry due to the fact that people see themselves (and their words) reflected in the art form. This is a great way to also memorialize our experience and time together at the virtual conference.

For Those of Us: In Praise of the Teaching Artist
by Cynthia Amoah

For those of us who enter spaces
brimming with possibility and loud voices
who drift daily through ordinary hallways
for the hope and the way we get to share ourselves and stories
sipping on the sweet comfort of art.

For those of us who enter positions of trust and power to dream and think
who build beautiful futures with our shaky hands
who ready ourselves for the reach
who seek the marvelous rather than the mundane
who teach others to become constellations of their own.

For those of us who busy ourselves with brilliance
who wake in the everyday of a new morning
and walk in our highest calling
who give into the divine demand to live and teach
who share in the joy of art-making,
For art is so many of us.

For those of us who were never really given a chance
who learned the sacred stories of who we were in a strong accent at our mother’s feet
who live with the ability to explore the world in a much bigger way
who settle for pennies in exchange for the art
and who dare to make space for young artists to discover, explore, and share their creative voices.

Show me a teaching artist and I will show you a mountaintop
Show me a teaching artist and I will show you a revolution
of art on its spinning axis
of a spirit staring us in the face.

For those of us who be the art
and teach it, too
humanity-minded, storytellers, poets, visionaries, creatives and artists
drumming for our right to rise.

For those of us who are the music and its beating heart
dancing and dancing in the gospel of the chest
a freedom song
the breath of birds
the bones of butterflies
for we have always been somewhere before—
blooming and teaching and teaching and rising.

JAVAN HOWARD

Javan Howard used the session titles to recap experiences and insight taken away from the conference and created poetry from them.

JULIO MONTALVO VALENTIN

Julio Montalvo Valentin took the traditional blog form and drifted it into poetic prose to capture the feeling and essence of the conference experience.

MIDORI SAMSOM

Midori Samson’s creative activities as a teaching artist, and their scholarly works in academia, exist at the intersection of music and social work. So they brought to the conference their lenses of classical music, social welfare, anti-racism, anti-oppression, anti-colonialism, and critical pedagogy. Using these lenses, Midori created a written report discussing conference events and key takeaways. Then they included in that written report a collection of several recommended music/arts lesson plans that they created, which aimed to exemplify their takeaways and lessons-learned from the conference.

This event was made possible by funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, U.S. Department of Education and Hewlett Foundation and by planning support from the Teaching Artists Guild and Arts Education Partnership.