Through Tumultuous Times - Reimagining and Rebuilding America
nat rosasco • July 21, 2020
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: AUGUST 28, 2020
This year, in place of an in-person IA National Gathering, Imagining America invites creative responses that offer opportunities for community reflection, healing, and the creation of spaces and places for a radical reimagining of the world in which we live. This collective creative engagement will explore questions such as:
● What is the role of art, design, and creative culture in reimagining and rebuilding our world in ways that create antiracist institutions, structures, practices and ways of thinking?
● How can we work towards a post-COVID university that lessens rather than deepens inequality in access, pedagogy, and forms of knowledge production? How might we re-imagine our educational systems, and particularly our colleges and universities, in ways that divest from forms of violence and inequality and invest in cultures and communities of care within institutions and as stakeholders in regions? What are the opportunities and imperatives of our moment?
● What are local communities doing to move towards a more caring, just, and liberatory ‘America’ and world? What are the new and remembered ideas, images, symbols, forms of knowledge, and ways of being that will lead the way?
We invite teams of two individuals and larger to collaborate on a creative project in response to the prompts outlined above. Creative responses are welcome in the following formats and modalities:
- Community Memorial Quilt
- Community Meals
- Paired Dialogues
Participants are requested to document their creative response in a written, visual, or audio-visual format and share them with IA. These responses will be listed on IA’s dedicated event page, with a cross-section of responses featured on IA’s website and Youtube channel in October 2020 as part of curated live streamed and recorded programming.
La CASA (Center for Arts, Self-determination, and Activism) is a transformative $33 million initiative by Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA) in Boston's South End.This four-story facility will consolidate IBA's diverse programs—including affordable housing, education, financial empowerment, and arts—under one roof, enhancing access and community outreach.Supported by a $20 million New Markets Tax Credits allocation and $12 million in tax-exempt bond financing led by TD Bank, La CASA exemplifies a strategic partnership aimed at fostering socio-economic mobility.Upon its anticipated completion in 2026, La CASA is projected to serve over 2,500 individuals annually through resident services and youth development, with an additional 5,000 benefiting from its arts programming, reinforcing its role as a beacon for Latino culture and community empowerment in Boston.
The Welman Project aims to support educators by making the reuse of materials a resource for creativity in the classroom, and to increase arts participation in underserved groups. They serve educators, artists, makers, and families through three main programs: the Educator Resource Program, the Curiosity Shop, and their Creative Reuse Education Program. They are dedicated to using the arts as a space for healing and confronting social injustice.
Art Against Racism is a virtual arts exhibition which aims to lift up the tremendous array of creative works made in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. In doing so, project organizers hope that the exhibition will serve as an archive of the national artistic response to this historic moment.
La Raza Youth Leadership Institute hosted an art contest for youth ages 12-19 with the goal of motivating Latinx youth to get vaccinated. Three winners were chosen, and the first place winner's artwork was displayed on buses and in bus stop shelters near a number of schools. A phone number is included with the artwork for youth to call to receive more information about vaccines.
Saint Louis Story Stitchers Artists Collective's Perception Isn't Always Reality engages BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) teen and young adult artists to reevaluate messages they may have received about Covid-19 and vaccinations and to reevaluate the sources of the information. Through their own brand of urban storytelling that involves collaborative work in hip hop music and krump dance, spoken word, videography, photography, and podcasting, the artists will produce a challenging body of work for the public to experience on urban canvases such as the sides of city buses and on air waves.
Based in St. Louis, Missouri and incorporated in 2014, the Story Stitchers Artists Collective uses a collaborative model to create social justice art. The mission of Story Stitchers is to document St. Louis through art and word and to promote understanding, civic pride, intergenerational relationships, and literacy. Story Stitchers works to promote a better educated, more peaceful, and caring region through the creation and dissemination of original art.
