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Common Place: Collective Learning Outside the Institution

 
 

The student debt crisis, exclusionary admissions policies, and precarious working conditions for faculty and staff at academic institutions across the board: How do the ripple effects of the academic industrial complex compromise the university’s mission to produce and share knowledge? How do artists and organizers cultivate common spaces for learning in response to shifting paradigms of “value” and “worth” in higher education?

On Wednesday, July 26th at 7pm CST panelists Cass Eddington, Alex O’Hanlon, Valerie St. Pierre Smith will join moderator Amanda Huckins for Amplify’s next virtual Alternate Currents panel discussion, Common Place: Collective Learning Outside the Institution. Together they’ll weigh the possibilities for ongoing education outside the institution by uplifting humanly-scaled models of collective learning that reorganize value systems conventionally bound by money, exclusivity, and expertise.

Register on Zoom, Facebook, or Amplify’s website. You will receive a confirmation email with a link to join the discussion on Zoom after registering. And don’t forget to visit the Alternate Currents blog to read related posts before the discussion.

www.amplifyarts.org/alternate-currents

Alternate Currents incubates artist-led responses to the systemic challenges we face by centering creative research, collaboration, and critical dialogue both on- and off-line. Together, the Alternate Currents Blog, Discussion Series, and Working Group hold space for critical discourse around national and international issues in the arts that have a profound impact at the local level.

Free and open to all. Alternate Currents programming is presented with support from the Sherwood Foundation, the Nebraska Arts Council and the Nebraska Cultural Endowment.

 
 

About the Panelists:

Cass Eddington is a poet, teacher, editor, and community arts organizer. A PhD candidate at the University of Denver, they are the author of VERNAL HURT (Magnificent Field) and TRANSIT (Spiral Editions). They run vocationalpoetics.com -- an accessible space of creative autonomy and radical communion for working writers. Cass teaches community-based and university-funded creative writing classes, and performs other forms of labor. They live in so-called Denver with their dog Jupiter.

Alex O’Hanlon is a community organizer who is committed to supporting resident-led projects that enhance their quality of life. She currently works as the Engagement Coordinator at One Omaha. Prior to that, Alex worked as a Garden Manager for City Sprouts South where she coordinated programs, workshops, and events. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy/History from UNO and travels to California every fall to harvest olives.

Valerie St. Pierre Smith (White Earth Ojibwe enrolled descendant) is a scholar, author and multidisciplinary artisan. Valerie's eclectic creative background includes fiber arts, sewing, painting, multimedia, and costume/fashion design. Her design work has been seen across the country with highlights that include The Kennedy Center, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Mixed Blood Theatre, Sea World: San Diego, the National Museum of the American Indian and Pilobolus Dance Theatre. A bit of a unicorn, Valerie’s creative research and scholarly work focuses on cultural appropriation, inspiration, representation and decolonization in western creative practices. As a mixed blood Anishnaabe kwe, healer, and artisan, her work explores and is influenced by her experiences at the confluence of healing, social justice, traditional Anishinaabe teachings, and the power of identity. St. Pierre Smith has over 25 years of professional creative, academic, and scholarly experience, holding a B.F.A from Stephens College, and an M.F.A from San Diego State.

About the Moderator:

Amanda Huckins is a Nebraskan poet whose work has been published in booklet form as "Trying to End the War" (merrily merrily merrily merrily, 2017) and featured in A Dozen Nothing (adozennothing.com), among other places on paper and online. In her weekday hours, Amanda is an Early Head Start educator and participates in building the brain architecture for social emotional and cognitive development in infants and toddlers. In addition to her paid work, Amanda is a grassroots organizer who works alongside fellow community members to build self-determination, forge non-transactional relationships, and create radical free spaces (such as past DIY spaces The Commons in Lincoln, NE and Media Corp. in Omaha). She is also a letterpress printer who produces posters and other ephemera in her garage print studio, where she teaches typesetting to anyone who wants to learn.


 
Earlier Event: July 14
Body Defiance
Later Event: September 8
Unceded Garden