program tracks

Civic Engagement

From volunteering to voting, community building to community healing, issue awareness to social action—the arts engage people in civic life. The Civic Engagement Track will explore how the arts can offer welcoming invitations, needed spaces, and new forms for civic participation. Case-based sessions, skill-building workshops, and research and policy sessions will illuminate the many ways the arts are providing platforms for civic engagement and will build participant skills for designing and delivering arts-based civic engagement opportunities in their own communities. Innovator keynote speaker Rob “Biko” Baker—a nationally recognized hip-hop organizer, journalist, activist, and scholar—will shine a light on how hip-hop is being used as a catalyst for voter registration and youth engagement. Participants will have the opportunity to learn how to build their civic engagement muscle during a special half-day preconference workshop presented by Animating Democracy.