Arts + Environment Project Ideas Session
Monday, October 8 at 2 PM
Lamar Dodd Room N100
An open session to learn about arts + environment project funding opportunities at UGA. Representatives from the Office of Sustainability, Social Ecology Studio, and Ideas for Creative Exploration will be available to answer questions about Campus Sustainability Grants, Social Ecology Studio Grants, and Idea Lab Mini Grants. Get feedback on project ideas, meet potential collaborators, proposal writing advice, and learn more about available resources.
ART+SCIENCE: a conversation with Dan Jay
Wednesday, September 26 at Noon
Lamar Dodd Building Room S160
Dan Jay is a professor and dean of the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts University in Boston, MA. For 30 years he has led parallel careers in science and art and acted as a conduit between the two fields.
“As a society we have segregated art and science such that fields have become overly specialized and do not speak to the vast majority of society. This was not always so and I seek to catalyze a reunification of knowledge or at least an appreciation that disciplines can inform each other in novel ways.”
Ideas for Creative Exploration and the Willson Center for Humanities are pleased to announce the recipients of projects grants to support UGA student work featured in the a2ru 2018 National Conference.
Feed the Fish: Engaging the Campus Community in Reducing Plastic Waste in Campus Waterways Sam Cherof and Lindy Erkes
Amazonian Arts: The Aesthetics of Traditional Ecological Knowledge Louisiana Lightsey
Utilizing film as an art-as-research method, this short digital mosaic incorporates visual anthropology, multispecies representation, and sensory ethnography in order to train attention on the biotic and abiotic minutiae of dwelling in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Based on preliminary fieldwork, the camera travels alongside Kichwa, Achuar, and Waorani indigenous people as they garden, forage, tell stories, sing songs, and navigate forest paths and riverways. But instead of positioning the human as the central agent in human-nature relationality, the focus is on the colors, textures, movements, shapes, and sounds which animate a pluriverse of interconnected lifeworlds and configure an aesthetic of cultural and ecological resilience.
This paper examines critical needs or opportunities to help the Creative Placemaking field continue taking root in community planning, and to better contribute to expanded opportunity and equity in low-income communities. Several years into the advancement of Creative Placemaking, the language and general premise are taking hold. The term is now widespread in the arts and culture field, and increasingly in community development and urban planning. Yet critical gaps in the field must be addressed if Creative Placemaking is to flourish and be an integral part of community development.
UGA will host the 2018 National Conference for the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru) on the theme of “Arts Environments: Design, Resilience, and Sustainability.” The conference will be held in partnership with the UGA Arts Council and in conjunction with the November Spotlight on the Arts festival.
The 2018 theme, Arts Environments: Design, Resilience, and Sustainability, is an invitation to explore the relationship between creativity and diverse cultural locations, by framing discussions about design, resilience, and sustainability in context of interdisciplinary artistic and environmental practice. The theme offers an opportunity to think broadly about the ecology of the arts and their environments, in terms of performance, design, and engineering. A land and sea grant institution inextricable from the town of Athens and the broader ecologies of Georgia and the Southeast, the University of Georgia will provide a rich context for thinking creatively about Arts Environments globally.
Call for a2ru Conference Volunteers
Students who are interested in volunteering during the conference should contact Mark Callahan, mark.callahan@uga.edu. All student volunteers who satisfy volunteer requirements will have free access to conference events.
ICE Conversation: Georgia Prison Beekeepers
Wednesday, September 12 at Noon
Lamar Dodd Building Room S160
How can individuals in prisons mimic honeybee behavior and work together for a common goal? Idea Lab Mini Grant recipient and MFA student Cristina Echezarreta will share progress from a collaboration of a students, faculty, and staff in Art and Entomology with the Georgia Prison Beekeeping program to explore prisoners’ relationship to nature through the arts.
