Check-in
2:00pm-2:15pm EDT
A quick welcome and check-in before workshops
Workshop Sessions
2:15pm-3:30pm EDT
Choose one of the three options. All will be recorded and video links will be made available after the Convocation.
Recognizing & Reconciling: Gentrification and Other Unintended Consequences
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, is there a map to get us out of there? Achieving equity through placekeeping comes with ample detours and fragmented maps. If we’re lucky we can find a good compass. How can we help communities find and maintain equitable directions? What unintended consequences do we need to prevent?
Resources
Defining & Devising: Metrics That Fit Communities
How do we know our grantees and communities have achieved real, positive progress in this complicated, long-term work that’s different in each place? Can one size fit all in assessing community change? How can communities go about devising meaningful metrics they can work with?
Resources
Embodying Equity: Culturally Competent Arts Agencies
How deeply do we understand equity in the ways we do our work and how our organizations are structured? How are our institutional assumptions biased? Addressing equity is more than a change in the colors of faces. This workshop examines different ways that our systems can become more equitable.
Resources
Break
3:30pm-3:45pm EDT
Closing Plenary
3:45pm-5:00pm EDT

Sketch notes by Alson Chiu from Sketch Effect
Looking to the Future
“How can we become agents of justice not administrators of the status quo?” This was asked during a July 2020 discussion among city planners of color by Pedro Soto, planning director for the City of Lawrence, MA. This final plenary concludes the convocation by inviting us to take leadership roles in creating positive change through new ways of thinking and working. Speakers will share what gives them strength and hope as champions of equity across different cultural, economic and social environments. The presenters all bring deep experience in community-based cultural work, leadership development and facilitation processes that bring together disparate voices and ideas to empower people and places through the arts. Their personal, organizational, and community experience provide successes stories and inspiration for us all.
Resources
Anti Bias Continuum and the descriptor of what is White Supremacy Culture and the antidotes by Tema Okun.
Performance
Join us as we close out the Convocation with an original composition that reflects the takeaways of the two-week event. Music by Mike Bond, featuring piano by Mike Bond, vocal percussion by Gene Shinozaki, and trumpet by Alfonzo Demetrius Ryan, Jr.