Annual Convening, Jacksonville, Florida, September 1-4

SAVE THE DATE!

Join us Sept. 1-4 for this year’s Annual Convening! This year’s convening offers the opportunity for learning and networking — and just as importantly, an opportunity to celebrate our collective work and to help ensure everyone has access to an excellent arts education. Whether your goal is to build your personal network, take part in thoughtful discussions or enjoy the company of leaders across the nation, the Annual Convening is the place to be on Sept. 1-4.

CALL FOR BREAKOUT SESSION PROPOSALS

Are you interested in hosting a breakout session at the 2026 Annual Convening? Breakout sessions will assist leaders in gaining the knowledge and insights to ensure that all learners receive an excellent arts education. This includes dance, folk arts, indigenous arts, media arts, music, theatre and visual arts.

Purple line illustration of the Portland skyline including a bridge and Mt. Hood

Title: 2280 Pasos Bajo un Cielo Nublado | Artist: Hernán Jourdan | Medium: Film

When I was asked to create a work of art exploring literacy, I wanted to create a dance but I had no dancers or a studio, so I chose to use my own body in the space I had, my yard. Fluent Nature is video of micro-choreography that explores what cannot be expressed with words, how nature has its own language, and how placing the human body in nature changes the story.

Title: What Is Me and What Is Not Me | Artist: Alex Chadwell | Medium: Music

My thinking on arts and literacy centers around the concept of literacies and artmaking as both sense-making and meaning-making processes that organically and inevitably overlap, intersect, and reciprocate. Compositionally, What is me and what is not me is a sound collage of sorts (there is no notation for the piece, and I'd be hard pressed to recreate it accurately) that abstractly and aurally represents the relationships between literacies and artmaking.

Title: A Curious Honeybee | Artist: Gideon Young | Medium: Film

Offering welcome through traditional and digital elements of literacy, A Curious Honeybee provides an experiential learning environment by activating visual, musical, natural, and emotional literacies.

Title: Tercera Llamada | Artist: Karilú Forshee | Medium: Audio

La Carpa Theatre is a project that I am currently directing in the Detroit Latinx community. The project aims to strengthen and uplift youth voices through devised theatre, in the style of the Mexican Carpas. This audio was created in the theatrical environment envisioned for our project. The ways in which literacies are re-defined are at the heart of La Carpa Theatre's mission.

Title: Literaseas | Artist: MJ Robinson | Medium: Graphite and ink on paper with digital edits

Title: A Riddle | Artist: MJ Robinson | Medium: Graphite on paper with digital edits

Title: False Binaries | Artist: MJ Robinson | Medium: Graphite on paper with digital edits