Each year, Creative Generation conducts a campaign with a specific focus and this year’s campaign is “Intergenerational Collaboration,” explored through quarterly topics. In this blog, Director of Leadership Valerie HD Killebrew explores this quarter’s topic, Redefining Eldership, by looking at nature as a non-traditional elder.
Read moreREDEFINING ELDERSHIP: When to Talk and When to Listen
Each year, Creative Generation conducts a campaign with a specific focus and this year’s campaign is “Intergenerational Collaboration,” explored through quarterly topics. In this blog, Director of Engagement Bridget Woodbury explores this quarter’s topic, Redefining Eldership, by reflecting on Creative Generation’s work with the Arts in Basic Curriculum (ABC) Institute and the School for ABC Leaders.
Read moreBlueprints for Belonging: Lessons Learned from Community Engaged Forecasting
Less than six months into my role as Director of Education & Community Engagement at the Appell Center for the Performing Arts, a member of the community said to me that “people know when something isn’t made for them.” Having just moved to York, PA to assume this new position at an organization focused on expanding education and community engagement programs, I was working double-time to make connections and have honest conversations about ways the performing arts center could do better in truly serving its community. I was learning that there were two sides to every coin, and navigating a way to honor and support existing narratives.
Read moreHOLDING TENSIONS: Consultant-Ethnographer, A Nuanced Approach to Working with Organizations and Beyond
As a former educator-turned-project manager at Creative Generation, I hold the tension of currently working in a professional role that my former teacher colleagues (and myself) were often so skeptical of. In this post, I explore how Jill Schinberg’s consultant-ethnographer (CE) framework helps me balance this divergent experience, wherein Creative Generation’s objective to be in co-creation with our collaborators is actualized as we “understand, document, and interpret” important contextual information to successfully see projects through with integrity and care.
Read moreHOLDING TENSIONS: On Being a Creative and an Academic
I have always been a scholar and a poet. I won my first award for poetry in the 4th grade. I remember my algebra teacher in high school scolding me for writing poetry in the margin of my math notes. It made perfect sense to me. I wrote poems about mathematical concepts to draw connections and define terms. She reprimanded me. Freshman year of college I left the private art school where I was enrolled because I felt my scholarly appetite was not being fed. I remember writing poems to explain my emerging epistemological stances during my doctoral program. Yet, when I went to my community open mic where I was born and raised as a young poet, the language of academe felt ill placed peeking through my stanzas. I remember wondering what was happening to my voice as a poet.
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