HOLDING 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.

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Young and Emerging Leaders Forum Spotlight: Sul Ju Kim

Artistsnowww (Sul Ju Kim) is a teaching artist from South Korea. My artistic identity has been constructed since I was very young. I started painting at the age of 4 and studied orientalpainting, western painting, sculpture, and design in the art high school. While I studied University and Graduate School, I contemplated how to communicate with the world as an artist and was involved in various projects. In particular, I have endeavored to be an artist who works with marginalized groups. Spontaneously, most of my works address the life of the socially disadvantaged.

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5 Learnings from Our Work Building and Engaging STEAM Audiences Alongside the Innovation Collaborative

Over the course of 2022, I had the pleasure of working closely with the Innovation Collaborative to help build their audience of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics Education (STEAM) supporters this year, which included conducting a focus group of educators — and their supporters — to learn more about the STEAM educational landscape and their unique interests and needs as those cultivating creative learning. 

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HOLDING 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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