From April 2020 – December 2021, Creative Generation was named an ITAC Innovator and focused on developing an infrastructure within the International Teaching Artist Collaborative (ITAC) to address the gap in research and resources produced by and for the field of teaching artistry. The project engaged volunteers in the teaching artist field from a cross-section of countries to collect, validate, and disseminate tools, resources, and creative/scholarly research in a number of capacities. These include retrofitting the existing knowledge shared through the 2019 Think Tanks, building each into a digital learning module; formulating a strategy to catalog, publish and disseminate research and resources shared through the 2018 and 2020 ITAC conferences; and researching and recommending a sustainable and scalable framework for a clearinghouse of new tools and resources created by and for the field of teaching artistry to be located within ITAC’s digital platform. Read more about this project there.
From this work, ITAC hosts monthly Think Tanks, where a Host from a different part of the world shares insights about their work, and in discussion with attendees, digs deep about the ways this could help you develop your own practice. The Think Tanks are edited, archived, and connected to additional resources across the sector.
Check out the latest archives here:
Integral Co-Mentoring Part 1 (June 2022)
Jean E. Taylor and Zoey Peacock Jones (USA)
“When something good happens, I think about us.”
What can transpire when a 60-year old and a 20-year old together investigate art making, philosophy, and teaching artistry? What is learned, unlearned, and relearned? How does each mentor serve as a conduit to generational thinking? Maybe the big issues facing us need intergenerational thinking and art making to instigate substantial change?
Intergenerational Co-Mentoring dissolves hierarchy and lifts up shared wisdom. It is a relationship built on respect, curiosity, and humility.
During this Think Tank, the collective explored intergenerational co-mentorship and its potential for individual growth. Leads, Zoey Peacock Jones and Jean E. Taylor, heard various perspectives on mentoring, beginning co-mentoring processes, and sharing current findings and creations thus far.
In Fall 2022, they plan to offer a second part that will encouraging participants to “bring a co-mentor” to investigate collaborative impact, multiple perspectives and innovative actions.
Building A Social Impact Curriculum For Teaching Artists (July 2022)
Eric Booth & Gowri Savoor (USA)
This month, ITAC is launching its FIRST FREE online course: Teaching Artistry for Social Impact.
As the human element has become increasingly important to protect, preserve and present in these trying times, this pioneering edge of our global field now becomes an area for professional development. This course sprang from the case studies of the ITAC IMPACT: Climate Initiative but is applicable to social impact projects in other areas like health and wellness, social justice, and democracy-building.
During this Think Tank we looked “under the hood” with its authors to find out what’s in it, how they chose to make it teaching-artist-friendly, its distinctive features, and how and why to partner with Kadenze (the world's largest arts learning platform). Eric Booth and Gowri Savoor have spent a year creating this course, and are excited to invite teaching artists to think forward.
It’s not just a presentation.
The authors welcomed contribution from participants about how to venture through the course’s completion and/or to join as a coach, sparking dialogue on how this new opportunity will both build our field and connections with partners in social change organizations. Concluding the Think Tank, the group thought about the potentials and pitfalls of online learning to expand the field of teaching artistry.
Call 2 Action Teacher's Edition (October 2022)
Clara Bloomfield (Scotland), Khairina Khalid (Singapore), Irsyad Dawood (Singapore), Catherine-Star Blatchford (Scotland)
To what extent can we as teaching artists create a global discourse relating to youth identity, to dismantle and disrupt the hegemonic narratives surrounding youth identity?
Inspired by the living newspaper, “Call 2 Action” is a new digital collaborative approach to Applied Theatre developed by Clara Bloomfield and Khairina Khalid. This online platform fosters positive relationships, celebrates global citizenship, and nurtures creative learning spaces that promote collaborative art making as a catalyst for change.
This Think Tank studied the most recent newspaper edition, which included an international cohort of young people exploring the power-laden relationships between self and society. Through the lens of social justice, the young participants listened to a variety of different viewpoints and analyzed their own experiences, debated ideas and made mindful choices about how to represent their own political truths. Through the crossing of geographical and cultural borders, this project provided the arena for both young participants, and their audience, to explore their relationship and experiences of their world, which lead to acts of personal and social change.
Afterwhich, the hosts were eager to recruit teaching artists for their forthcoming ITAC innovators application to create a global Teaching Artists Edition of Call 2 Action, which aims to provide the tools to explore our personal agency as teaching artists as a catalyst for change.
For those who see the power of action research, a Working Group will spring from this session to create a user-friendly Handbook on Action Research that serves the global field.
Action Research For Teaching Artists: Adding Muscle To The Power Of Our Work (December 2022)
Eric Booth (USA) & José Angel Salazar Marin (Greece)
Heard of “Action Research”?
Action Research is a professional research method that empowers individuals, in this case teaching artists, to consistently improve, clarify impact, and to strengthen proposals and projects for funders. The significant factor in action research is that those involved do the research alongside implementation, which can guide direction and add credibility and accountability to the work. This Think Tank, which shared practical examples of action research, distilled practices through user-friendly approaches to ensure that participants could leave with their own action research project ready to go.