On Wednesday, March 18, 2020, during the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, Creative Generation deployed a fast response survey to gather data about the rapidly changing funding needs of arts & cultural education organizations, investigating the potential responses which could mitigate the impacts of impending challenges. Read more about this survey and its findings here. In the following months from March - October, Creative Generation and its collaborators embarked on several continued investigations, which sought to understand the multitude of pandemics impacting arts & cultural education and the response of individuals, programs, and communities to these circumstances.

Creative Generation is currently seeking new members to join the collective; draft scopes of work are outlined below. Potential applicants may view these scopes as a summary of the skills needed to sustain the collective work of the organization, but may also propose new or combined scopes integrating the outlined needs and their unique contributions into a newly devised position.

This session is a part of our ITAC Innovator Think Tank series! Every month, Think Tank hosts invite interested participants to engage beyond the initial session and form working groups which can collectively address a specific need or topic linked to the Think Tank's original theme. Participants are welcome to join the sessions, learn more about hosts' chosen topics, and then choose to opt-in to these collaborative working groups. Why not come along, learn about different practices, and discover the ways you can get involved?

Members of our collective presented three sessions at the 2022 Association of Arts Administration Educators Conference. You can view the sessions in their entirety here:

Intergenerational Co-Mentoring dissolves hierarchy and lifts up shared wisdom. It is a relationship built on respect, curiosity, and humility. 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?

Coalition for Queer Creative Arts Therapies’s Annual Symposium, Expressing Pride 2022, is still open to registrants! Enjoy a free day of virtual learning, connection, and community building to discover, explore, and honor the impact of creative arts therapies on LGBTQ+ communities across the globe.

#ENOUGH: Plays to End Gun Violence is a project that calls on teens to confront gun violence by creating new works of theatre that will spark critical conversations and inspire meaningful action in communities across the country. Our mission is to promote playwriting as a tool for self-expression and social change, harnessing this generation's spirit of activism and providing a platform for America's playwrights of tomorrow to discover and develop their voices today.

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.

International Arts Education Week is May 23-29, 2022. This international celebration is designated by the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

This year, the World Alliance for Arts Education has selected the theme: Arts Education for Peace.

The organization is currently collecting the voices of arts educators to unify their global impact during the celebrations. There are three opportunities to participate - learn more.

Created in November 2021, #LearningPlanet Youth Fellows are engaged individuals under 25 years old whose passion for social and/or environmental impact are worthy of stronger global recognition and support. Today, there are 60 Youth Fellows exploring key topics around health, learning, rights and sustainability.

Creative Generation encourages systemic change by working within and disrupting the current structures of the arts/cultural, education, and social change sectors. Recognizing the negative impacts of traditional internship structures, the organization seeks to mentor new professionals with the necessary tools, training, and resources that will aid them in changing the landscape for the future. With a commitment to our values of honoring diversity and enabling radical inclusion, Creative Generation will work with individuals from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in the sectors in which the organization works.

You are Invited to Express Your Interest to Join the Young & Emerging Leaders Forum (YELF)! This 9-month program builds a peer-to-peer network of young and emerging professionals within the fields of culture, education, and social change. Expressions of Interest due on April 29, 2022.

The Call For Kindness offers young leaders the chance to participate in a dynamic leadership development fellowship and win up to $3,000 in funding for a project of their own that inspires kindness and strengthens their local, national, or global communities.

Practitioners from around the world, working at the intersection of arts, education, and disability, are invited to join the new International Arts Education and Disability Justice Exchange.

The International Arts Education & Disability Justice Exchange, which will commence in March 2022, provides space for peer-to-peer networking and knowledge sharing among practitioners advancing both arts education and disability justice around the world.

Young writers with disabilities are invited to submit a 'ten-minute script' of any genre. Scripts may be for plays, musicals, multimedia, video, film, TV, podcasts, or other writing for performance. Entries may be the work of an individual student or a collaboration of two students that includes at least one student with a disability. A panel of theater professionals selects division winners.

This is one of ITAC Collaborative's monthly Think Tank sessions, and this month we focus on Playback Theatre in Africa hosted by the AFRICA CONNECT Group. This group is an IPTN (International Playback Theatre Network) Africa Region Project that brings Playbackers from Africa together for the purpose of connecting and exchanging lived experiences through the modality Playback Theatre.

Here this ITAC Think Tank helps Teaching Artists from the Global North to witness a Global South online applied theatre intervention through stories of, and from, Africa. Even, ITAC participants were invited to watch part of the AFRICA CONNECT Group rehearsal live where they discussed their learning, goals and ambitions for this practice.