Fatherhood and Healthy Masculinities Mapping Undisciplinary Research - The Soil Factory Ithaca Artists' Grief Deck Youth Grief Deck Turn it Around! Flashcards for Education Futures Pandemic Pedagogy Projects ALI Covid-19 Economic Impacts Project Democratic Field Tre Maison Dasan Earth in 2045: UN75 Artist Moderated Dialogues Her Opponent Prototype Project: Narrative Research on CSI's Zero Waste Initiative Prototype Project: Performance Based Artists' Literacies - Engage Improvisational Rhetoric Prototype project: Narrative Research on Wildlife Conservation

 Artists do more than just make art.  Artists think systemically, contextually, and holistically.  Artists synthesize complexity.   Artists’ processes are fundamentally about transformation and reorganization, destabilization and reconfiguration.  Artists operate through ways of knowing intrinsic to humanity, and essential to our existence.  If the last period of history relegated artists to be mere producers of objects, experiences, and entertainment, the one we’re entering now calls on them to lead by breaking through biases, old patterns of thought, and creating, above all, knowledge and action.

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 for ARTISTS:

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We believe there is a huge shortcoming in contemporary art education that leaves both established working artists as well as recent graduates adrift in a commodity-dominated marketplace, unable to fully utilize their intelligences, experiences, and skills to generate transformative cultural growth.  

Artists’ Literacies answers that gap by recognizing that an artists’ value is not in what they make, but what and how they learn while making.

To activate this untapped value, and transform artists’ practices so that they can beneficially transform their surroundings and society, we offer:

A PROFESSIONAL-PRACTICE TRAINING PROGRAM - to expand your creative practice toward amplified impact in social and systemic fields

A ‘POST-BAC’ INSTITUTE - to help reposition your art practice where you can use it to engage complex systemic change

A COMMUNITY OF ARTISTS - who are not content with issue-driven expression, activism, preaching to a choir, or just 'starting a conversation' with our work; but who know how to push past these communicative modes and tap into the primary knowledge that artists utilize to make their work, and build new systems

A CONVENING SPACE - to bring artists together with organizations and institutions that are ready to work with us in new ways, and to elevate the value of artists from merely communicators to producers of knowledge

 
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“IMPACT” PRODUCING FOR ARTISTS

Borrowing an idea from the social-issue documentary film world, ‘impact producing’ takes existing artworks and conducts audience/participant research around them, to understand how people are affected and responding to the work.   Then we develop strategies with the artist to disseminate the work in the context where the effects can be greatest, and to realize new iterations that can accelerate and maximize the cultural growth the artist is seeking. 

Click HERE to view a sample project.

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AGENCY: CREATING NEW ENGAGEMENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR ARTISTS

Often the best an artist can hope for is a residency within an organization that works in their sector of interest.  And then they are left to re-invent the wheel in terms of having a real impact in that space.

ALI wants to be your agent, and strategically develop opportunities in the places you want to make a difference: residencies, research positions, fellowships, immersions.  This means advocating for cultural change in institutions to recognize how powerful artist-adjacency can be, and protecting artists from conventional ‘instrumentalization’ to move forward the agendas of others.

This isn’t an easy lift, which is why we want to do it together, and create a community of artists, and a record of achievement, that lets prospective organizational partners see there’s much more to opening their doors to artists than just good PR and decorated hallways.

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PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: WORKGROUPS AND ONE-on-ONES

At the heart of all of this are the “artists’ literacies” themselves - the unique ways of knowing that all artists operate with, their intuitions, senses, and sensibilities.  Through workgroups, seminars, and individualized advising we help you interrogate your intuitions, understand how you know what you know, and how to make it conscious, repeatable, applicable, and apply it as a method of research that can take your work well beyond art markets and activism.

And because the markets have systematically undervalued artists and compelled us to buy into the trope of the ‘struggling artist,’ these services are ALWAYS free for trade or barter, or pay-what-you-wish.  ALI is committed to mobilizing the capacities of ALL artists to build a more balanced human culture and money will never be an obstacle to participation!

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