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

for ORGANIZATIONS, INSTITUTIONS, RESEARCHERS, and PROBLEM SOLVERS:

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Every organization needs knowledge to pursue its purpose.  The dominant modern methods of measurement and evaluation have been quantitative and mechanical, and have led our social and institutional structures to become imbalanced, inhuman, biased, and often falling short of their purpose.

Artists’ Literacies Institute can introduce new forms of qualitative knowledge, the unique lateral-thinking capacities of artists, and the deep effects of art adjacency to your organization, institution, or research methodology.  ALI can help you learn in a new way, and in the process create experiences, objects, and media of immense value to your organization and the larger culture. 

Artists’ Literacies InstITute can be:

AN INNOVATIVE PARTNER - for creating new bodies of qualitative data for deeper understanding of the large systems you work in.

A PROJECT INCUBATOR - to develop your research labs, experimental interventions, and new modes of inquiry.

A MEDIA AGENCY - providing access to filmmakers, photographers, designers, and more who can develop your communications and content while also providing deep qualitative insights into complexity and potential interventions into intractable problems.

A FLEXIBLE CREATIVE CONSULTANCY - that does not stop at content creation, but believes that in creating content, we will - more crucially - also gather bodies of essential qualitative data to share, learn from, and act on.

RESEARCH

Don’t be fooled by what the commodity economy tells you: artists produce knowledge first and foremost.  And powerful knowledge, the kind that cultures are built upon, and that shapes civilizations.  ALI brings this to the front of our artists’ practices, and makes them researchers first, and object-makers second.  Tapping into these potent types of ‘qualitative data’ can ensure you’re asking the right questions, add humanity, nuance, and integrity to the quantitative methods you’re probably over-relying on already.

 

CONSULTING

ALI can provide full service consulting in organizational structure and culture, measurement and evaluation, and mission pursuit.  Embedded artists will spot the qualitative, intangible, and complex in your work, and artists’ literacies-insights will always challenge your assumptions and offer transformational possibilities on behalf of core missions.

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CRITICAL DISCOURSE

The ‘crit’ is the rigorous center of the artistic process, simultaneously laboratory, peer review, and workshop. The critical thinking methods that artists put to work in this process can also be applied to any creative human endeavor - from staff meetings to office design to project implementation on the largest scales. As a one-off introduction to the efficacy of artist-adjacency, a critical discourse session is a powerful way to start.

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BIAS TRAINING

ALI artists come equipped with unique methods for identifying the very deepest forms of structural and implicit biases, and helping make perceptible how these preconceptions hold people back or cause them to suffer dissonance between their intent and their actions.

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CHANGE THROUGH NARRATIVE

Human beings tell stories, and use the causative logic of narrative to understand their circumstances and shape their futures. ALI artists bring true literacy in narrative to bear on the ‘story systems’ of an individual or a community, and can show how the cause-and-effects we perceive aren’t always the cause-and-effects we intend.

 STRATEGY

Artists are long-term, systemic, anticipatory, and nonlinear strategic thinkers.  Artists’ Literacies-trained artists harness and apply these capacities to study and project where things are headed, and shape plans to anticipate and adapt with resiliency, sustainability, and humanity as central concerns.  

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HIRE ARTISTS, AND TRUST THEM.

-Alan Kay