SYSTEMS THINKING FOR SOCIAL ARTISTS
Facilitator: Andrew Freiband
Andrew Freiband is a producer, filmmaker, educator, and research-artist, and is the founder and director of the Artists’ Literacies Institute. He holds more than two decades of experience at the many intersections of art, education, media, film, journalism, literature, social impact, international development, research, and strategic design. For 20 years he has worked as: a producer of award-winning documentary films, an impact producer, a multimedia artist, writer, social researcher, and arts educator at institutions including RISD, Pratt, SVA, and around the world. He has taught, produced, and conducted research on behalf of USAID, the UN, Cornell University, and many more. After years working to mobilize artists to engage in their historical moment in ways beyond activism or advocacy, he founded the Artists’ Literacies Institute to serve as a supplement to the education of citizen artists. He is a 2020 Creative Climate Leadership Fellow, a program run by the UK’s Julie’s Bicycle, empowering artists to take the lead on addressing the climate and ecological crisis.
Who is it for:
Artists at any career stage with a social or civic-engagement aspect to their practice, but especially geared to arts students of any level whose education has been interrupted or compromised as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Artists who might otherwise be adding to student or personal debts to receive critical support for their creative practice are here offered a platform for learning and community of socially-engaged artists, free from the accrual of debt and with the opportunity for long-term mentorship and collaboration within the Artists’ Literacies Institute.
What is it about:
Artists’ literacies is a framework for considering art-making as a form of deeply-insightful social research, and then applying the knowledge acquired to creating systemic change. Systems thinking tailored to artists’ individual creative practice lets us see the mechanisms by which transformative impact might be possible. We then map the systems in which we’re working to identify pressure points and develop strategies that may intervene and interrupt. Traditionally, these strategies involve activist communications, but with artists’ literacies, we consider other ways that artists’ knowledge can be leveraged within systems to intervene meaningfully in them. What are the vertical strategies that might take your creative practice from your studio into your community, and from your community to your region, or further into a whole social sector? What are your most ambitious visions for re-shaping the world, and how can we draw a line between your personal creative practice and those visions of the future?
How is it structured:
The course is an online discussion group, comprised of 6-8 artists, that will meet weekly for 9 weeks, to be followed by 1-on-1 transition meetings to explore avenues of continued collaboration and engagement for each participant. It will combine readings, presentations by the facilitator and guests, and critical review of participants work and creative practice, to identify where systems thinking may be especially applicable to their work. The 1-on-1 sessions which conclude the cycle are geared toward concrete, actionable strategies of collaboration moving forward. Participants should feel connected to a transformational future through which their creative practice runs vitally and impactfully.
Financial Structure:
Once students (6-8) are enrolled, the entire cohort and ALI will share the course expense of $4600 - a funding pool to be filled by collective fundraising, donation solicitation, and contribute-what-you’re-able. At the conclusion of the course, each participant will receive $200 from the pool.