Facilitation + Curation / Open Engagement: Dinner Conversation Series

Facilitation + curation of 12-site satellite dinner conversation series for 10th-annual international socially-engaged arts conference.

As part of a national remote organizing team for the 2018 Open Engagement conference, I supported our directors to produce the 10th annual international convening at the Queens Museum. Gathering hundreds of artists pushing boundaries of socially-engaged arts and keynote speakers Lucy Lippard and Mel Chin, our team led four days of on- and off-site programming grappling with the urgent complexities of sustainability — from varied social, economic, cultural, environmental, educational, and institutional contexts.

As our Conversation Series Coordinator, I coordinated and curated a 20-artist team of facilitators to lead a 12-site conversation series hosted at restaurants across Queens and Brooklyn, engaging 150+ conference attendees seeking deeper connection, dialogue, and good eats. Contributing artist-facilitators included organizers from Decolonize This Place, Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Radio Free Brooklyn, and The People’s Cultural Plan, hosting dinner conversations ranging in topic from gender justice and abolition to sustaining our movements, economic censorship, and creating thriving artist spaces beyond the metropolis.

All design by Open Engagement’s designer, Lauren Miranda.