Philanthropy, Art, and Education on Captiva Island

I am honored to participate in Rauschenberg Residency proposed by Sanjit Sethi, Director of the School of Art and Design at George Washington University.  A day after the election, I was on a plane to Captiva Island off the coast of Florida. It was a surreal experience to be greeted by a brilliant and generous group of people, a delicious meal, and plenty of wine against a backdrop of palm trees and the seaside on that evening. I look forward to working with this core group to design and pilot a project that "exists in three distinct socio-geographic regions at the intersection of design, policy, cultural programming and philanthropy, and create recommendations on how Arts Education can operate in the future. " 1
 
Our facilitator and host, summed it up in his facebook post:
 
"Last Wednesday I, along with six dedicated colleagues, embarked on a year-long project through the generous support of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation intended to redesign our approach to Arts Education.

Over an intense 1.5 days in the idyllic settings of the Rauschenberg Residency on Captiva Island, Florida we launched this project under the scepter of the devastating election results we experienced this week. We mapped, prioritized, deciphered, critiqued, listed, crossed-out, distilled, elaborated, focused and pushed each other to move beyond current models and prevailing attitudes of Arts Education. Over the next year, this core group will design and pilot a project that exists in three distinct socio-geographic regions, build more expansive and nuanced relationships between areas of design, policy, cultural programming and philanthropy, and create recommendations on how Arts Education can operate in the future.

I am incredibly grateful to Roger Montoya, Liz Maugans, Maureen Lallos Dwyer, Jennifer Parks, Christine Cerqueira Gaspar, Sarah R Filley, Marianna Brown Schaffer, for, despite Tuesday's trauma, rolling up their sleeves, coming together as listeners, thinkers and visionaries and embarking upon on the creation of something greater than the sum of its parts." - Sanjit Sethi (1).

Future posts will examine the how the ULab process can support this work, and I will be sharing the process of prototyping!