Practicing Creative Dissent

PRACTICING CREATIVE DISSENT

~ a two part workshop lead by Donna Oblongata and Patrick Costello ~

Sunday, Oct 6th and Monday, Oct 7th 6:30-9:30pm

at In the Heart of the Beast – 1500 E. Lake Street, MPLS

rsvp – helpful but not required – to [email protected]

This summer marked the first ever GABFESTRY for Creative Dissenters (www.gabfestry.org). This week-long gathering brought together 200 artists and activists from around the country for a conference addressing the intersection of art and social change. It was organized by individual members of the Missoula Oblongata and the Beehive Design Collective.

This 2-part workshop will be a space to discuss and introduce some of the key topics that were turned over during the Gabfestry. The first session will be a space for small groups to discuss and unpack a number of topics, including questions about artists’ roles in gentrification, working with community as an outsider, issues of race and representation in visual art and performance, and more! We’ll have a number of topics to chew on, but feel free to bring your own questions and concerns to share.

The second session will be a time for participants to bring ideas or proposals or stories of projects they have done or would like to do, and to workshop those ideas with the group, with respect to what we discussed in the first session. For example, maybe you want to initiate a community parade, and aren’t sure how to make anti-racism a core value of such a project? Or maybe you are planning to tour the US and are concerned about playing in venues that are contributing to gentrification and displacement in their neighborhoods? Or you’re a young white person who dreams of playing a puppet of Malcolm X and you don’t know if that would be “okay”? Or you did a project that people got upset about and you’d like to figure out what you could maybe do differently next time? All of this sort of thing and more!

“This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.”