Conference Schedule

Registration Opens

Chazen Museum of Art Lobby

Welcome

Opening Keynote: “The Value of Immeasurable Things: Why the Arts—and Artists—are Essential to the Future of Work”

Benjamin Wolff, Author and Forbes Contributor

Introduced by Marcelle Haddix, Dean of the College of Education, University of Wisconsin—Madison

Hamel Music Center Concert Hall

Coffee Break

Chazen Museum of Art Lobby

Presentation of 2025 a2ru Award for Excellence in Arts in Health Education

The Creativity Cure: Social Prescribing and the Future of Campus Wellbeing

Hamel Music Center Concert Hall

Panelists:

Chris Appleton, CEO and Founder, Art Pharmacy
Amelia (Amy) Kraehe, PhD, Associate Vice President, Organizational Excellence and Impact and Professor, School of Art, University of Arizona
Deborah Cullinan, Vice President for the Arts, Stanford University Laurel N. Donley, M.S., Vice Provost, Student Affairs, University of North Carolina School of the Arts

As student loneliness and mental health challenges rise, U.S. universities are exploring social prescribing—connecting students to non-clinical resources like arts and culture—to foster wellbeing and belonging. This panel, moderated by Art Pharmacy CEO Chris Appleton, features leaders from Stanford, UNC School of the Arts, and the University of Arizona sharing campus-based models and strategies. Topics include cross-sector partnerships, referral systems, data-driven evaluation, and alignment with equity and retention goals. Designed for faculty, administrators, artists, and researchers, the session offers actionable tools for integrating arts-based interventions into campus life, advancing holistic, inclusive approaches to student connection and institutional transformation.

Making Space for Creativity: Arts-Based Programming in STEM Institutions

Hamel Music Center Recital Hall

Panelists:

Kimberly Sheldon, Program & Portfolio Manager, Georgia Tech Library
Kirk Henderson Exhibitions Program Manager, Georgia Tech Library
Connor Lynch. Exhibits Associate, Georgia Tech Library
Catherine Manci. Public Programming & Community Engagement Librarian, Georgia Tech Library
Alison Valk. Emerging Technologies Librarian, Georgia Tech Library
Jason Wright. Communications Director, Georgia Tech Library

This panel brings together a diverse group of professionals from an academic library on a STEM-focused campus to explore the development and growth of arts-based programming within their organization.

Framing Impact: A Workshop on Strategic Planning and Making a Case for the Arts and Design at Universities (Workshop)

Hamel Music Center Rehearsal Hall

Presenters:

Mallika Bose, Associate Dean for Research, Creative Activity and Graduate Studies, College of Arts + Architecture, Penn State
Sudip Ghosh, Arts and Design Research Incubator, Penn State
Rebecca Zarate, Associate Dean for Research, College of Fine Arts, University of Utah

How do we demonstrate the value of arts and design activities in our universities and communities? This interactive workshop provides a practical framework, and insights based on ongoing impact assessment projects at two large research-intensive public universities. Involving presentation, interactive discussion and groupwork, workshop participants will have the opportunity to identify baseline data and benchmarks, set strategic goals (like interdisciplinary research or community engagement), and select reporting metrics for their own units. This workshop will be relevant for faculty, administrators and staff seeking to make a case for arts and design in institutions of higher education.

Paper Session

Chazen Museum of Art Auditorium

From Tea Bowls to Sloyd Knives: Reframing Craft Traditions for Contemporary Education
Hugo Nakashima-Brown, Rhode Island School of Design

How can traditional craft practices reshape interdisciplinary education today? This session explores the Japanese Tea Ceremony and Educational Sloyd as models for framing craft not just as manual skill, but as cognitive, emotional, and moral development. Through student work examples from a RISD Foundations course, attendees will see how hands-on assignments rooted in historical practices can foster authentic, conceptually rich outcomes. The session advocates for reviving craft-based education to empower students—especially those in computation, performance, and conceptual fields—and demonstrates how challenging materials like wood can unlock deeper spatial understanding across disciplines.

Discoveries at the Intersection of Weaving and Engineering
Maia Rauh and Marianne Fairbanks, University of Wisconsin—Madison

A weaving professor and student share insights from a several year of collaboration with an engineering lab, exploring what a true interdisciplinary partnership looks like between art and engineering. Through storytelling, they reveal the challenges and rewards of bridging traditional craft knowledge with engineering innovation. Their experiences highlight how essential it is to value artists’ expertise early in projects as it can transform research methods, project values, and outcomes. Beyond the excitement of collaboration, they discuss the persistent need to build mutual respect and understanding in this context. They also offer practical steps for cultivating more equitable, innovative collaborations, emphasizing that real interdisciplinary work surfaces systemic tension and creates opportunities for lasting change.

Dream Flag: A Resistance Project
Rogério M. Pinto, University of Michigan

Dream Flag investigates the meaning of the American flag by using visual art and storytelling for personal and community healing, following elimination of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) at our university. Grounded in “aesthetics of the oppressed,” we explored how the flag marginalizes/excludes people from political life. Using 16×12 canvases and acrylic paint (red, blue and white), we each painted the flag as it exists today. After, we talked about current political landscapes and created colorful flags representing a more diverse United States. In a schoolwide gathering of 40 people, we created nine 36×28 Dream Flags that became an exhibition.

Collections Viewing at the Chazen

Chazen Museum of Art, Chen Family Study Room

****Please note that this viewing experience will be available between 11:00am and 2:00pm

Need an art break? Explore a curated selection of highlights from the Chazen Museum of Art’s collection inspired by the themes of this year’s a2ru conference. This drop-in session takes place in the museum’s Chen Family Study Room, which allows artworks to be temporarily put on view by request. Stop by at your leisure at any time during the time window. 

Free and open to all as capacity allows. No RSVP required.

Our Vibes: A Vibrotactile Screendance Installation

Wisconsin Union Play Circle

****Please note that this installation will be available for viewing between 11:00am and 2:15pm. Advance sign-up for a ten-minute slot is available here. Walk-ins will be accommodated as space allows. 

Omari Carter, Assistant Professor of Dance, University of Wisconsin—Madison

You are invited to join Omari Carter as he presents a preview of ‘Our Vibes: A Vibrotactile Screendance Installation’. This groundbreaking work merges body percussion, film, and vibrotactile technology for a unique sensory experience. The project explores the nuanced vibrations between two individuals in a close relationship, illustrating harmony despite occasional dissonance in their everyday communication. The installation features a 12’ by 12’ vibrating viewing-platform that transforms the audio of the performance into tactile sensations, allowing audiences to feel the sounds of the film as they watch. “Our Vibes” aims to make dance more accessible through sensory engagement, enhance body percussion’s artistic expression, and push dance and film boundaries.

Lunch Break (on your own)

Working group sessions and other meetings TBA will be scheduled during this time.

Interdisciplinary Centers and Institutes Working Group Open Meeting

Wisconsin Union Festival Room

Moderators: Mark Callahan, University of Georgia; Donna Chen, University of Virginia; Mary Beth Leigh, University of Alaska Fairbanks; Emily Ryan, University of Kansas

Interested in learning more about a2ru’s Interdisciplinary Centers and Institutes Working Group? Join current members for an informal lunch and hear about their current projects and conversations.

How the Immersive Experience Alliance is Redefining Arts-Integrated Innovation

Hamel Music Center Concert Hall

Panelists:

Jonathan Martin, Lecturer of Immersive Media Design, University of Maryland
Erin Reilly, Professor of Practice, Stan Richards School of Advertising & Public Relations,Texas Immersive Institute, University of Texas at Austin
Elizabeth Strickler, Senior Lecturer and Director of Entrepreneurship Programs in the Creative Media Industries Institute, Georgia State University

Learn how the Immersive Experience Alliance (IXA)—a coalition of universities at the forefront of Extended Reality (XR) innovation — is redefining interdisciplinary collaboration and amplifying the role of the arts in shaping creative futures. We will share how XR technologies are rapidly transforming how we teach, research, and create, dissolving traditional boundaries between disciplines and prompting new models of collaboration between artists, computer scientists, social scientists, and humanities scholars.

Through interactive demonstrations and dialogue, this session invites participants to gain practical insights into how their institutions can embrace XR as a vehicle for creative learning and meaningful impact.

Co-Creative Placekeeping in Los Angeles

Hamel Music Center Recital Hall 

Panelists:

David Sloane, Professor and Chair, Department of Urban Planning and Spatial Analysis, University of Southern California
Brettany Shannon, urban scholar, CSUN, Cal Poly Pomona
Michael Blockstein and Reanne Estrada, directors, Public Matters
Additional Panelist TBA

The artists in this panel are forever interacting with community members, connecting with them, listening to them, and working with them in a co-creative approach to empowering communities. Their communities are confronted with severe issues, such as income inequality, nativist policymaking, homelessness, and others. The panel, based on a 2023 book, Co-Creative Placekeeping in Los Angeles, will showcase 3 socially engaged artists in 2 teams working with communities through engagement, relationships, networks, and defiance. The artists differ by gender, race/ethnicity, and artistic medium – including landscape design, media, facilitation, theater, graphics, visual art, and social computation.

How Do You Catch a Cloud and Pin it Down? Arts Institutional Research (Workshop)

Wisconsin Union Chart Room

Presenters:

Alison Rivett, Associate Director of the Arts Initiative, University of Michigan
Maryrose Flanigan, Executive Director, a2ru
Veronica Stanich, Research Program Manager, a2ru
Debra Mexicotte, Director, ArtsEngine

The workshop provides a roadmap used by one university to understand its complex arts landscape through institutional research. It will feature an overview of the kinds of data available institutionally from existing sources (i.e. enrollment, event listings) and which research questions required new research. Participants will then try a hands-on component for interpreting data sets and identifying where they can find existing data at their own institutions.

Marks of Memory: Visualizing the Invisible Through Collaborative Storytelling (Workshop)

Wisconsin Union Festival Room

Presenter:

Avery Williamson, Artist

Marks of Memory is a hands-on workshop led by artist Avery Williamson, drawing from her collaboration with the University of Michigan Concussion Center. Participants will explore how storytelling and abstraction can make the invisible—like emotion, memory, or recovery—visible. Through guided writing and mark-making exercises, attendees will translate personal experiences into collaborative visual compositions. Rooted in a public art project on invisible injuries, this session offers adaptable, arts-based strategies for teaching, research, and community engagement.

Paper Session

Chazen Museum of Art Auditorium

Fostering Global Neuroarts Connections

Researchers and artists worldwide are leading innovative projects, yet connecting across disciplines and geographies remains difficult. A new open-access, community-driven tool addresses this challenge by enabling individuals, labs, and organizations to share research, funding opportunities, events, and more. By fostering direct connections and collective knowledge-sharing, this platform supports the integration of neuroarts principles into diverse programs and practices.

Visualizing Resilience: PhotoVoice as a Transdisciplinary Bridge Between Healthcare, Art, and Border Communities 
Carissa DiCindio, Associate Professor, Art and Visual Culture Education; Amelia (Amy) Kraehe, Associate Vice President for Organizational Excellence and Impact; Denisse Brito,
Learning and Engagement Manager, Center for Creative Photography; Tarnia Newton, Associate Clinical Professor for Nursing, Family Nurse Practitioner Program; Lisa Kiser, Associate Clinical Professor for Nursing, Midwifery Program, University of Arizona

This session shares a transdisciplinary collaboration between universities in the U.S. and Mexico using PhotoVoice methodology to document and reflect upon health experiences across border communities. Nursing students captured visual narratives revealing how care practices, consciousness of systemic challenges, and community structures contribute to health resilience. Art students designed exhibition frameworks that invited broader public engagement with these themes. The project merges healthcare perspectives with artistic inquiry to create a multidimensional understanding of health factors across cultural contexts, highlighting both structural challenges and community strengths. Presenters will discuss approaches to community-centered exhibitions and implications for health education, arts engagement, and cross-institutional collaboration.

The Music of Our Genetics
Daria Tennikova and Siyuan Feng, University of Wisconsin—Madison

Our presentation will explore the creative and scientific potential of translating genetic information into musical compositions, showcasing a novel interdisciplinary system capable of automatically generating music from genetic data. Building upon the legacy of genetic music established by pioneers such as Susumo Ohno and Mary Anne Clark, we have discovered innovative ways to map genetics to music, and re-defined the balance between scientific representation and artistic expression. By integrating advances in bioinformatics with algorithmic composition, our system not only bridges the gap between art and science but also exemplifies future-thinking creativity by utilizing emerging technologies to address interdisciplinary questions about life, identity, and expression. This work underscores how artistic methodologies can lead innovative inquiry into biological sciences and education.

Paper Session

Humanities 2441

Embodied Memory and the Senses: Integrating Music, Data, and Immersive Media in Higher Education through Memor-ii

Lynn Vartan, Michael Bruner, Jinsil Hwaryoung Seo, Ph.D,  and Tim Weaver, Texas A&M University

Memor-ii is a multimedia performance project that integrates live music, data-driven visual art, and immersive technology to explore memory through embodied experience. This session presents the project as a case study in arts integration within higher education, offering strategies for interdisciplinary collaboration, student engagement, and technological innovation in research-based performance.

Touchless Sound: Wearable Interfaces for Generative Music and Visuals

Matias Homar, Alfred University

This presentation shares results from a four-year research project on interactive devices that generate music and visuals through movement. Grounded in enactivism, the work explores how perception and action shape artistic creation. It features a MIDI touchless synthesizer for dancers and musicians, and a wearable glove now being developed with ASL interpreters. These tools use real-time motion data in Pure Data to drive generative processes. The session highlights the role of basic AI, co-creation between performer and system, and inclusive practices. Attendees will engage in dialogue on embodied tech, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the future of accessible creative environments.

Making Matter Speak: Embracing Uncertainty in Digital Fabrication for Sustainable Design

Chad Curtis, Temple University

This presentation explores how digital fabrication processes—rooted in precision—can give rise to unpredictable, emergent forms when paired with natural materials like clay. Drawing from architecture, sculpture, and systems theory, the session challenges traditional authorship and proposes new models of eco-sustainable creativity through the interplay between code and matter.

Curator Conversation with Aurora Santiago Ortiz

Chazen Museum of Art

Join us in the Chazen galleries for a walkthrough of cuestiones caribeñas/caribbean matters: assemblage and sculpture by pablo delano with professor Aurora Santiago Ortiz, co-curator of the exhibition. This tour will explore how visual artist and photographer Pablo Delano interrogates the complexity of the Caribbean’s past and present in his expansive installation of juxtaposed photographic images, archival documents and found objects.

Free and open to all. RSVPs required: https://chazen.wisc.edu/events/curator-conversation-with-aurora-santiago-ortiz/

Reception

Wisconsin Institute for Discovery Atrium (First Floor)

Creative Futures: Higher Education, Policy, and the Creative Economy in Wisconsin

Introduction by Andrew Hanus, Director, Illuminating Discovery Hub, Wisconsin Institute for Discovery

Moderator: Chris Walker, Special Advisor to the Provost on the Arts, University of Wisconsin—Madison

Panelists:

Anne Katz, Executive Director, Create Wisconsin
Crystal Potts, Senior Director of State Relations & Statewide Outreach, University of Wisconsin—Madison
George Tzougros, Executive Director, Wisconsin Arts Board

Wisconsin Institute for Discovery Forum (First Floor)

This panel explores how the arts function as engines of innovation, belonging, and economic vitality, showing up fully in areas like health, education, design, and creative thinking. With the creative economy contributing significantly to Wisconsin’s earnings, leaders from advocacy, policy, higher education, and the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery will share cross‑sector strategies to strengthen this impact and lead the state’s future.

Registration Opens

Chazen Museum of Art Lobby

Three Case Studies and Reflections on How Arts Drives Campus and Community Collaboration

Hamel Music Center Concert Hall 

Panelists:

Jason Freeman, Associate Vice Provost for the Arts, Georgia Tech
Avital Shira, Strategist, Arts at Tech
Catherine Manci, Public Programming and Community Engagement Specialist, Georgia Tech Library
Abigale Stangl, Assistant Professor, School of Industrial Design, Georgia Tech
Virginia Howell, Director, Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking, Georgia Tech
Jocelyn Kavanagh, Technical Director, Georgia Tech School of Music

This session features perspectives from panelists who have moved audaciously to make innovative arts practices and programming central to their work and their collaborations. These projects are unfolding within an ambitious new arts strategy at Georgia Tech that connects research, academic, and co-curricular units with each other and with community and industry partners. Learn about a unique artist-in-residence program at the Georgia Tech Library; a partnership between the Museum of Papermaking and industrial design/human computer interaction researchers; and the School of Music’s international new musical instrument competition.

Paper Session

Hamel Music Center Recital Hall

Crip* Cripestemology and the Arts
Christopher Jones and Liza Sylvestre, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Cripistemology is a term that describes knowledge produced via Crip/Disabled experience(s). A cripistemological approach to creative production or research focuses on how Crip/Disabled knowledge can shape and change the ways in which we conceive and enact our respective disciplines and fields, challenging how creative/interpretive spaces and strategies are reliant upon ableism.

To explore potential applications of cripistemologies in the arts, this presentation explores the work of Crip*—Cripistemology and the Arts, a transdisciplinary pedagogical initiative and creative research lab that addresses both how cripistemologies are shaped pedagogically and how they are disseminated publicly.

Together, Tacit
Bonnie Collura, Penn State

“Together, Tacit” proposes an inclusive experience among low vision, blind, and sighted individuals to exchange one another’s tacit knowledge, through the act of creative collaboration. One workflow employs the use of a haptic, virtual reality glove, which has a vibrational feedback system that simulates a sense of sculpting in virtual space. Movements by visually impaired participants get translated as three-dimensional marks. These virtual shapes get 3D printed and become tangible models which, in turn, are used by BVI and sighted team members to collaborate with, or from. Collaborators begin to negotiate, communicate, and experience through the art making process to create a form that neither group, the sighted or visually impaired, could have built without the other. In this way, “Together, Tacit” aims to create a shared language that knits a meeting place between what we see, and how we know, through acts of experiencing, together.

https://www.bonniecollura.com/togethertacit

Excavating the Self: Art, Neuroqueering Identity, and Pedagogies of Resistance

Meng-Jung Yang, California State University, Long Beach

This session explores Self-Excavation, a neuroqueering art project that integrates Universal Design for Learning (UDL), neuroqueer theory, and intersectionality. Engaging preservice art educators through creative identity work and fictional neurodivergent character design, the project fosters empathy, self-reflection, and inclusive pedagogy. Participants critically examined how ableism, transphobia, and normative expectations shape education, and how creative practices can resist and transform them. Attendees will gain practical strategies for cultivating neuroinclusive classrooms and designing curricula that center diverse ways of learning and being. This session offers an actionable model for reimagining educational spaces as sites of equity, belonging, and joyful difference.

Mapping Beyond Boundaries: Creative Geographies as Tools for Interdisciplinary Research and Teaching

Wisconsin Union Play Circle

Panelists:

Aletha Spang, GIS Specialist, Dartmouth College
Dr. Sarah Kelly, Lecturer and Research Associate, Geography and Research Scientist, Energy Justice Clinic of the Irving Institute for Energy & Society, Dartmouth College
Thien-Kim Bui, PhD student, Portland State University

How can art and creative mapping enhance research, education, and community engagement? This panel explores mapping practices and creative interventions that help reveal new connections about natural disasters, community aid, storytelling, and cultural practices. We will discuss two projects exploring creative mapping: flood-based community research in Vermont that uses mapping and quilt-based activities to understand disaster response, and new teaching methods that allow students to experiment with collage and hands-on practices in the geospatial curriculum.

The Theatre of Failure: Speculative Performance and the Art of the Possible (Workshop)

Humanities 1341

Presenter:

Timothy Braun, St. Edward’s University

In a world shaped by climate chaos, technological acceleration, and social fragmentation, what can the playwright or performer offer? This talk reframes failure—glitches, breakdowns, and misfires—as speculative acts of resistance and renewal. Drawing from my course The Art of Failure and broader creative practice, I propose a framework for the “Theatre of the Possible,” where failure becomes a methodology for imagining otherwise. Through theatre and creative writing, we explore failure as a generative tool for innovation, critique, and emotional resilience—an engine for rethinking risk, vulnerability, and the unknown in uncertain futures.

Paper Session

Chazen Museum of Art Auditorium 

Understanding Student Arts Engagement in College
Deb Mexicotte, University of Michigan

This session will feature past and current data analyses from both the singular 2010-2015 Arts Engagement Project (AEP) and the relaunched 2023-2025 AEP – presenting insights, impacts, and recommendations related to students’ personal and professional development, arts identities, skill acquisition, precursor experiences, wellness, and the other impacts of engaging in the arts during college. Attendees will gain strategies to better advocate for the arts, exploring relevant evidence around student wellness and skill development, and either using the findings of the AEP, or doing similar research to better link student arts engagement to the broader strategic conversations on their own campuses.

Building Creative Bridges: The Illuminating Discovery Hub Model for Interdisciplinary Collaboration 
Andrew Hanus, University of Wisconsin—Madison

What happens when creativity leads — not follows — discovery? At the Illuminating Discovery Hub, artists and scientists team up to reimagine how we learn, explore, and engage with the world. This session reveals how a bold institutional model broke traditional silos, launching collaborations that fuel innovation across disciplines and communities. Through residencies, exhibitions, and immersive public programs, the Hub shows that building a creative future isn’t optional, it’s essential. Join us to explore strategies for making creativity a core part of research, education, and campus culture.

Coffee Break

Chazen Museum of Art Lobby

Building an Access Archive: Reflections on Reco(r)ding CripTech

Hamel Music Center Concert Hall

Moderator:

Elizabeth McLain, Virginia Tech

Panelists:

Daragh Byrne, Ground Works Technical Director
Andy Slater, CripTech Incubator Artist
Christopher Jones and Liza Sylvestre, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Reco(r)ding CripTech launches this fall! Reco(r)ding CripTech is an open-access digital archive on Ground Works that documents the creative, interdisciplinary processes of four disabled artists who were in residence with the Leonardo CripTech Incubator in 2022-23. We have centered the artists in this project, and built the archive with access and usability front-of-mind. Panelists will discuss “capturing” artistic process, creative accessibility, and scholarly and educational possibilities for the archive, and we are eager to hear attendees’ questions and perspectives on the project.

Facilitation Toward Flourishing: Art-Science Programs on Creating Conditions for Successful Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Hamel Music Center Recital Hall

Panelists:

Lissy Goralnik, Michigan State University
Mary Beth Leigh: University of Alaska Fairbanks
Megan Halpern: Michigan State University
Carly Lettero, Oregon State University PRAx

Art-science integration can catalyze imagination and creativity, engage broad audiences, and contribute to complex social-environmental problem-solving. But research also shows that these collaborations can be limited by internal and external power dynamics, epistemological hurdles, and communication challenges. How can we transcend these potential barriers to facilitate art-science interactions toward effective collaboration? What are the conditions that allow collaborative dynamics to flourish, and how might facilitators design programming with these conditions in mind? How do we know if our efforts are working? This panel will explore art-science facilitation across several university-affiliated interdisciplinary programs.

Paper Session

Wisconsin Union Play Circle

Dancing with Robots: Reimagining Artistic and Technological Collaboration

Jonathan Martin and Adriane Fang, University of Maryland; Liddy Detar, Oregon State University

How did one robot inspire half a billion possibilities? What can it teach us about arts-science collaborations that enhance both research and public technology engagement?

DANCE^2 (Dance Squared) is an immersive live performance that combines dance, robotics, smartphones, and AI to probe the audience’s feelings about how technology will shape the future of society.

Developed by University of Maryland researchers and students from computer and data science, engineering, dance, theater, and immersive media, the project recently completed a highly successful run at Oregon State University’s PRAx Performing Arts Center.
This presentation will examine the project’s years-long development from the studio to successful touring production by exploring how novel administrative, artistic, and research collaborations can generate transformative interdisciplinary outcomes.

Flight Risk: Ethics and Aesthetics of Integrating Drones into Live Performance

Eric Handman, University of Utah

This presentation explores seven years of practice-based research integrating drones into stage choreography. As non-human agents, drones bring distinct behaviors, constraints, and presences, raising questions about embodiment, agency, and the aesthetics of risk. Their mechanical logic contrasts with human movement, yet their precision and affective presence invite anthropomorphism. By staging inter-entity relationships, this work investigates choreography as a meeting ground for human and machine intelligences. Topics include drone dramaturgy, collaboration methods, audience safety, and performer preparation. Showcasing four projects (2018–2024), the presentation reflects on how choreography can navigate the friction and uncanniness of cross-species collaboration.

Paper Session

Humanities 2411

Beyond the Prompt: Teaching Computational Literacy as Intellectual Self-Defense in Creative Writing

Lilian-Yvonne Bertram, University of Maryland

This presentation explores how creative writing programs can equip students with “intellectual self-defense” in the age of AI through computational literacy and critical engagement. Drawing from an innovative interdisciplinary course, I’ll demonstrate how teaching Python programming, web-based creative work, and critical analysis of LLMs transforms students’ relationship with these technologies. By historicizing AI within a longer tradition of computational poetics and giving students hands-on experience with basic programming, instructors can demystify these tools while revealing their limitations. This approach positions creative writing departments to lead rather than follow technological change, maintaining disciplinary integrity while preparing students for an increasingly AI-mediated future.

Mythmaking in the Machine Age: “Raksha” and the Dialectic Between Traditional Storytelling and Emergent Technologies

Deepak Chetty, Texas A&M University

This presentation examines the evolving relationship between traditional storytelling and emerging technologies through the lens of “Raksha,” a mythological short film created using generative AI. The filmmaker shares insights on maintaining artistic integrity while leveraging AI’s creative possibilities, navigating tensions between technological efficiency and storytelling authenticity. Drawing from personal experience as both artist and educator, the session presents frameworks for ethical engagement with AI tools and pedagogical approaches that empower students to critically shape technological narratives. Attendees will gain practical strategies for human-AI collaboration that preserves creative agency while expanding artistic possibilities in an increasingly technological landscape.

Teaching Outside the Classroom and Inside the Studio

Keli Dirisio, Rochester Institute of Technology

Command+g Design Lab, a dynamic student-run and faculty-overseen design studio at Rochester Institute of Technology, boasts a talented team of over 30 designers and a diverse portfolio of 100 clients. This innovative studio collaborates with internal departments and organizations on campus and external clients nationwide. Command+g not only hones the professional and leadership skills of its student designers but also immerses them in real-world design experiences, preparing them to excel in the competitive design industry. Command+g is shaping the future of design education and practice.

Paper Session

Chazen Museum of Art Auditorium 

Redefining Disciplines through Alumni Insight: What the 2022 SNAAP Data and New SNAAP Pulse Panel Tell Us About the Future of Arts Education 

Lee Ann Scotto Adams, SNAAP

This session shares new findings from the 2022 SNAAP survey, offering insights into how arts alumni navigate hybrid, interdisciplinary careers in a rapidly changing world. It also introduces SNAAP Pulse, a new rapid-response panel exploring urgent issues in arts and design fields. Attendees will learn about trends in diversity, belonging, and cross-sector fluency, and help shape the future Pulse research agenda by identifying key challenges facing a post-disciplinary creative landscape.

From Student to Innovator: the Artist in Industry

Ben Knapp, Lisa McNair, and Tom Martin, Virginia Tech; Termeh Rassi, LEONARDO

Our work as a NEA Research Lab is beginning to show the human-centered roots of innovation are found in arts and design. We have been interviewing professionals about their career paths and the sources of new ideas in their organizations and how they identify talent for emergent change. We will discuss the implications of this for arts and design students, for academic programs, and for industry.

Attendees will learn about a new model of innovation known as da Vinci’s Cube. They will gain a new perspective on the role of arts education in innovation. Using examples from historical case studies and current practices they will gain a new tool for predicting and improving their students’ professional trajectories.

Object-Centered Teaching Workshop

Chazen Museum of Art

Join the Chazen Museum of Art’s Berit Ness, Chief Engagement Officer, and Mieke Miller, Academic Coordinator, for a special workshop on teaching with museum collections across disciplines. This participatory workshop will largely take place in the Chazen’s galleries and Chen Family Study Room.

Free and open to all. RSVPs required: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a2ru-object-centered-teaching-workshop-tickets-1835346042419?aff=oddtdtcreator

Lunch Break

Academic Metrics: A Field Scan and Activities of the a2ru/ICFAD Working Group

Hamel Music Center Concert Hall

Presenters:

Jason Freeman, Associate Vice Provost for the Arts, Georgia Tech
Ivica Ico Bukvic, Director KIX Lab, Media School, Indiana University
Dan Cavanagh, Director, Mead Witter School of Music, University of Wisconsin—Madison
Maryrose Flanigan, Executive Director, a2ru

This session will present field scan results of arts faculty achievements and activities and how they can and cannot be measured in third-party data scraping platforms meant to measure faculty metrics. We will also explore perspectives and garner feedback on a toolkit for senior academic leadership – especially those not familiar with artistic research and activities – to understand these activities, how to best measure them, and how to leverage them to contribute to the university metrics and the resource allocation discourse. This is the latest in a series of activities of the a2ru/ICFAC metrics working group to understand what is being captured (and how effectively) in terms of academic metrics, working to generate a landscape and gap analysis that will help faculty make their work visible for annual reviews, tenure and promotion; and more globally will help arts units to show impact and advocate for resources.  This and other bottom-up efforts will promote faculty engagement with a goal of exploring cross-institutional and finely-grained scholarly output patterns that may serve as a way of establishing flexible, trackable, and quantifiable impact metrics.

Already at the Table: A Programmatic Review of Applied Performance and Psycho-Social Health Mechanism

Hamel Music Center Recital Hall

Panelists:

Christopher J. Staley, Rachel Hirshorn-Johnston, and T’Keyah Crystal Keymah, Texas Tech University

In this panel, three educators and researchers from Texas Tech University’s School of Theatre and Dance offer a review of applied performance and the mechanisms underlying its potential interventions. One panelist shares results from using performance to decrease disease (dementia) stigma and increase awareness. Another panelist speculates on health outcomes from actor-training and provides a roadmap to quantify these empirically. The third investigates the science of casting and reflects on different “casting practices” such as hiring, admissions, and other systemic modes of gatekeeping. These collectively point to the creation of a working group with the goal of forming an institutional Applied Performance Research Center.

Radical Community Archiving as Art (Workshop)

Wisconsin Union Festival Room

Presenters:

Tehan Ketema and Michael Davis, University of Wisconsin—Madison

Radical Community Archiving as Art presents Da Hoodzeum, a Black-centered and Black operated mobile archive and creative justice project founded by Michael Davis, PhD candidate. This session invites participants to interact with historical artifacts through art-making, transforming archival materials into tools for cultural memory, youth expression, and community power. Participants will leave with practices for integrating radical archives into classrooms, galleries, and grassroots spaces.

Climate Resilience with Youth: Creating Change in Education from Within (Workshop)

Wisconsin Union Sunset Lounge

Presenters:

Katie Dawson, Gabrielle Lewis and Carley Robinson, University of Texas at Austin

This interactive session introduces the Climate Resilience with Youth project, a community-based participatory action research initiative facilitated by Planet Texas 2050 and Drama for Schools at The University of Texas Austin. Participants will have the option to experience one of two arts-integrated workshops that use the arts to enhance climate change literacy and foster a sense of agency and resilience for youth and community members. One offering utilizes photography and digital storytelling to make personal connections with the natural world, and the second option invites participants to create a Living Newspaper performance out of found poetry to navigate climate crisis infowhelm (Houser, 2020) in a hyper-local context. Throughout, participants will consider how universities can use arts integration to partner with K-12 education to redesign curriculum, research impacts, and co-create a more climate resilient future for all.

Paper Session

Humanities 2411

Expanding Campus Reach | Leveraging Arts-Based Minors to Serve the Entire Campus

Andrew Stetson and Sarai Brinker, Texas Tech University

Many university-level arts programs face challenges in visibility and perceived value, yet often deliver high-demand courses that offer significant benefits to students from across entire campuses. This session shares how one institution leveraged such courses to create distinct music minors, increasing enrollment and broadening student engagement. Presenters will outline their planning and implementation, including how they leveraged data, developed advertising strategies, and considered institutional policies and best practices in their curricular design. Attendees will gain actionable and replicable insights that will provide a roadmap toward enrollment growth and increased integration of the arts into campus culture for all institutions.

A Game Plan for Animating Interdisciplinary Arts Programs: Lessons from Launching a Cross-College BFA in Games and Animation

Todd Herzog, University of Cincinnati

Faculty from the Schools of Art and Communication, Film, and Media Studies at the University of Cincinnati met in 2023 to propose a new undergraduate degree in Games and Animation that would be housed between two different colleges. This presentation traces the program’s development, launch, and first year: choosing between a BA and a BFA, negotiating admissions standards, co-designing a curriculum across disciplines, and aligning hiring priorities. Participants will learn how creative compromises shaped the program and gain actionable strategies for building interdisciplinary arts degrees across varied institutional contexts.

Community Music Degree at Florida State University

Gregory Jones and Elizabeth Avery, Florida State University

There is increased interest in community organizations that enrich and uplift using the arts. Gen-Z artists mirror heightened social consciousness as they seek to use their art to improve the lives around them. Current oversaturation in traditional career paths and the overwhelming fulfillment gained from community work are inspiring many young artists to choose new directions. It is the perfect time to consider new community arts degree programs utilizing interdisciplinary collaborations within the academy and enriched relationships with community partners. Florida State University will share an innovative interdisciplinary undergraduate degree in community music that fosters new career paths.

Curator’s Tour: Find Your Quilt

Ruth Davis Design Gallery, School of Human Ecology/Nicholas Building

Presenters:

Sophie Pitman, Exhibit Curator, Pleasant Rowland Textile Specialist and Research Director for the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection
Amy Wendt, Artist, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Associate Vice Chancellor for Research – Physical Sciences
Carlee Latimer, Artist

Join curator Dr. Sophie Pitman and featured artist Dr. Amy Wendt for a tour of Find Your Quilt, on view at the Nancy M. Bruce Center for Design and Material Culture. A quilt can be artistic and designed, scientific and mathematical, political and personal. Find Your Quilt celebrates this diversity by displaying a bold and vibrant selection of historic quilts from around the world, drawn from the rich holdings of the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection, alongside innovative contemporary quilts. Made for this exhibition, Sierpiński’s recursive triangle fractals demonstrates how Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Amy Wendt uses quilts to visualize complex mathematical concepts, exemplifying interdisciplinary innovation in the arts. In addition to the guided tour of the exhibition, conference participants will glimpse concurrent exhibition programs, including a collaborative community quilt making workshop and natural dye demonstration.

Poster and Exhibit Gallery

Chazen Museum of Art and Hamel Music Center Lobbies

Refreshments Provided

Presenters: 

Ocean of Memories

Lucy Yao, Dorothy Chan, Edgar Rojas-Munoz, and Kylee Friederichs, Texas A&M University

Ocean of Memories is an interdisciplinary performance initiative that equips performing arts students with tools to engage local climate issues, framed through the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal: Life Below Water. A collaboration between chromic duo and Texas A&M, the project guided students in creating site-specific performances rooted in everyday spaces such as their campus and nearby parks, fostering a personal sense of connection and responsibility to marine environments, inspiring meaningful conservation efforts. Conference attendees will have the opportunity to explore a demo of the AR experience at the gallery, offering a hands-on understanding of its functionality and impact.

An Arts Prescribing Model for a Multi-Campus State University

Stephanie Cronenberg and Peichi Waite, Rutgers University

In this poster session, we present feedback from the first year of the Rutgers University Scarlet Arts Rx program, a campus-wide arts prescribing program focused on student wellness. We contend that one of the practical applications for arts integration in higher education is to ensure an agile program design that relies on collaborations and student feedback. The arts experiences desired by students in disciplines across campus may not look like the arts for which we are preparing our degree-students. During this poster session, attendees can create mini rage piñatas, a favorite arts prescribing activity of the students.

Arts in Health Journal 

Ferol Carytsas, University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine

This poster session will announce the launch of Perspectives on Arts in Health, a new open-access, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to advancing practices and research in the arts in health discipline. Recognizing that creative practice is research, this engaging multimedia journal aims to share best practices with artists in healthcare and public health settings.

Igniting Connection Among Student Researchers Across Disciplines

Abbie Stevens, Michigan State University

The MSU Museum is elevating student and faculty success through the implementation of Ignite talks for student researchers. Ignite is a fast-paced, creative format for communicating a big idea in only five minutes using 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds. This brevity encourages clarity and accessibility, making Ignite talks a powerful tool for breaking down traditional barriers to academic discourse. By focusing on students conducting original research, we have created a forum where diverse perspectives and research fields converge. Ignite Talks MSU serves as a case study for engaging researchers in public programming that can be translated to other institutions.

Nature in Motion: A Biophilic Kinetic Installation for Mindfulness

Amy Koike and Rachael Shields, University of Wisconsin—Madison

This gallery entry presents a robotic kinetic artwork designed for high-stress environments like hospitals, where access to outdoor nature is limited. Grounded in biophilic design and informed by restorative theories, the screen-free installation uses gentle motion, tactile materials, and natural sounds to guide mindfulness and reduce stress. It functions as both art and wellness tool, offering moments of calm and emotional balance. Merging research and creativity, it exemplifies the arts’ role in interdisciplinary innovation. By reimagining robotics as a medium for care and sensory engagement, it challenges traditional boundaries and contributes to a future where the arts shape humane, healing-centered, and sustainable spaces.

The Impact of Experiential Graphic Design and the Built Environment

Katie Lupton, University of Wisconsin—Stout

Experiential graphic design (EGD) significantly enhances student retention and placemaking on campuses. Placemaking refers to the process of creating a sense of place and identity, often through elements like signage, wayfinding, murals, and supergraphics. These large-scale graphics improve the campus environment and frequently become attractions for the wider community, including students, faculty, and staff.

Additionally, EGD can positively influence social-emotional learning (SEL) by using graphics to create spaces that allow for personalization, provide privacy for individual study or mentoring, and offer a refuge within the larger learning community. With ongoing infrastructure updates on our (and any other) campus, numerous potential canvases exist for students from various design disciplines, including interior design, graphic design, and studio art.

Komboloi (Worry Beads): a collaborative  film project about climate anxiety

Krista Steinke, Courtney Starrett, and Meg Cook, Texas A&M University

“Komboloi (Worry Beads)” is a collaboration that integrates climate data with experimental film techniques, exploring anxiety in the era of climate change. Centered around worry beads crafted from local water sites frozen into ice, the beads embody the fragility of our environment. The project embraces chance, experimentation, and performance, exploring the existential stress of a rapidly changing ecosystem. Visuals are paired with a procedural poem and an original score, evoking urgency and reflection. The poster session will screen the film on a small monitor alongside documentation of the experimental and collaborative process behind its creation.

Indigenous Language Table

Laura RedEagle, University of Wisconsin—Madison

The Indigenous Language Table at the Wisconsin Institution for Discovery supports learners in developing spoken Indigenous language skills outside the classroom, while building community and advancing language revitalization. Open to all Indigenous languages, it offers a respectful, inclusive space for practice—guided by prompts and shared curiosity. Participants include former students, independent learners, and community members. The table is a unique, community-driven effort to normalize Indigenous language use and enact land acknowledgements in practice. Entering its fourth year in 2025–26, it is, to our knowledge, the only initiative of its kind in the Midwest.

U-SCOPIC

Krista Steinke and Meg Cook, Texas A&M University

Drawing inspiration from biology and the NASA archives, U-SCOPIC is an experimental video that explores the interplay between the microscopic and the cosmic. It features biomorphic forms animated with analog and digital techniques. Orbs drift in and out of focus, evoking petri dishes, galaxies, and space particles. A musical score incorporates sounds from nature and NASA audio clips. Originally created for a public art project in Downtown Houston, the video has since screened at other venues. This poster session presents U-SCOPIC on a portable monitor, with documentation of the creative process and installation shots from the original large-scale presentation.

Salt: A Ripple Effect

Adina Shaikh, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Jieun Lim, Boston University; Luisa Chavarria, Michigan State University

Inspired by the 2025 a2Ru Emerging Creatives Student Summit and its theme, “Resonance: Making Waves,” our project focuses on salt as a powerful, accessible symbol of ecosystem awareness and human-environment interaction. We aim to explore the ripple effect a tiny grain of salt can cause. As part of the Spring 2026 MSU Museum exhibition “Crystallized: The Science of Salt”, we will lead a workshop featuring collaborative Indian salt paintings and a crankie theater performance with music. Designed for MSU students, the workshop will deepen public understanding of environmental issues like winter de-icing methods, bridging scientific research, visual arts, and performance.

HeartSong: Exploring Physiological Coherence through Group Singing and Generative HRV Biofeedback 

Jeanne Marie Martineau and Richie Arndorfer, University of Georgia

Curator Conversation with Katherine Alcauskas

Chazen Museum of Art

Join Katherine Alcauskas, Chief Curator, for a walkthrough of the exhibition Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within. Born of Okinawan heritage in Hawai‘i, Takaezu was a groundbreaking American artist most celebrated for her prolific ceramic sculptures that range in scale from palm-sized works to immersive environments. This first nationally touring retrospective on the artist features over 100 of Takaezu’s artworks, including her ceramics, textiles, paintings, installations, and video work.

Free and open to all. RSVPs required: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1681411530149?aff=oddtdtcreator

Keynote: “Artful Context for Radical Identities: Exploring the Intersection of Video, Composition, Poetry, Electronics, Movement and Improvisation”

Curtis Stewart, Violinist and Composer

Hamel Music Center Concert Hall

Registration Opens

Chazen Museum of Art Lobby

Strengthening Arts, Creativity, and AI Integration: Towards A Shared Action Plan (Workshop)

Wisconsin Union Festival Room

Presenters:

Daragh Byrne, Carnegie Mellon University; Ben Knapp, Northeastern University; and Aaron Knochel, Penn State University

Supported by the a2ru network, and a series of national convenings, a vibrant dialog has emerged about the central role that the arts plays in shaping creative futures with artificial intelligence. This workshop will build on the analysis and recommendations from the recently released a2ru report “Centering the Arts in the Age of AI: Advancing Education, Innovation, and Workforce Development through Creative Practices.” This report offers a blueprint for a shared action plan.

The workshop will focus on developing this plan, together. Participants will be asked to bring and share examples of responses to AI that describe big and small moves to center the arts in the university responses to AI. We will explore shared commitments and actions that higher-education institutions can take to cultivate artists as leaders, center the arts in campus activities and initiatives.

Embodied Encounters – A Brown Paper Puppet Workshop for Health Science Practitioners and Others (Workshop)

Hamel Music Center Rehearsal Hall

Presenters:

Felice Amato, Jieun Lim, and Dr. Suzanne Sarfaty, Boston University

This 90-minute interdisciplinary and immersive workshop invites participants to collaboratively build and animate brown paper puppets in teams of three, drawing loosely on elements of Japanese Bunraku puppetry. Through the process of (1) creation, (2) animation and observation, and (3) reflection, the workshop offers a unique opportunity to engage with the human body—its form, movement, narrative, and presence. These material bodies, explored through a series of exercises, become prompts for dialogue across disciplines. All are welcome, and we especially hope to engage students, educators, and practitioners from the health sciences, whose disciplinary knowledge of the body can enrich the experience.

Paper Session

Chazen Museum of Art Auditorium 

Arroyo Seco Placekeepers: The Use of Dramaturgy to Cultivate Creative Placekeeping and Community Networks in Pasadena, California

Marcus Renner, University of California, Davis

This session will describe how a dramaturgical approach to understanding neighborhood life can provide a framework for disciplinary collaboration and participatory action research. Built around the devising of creative placekeeping projects, the presented research will illustrate tools for the analysis, comparison and synthesis of neighborhood stories and performances as a prelude to creative intervention. It describes how to identify essential questions for artists, researchers, and cultural workers to explore with the community around a host of topics: historical and urban ecology, Native American experiences of the landscape, land development, race relations, and environmental justice.

Civic Design for Creative Communities

Rebecca Beltran, Illinois Institute of Technology

This presentation details how underutilized public spaces on Chicago’s southside have been transformed into artistic career development hubs. Through a collaboration between the Chicago Park District, design researchers and students at the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech, local artists, and community advocates, the project reimagines public infrastructure as creative-career accelerators in underserved communities. The initiative encompasses digital knowledge-bases, accessibility-first wayfinding, consent-first data collection, and AI-powered career resources at two distinct Park District sites. The session aims to share research methodologies, insights and outcomes, and transferable frameworks for reimagining civic resources as accessible pathways toward inclusive creative futures.

Art + Information + Conversation = Social Change

Ariel Fristoe,  Out of Hand Theater

Pairing theater with information and conversation on social issues advances social justice, increases community support for the arts, and provides new income streams. Winner of The New York Times Best Theater of 2020 and the Bloomberg Public Art Challenge 2023, Out of Hand Theater combines art to open hearts, information to open minds, and conversation to inspire action. These programs attract thousands of people each year who don’t normally attend theater, and form a thriving business model featured in a Harvard Business School case study last year.

Paper Session

Hamel Music Center Recital Hall

Building Collaboration with a Hack-a-Thon

Sarah Bennett-Davidson, University of New Mexico

Learn how the University of New Mexico ARTSLab initiated and developed the New Mexico Dance Hack-a-Thon, a forum for practitioners of dance and technology in the community and university to collaborate and develop projects synthesizing the two disciplines. This session shares the process, outcomes, successes and challenges involved in this endeavor, from the initiation of the Hack-a-Thon to its final public performance, and the unique collaborative encounters it facilitated. Attendees will gain practical tools for launching similar interdisciplinary initiatives and are invited to connect with others exploring intersections between art, technology, collaboration and community engagement.

Time as Material in Shifting Worlds: Sustaining Interdisciplinary Practice Through Long-Term Collaboration

D. Chase Angier, Alfred University

This session explores Letter to the World, a fourteen-year interdisciplinary collaboration between D. Chase Angier (USA Choreographer) Marketa Fantova (CZ Scenographer) and Evelyne Leblanc Roberge (Canada Multimedia Artist) spanning seven evolving iterations across multiple art forms . Using this long-term project as a case study, the presentation offers strategies for sustaining creative partnerships, integrating slow, responsive processes into higher education, and engaging public space as a site of inquiry. Attendees will gain practical tools for arts integration, interdisciplinary collaboration, and navigating change through durable creative structures.

Launching Artistic Inquiry Into Lunar Themes

Stewart Copeland, University of New Mexico

Learn how the University of New Mexico’s ARTSLab and the Sustainable Space Research Grand Challenge partnered to create the Lunar Arts Award, a student grant that funds creative research projects exploring the Moon through art. This session shares lessons from the pilot year—spanning the open call, judging process, and public exhibition—and presents the five funded projects. Attendees will gain practical tools for launching similar interdisciplinary initiatives and are invited to connect with others exploring intersections between space research, artistic practice, and cross-campus collaboration.

Coffee Break

Chazen Museum of Art Lobby

University Arts Leadership and Infrastructure: Building Creative Futures Across Institutional Contexts

Hamel Music Center Concert Hall

Moderator: Chris Walker, Special Advisor to the Provost on the Arts and Professor of Dance, University of Wisconsin—Madison

Panelists:

Peter Betjemann, Executive Director of PRAx and Associate Vice Provost of Arts and Humanities, Oregon State University
Mark Clague, Executive Director of the Arts Initiative, University of Michigan
Todd Jokl, Dean, College of Art and Design, Rochester Institute of Technology
M. Cynthia Oliver, Special Advisor to the Chancellor for Arts Integration, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign