Arts, Inquiry, Action: Creative Methods, Community Knowledge & Scholarship

The arts play a vital role in how we understand and communicate the human experience. Beyond raising awareness of social issues or building community, artistic practices can also function as powerful tools for research — helping to investigate social realities, surface lived experiences, and communicate knowledge in ways that are accessible and meaningful to broader publics.

This University Worth Fighting For event explores the intersections of art, justice, and research, bringing together community activists, artists, and scholars whose work integrates creative practice with community engagement and public scholarship. The event will open with a participatory arts workshop led by Parent Power for Cultural Equity (PP4CE), a collective of Bedford-Stuyvesant mothers, caregivers, and grandparents conducting community-based participatory action research through their project Creative Pathways in Bed-Stuy. Drawing on their work documenting how creativity lives in everyday neighborhood life, PP4CE will guide participants through a hands-on activity exploring how creative mapping and storytelling can help communities identify cultural resources, surface unmet needs, and imagine more equitable futures for arts and culture.

The event will conclude with a panel that will share how they use artistic methods to address issues in local communities, communicate important research, and activate classrooms, cultural spaces, and public life. Together, they will reflect on how arts-based practices can expand how knowledge is produced, shared, and used in the pursuit of justice and collective well-being.

Light refreshments will be served during the event. 

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Host or Publisher Futures Initiative