Attention Activism with the Strother School of Radical Attention

Join the Center for 21st Century Studies and the Milwaukee Turners for a day-long series of workshops led by the Strother School of Radical Attention (SoRA), an organization that promotes human well-being through attention activism.

As the 21st century waxes, our attention wanes. Digital platforms drown us in endless noise, diverting our awareness from the real people and spaces around us to a haze of information overload, hot takes, and commodity-over-community. We’re losing the focus required to nurture embodied connections and create the vibrant spaces of care that enliven our city.

How might our capacity for sustained attention affect how we see each other and our city, and how might these perceptions lead to actions that reshape our respective communities and environments? What happens when we get quiet, stay still, and take it all in? Do we miss the world beyond the screen?

During this day of attention activism, SoRA facilitators will lead participants through two of their signature attention-cultivation workshops—an Attention Lab and Sidewalk Study.

are an experiential, participatory workshop curriculum dedicated to the exploration of radical human attention. Through group attention practices and guided discussions, participants create and test tools to build sanctuaries of attention — as well as networks of solidarity to sustain them.

Sidewalk Study is a form of group inquiry combining theory, practice, and public space. Participants meet at a predetermined location where they read through a selected text. They are then given the address of a second location along with an exercise that activates questions posed by the text, to be performed en route and in relation to the streets and sidewalks around them. Upon arriving at the destination, participants share their experiences in an open-ended discussion.

(SoRA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to Attention Activism: the movement to push back against the fracking of human attention by coercive digital technologies. We advance this mission through the study and practice of radical attention, or those diverse forms of attention which resist commodification. SoRA’s seminar courses, experiential Attention Lab workshops, and other hybrid forms of group teaching and learning seek to deepen our shared understanding of attention’s relation to human flourishing.

The (C21) fosters innovative research and community engagement at the intersection of the humanities, arts, and sciences. C21’s theme for 2024-2025 is Slow Knowing: The Pace of Being Human, with programming and sponsored research that calls attention to embodied processes of building and maintaining collective life that resist the fast-paced efficiency models and short attention spans that increasingly define human responses to 21st century social, political, and ecological challenges.

Founded in 1853, the are the oldest civic group in the city with a rich history of civic engagement; they offer non-partisan civic educational programs and mental and physical wellness programming for all Milwaukeeans.

This event is made possible with support from the .

Questions? Email us at [email protected].

Info: Indoor group workshop.

Info: Boxed lunch provided.

Info: Outdoor walking workshop practiced in pairs.

Info: Reconvene for reflective discussion at second location (location TBD).

Host or Publisher Center for 21st Century Studies