Home » Schedule of Events for Leading Creatively, the NAMAC National Conference, Sept. 6-8, Minneapolis

Schedule of Events for Leading Creatively, the NAMAC National Conference, Sept. 6-8, Minneapolis

[Please note: Some participant and program details still pending.]

Jump to a specific day's schedule:

 

Leading Creatively - #NAMAC12 Conference Program

 

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6

Afternoon at the Hyatt Regency

♦ Conference Registration + Hotel Check-in

3 PM - 5 PM

♦ "Prison Dancer: The Interactive Web Musical"
Screening & Master Class in the Mirage Room

Co-presented by Northern.Lights.mn

NAMAC and Northern.Lights.mn present the critically acclaimed, award-winning transmedia property "Prison Dancer" for the first time in the Twin Cities. "Prison Dancer" is an original interactive musical Web series inspired by the viral YouTube video, “The Dancing Inmates of Cebu.” Featuring some of the most exciting Filipino musical talent emerging in North America, "Prison Dancer" is “Glee" meets "Miss Saigon” done as a choose-your-own-adventure story. Filled with catchy pop tunes, star-crossed lovers, and engaging interactive elements, "Prison Dancer" brings together the best of Broadway and YouTube entertainment and takes transmedia storytelling to the next level.

This special Screening and Master Class will walk audiences through the entire 12-part episodic experience guided by Producer Ana Serrano. Sharing with you the techniques, key learnings, and challenges of producing the "Prison Dancer" storyworld, Serrano will provide the best possible real-time case study for anyone interested in transmedia productions, interactive storytelling, Asian-American pop culture, and musical theater.

5 PM - 9 PM

 ♦ Reception @ the Walker Art Center

Leading Creatively kicks off on Thursday night at the Walker Art Center, one of the foremost contemporary art institutions in the United States. Conference attendees will have free access to the Walker's multi-floor galleries and the adjoining 11-acre sculpture garden. The reception will feature hosted bars, complementary gourmet hors d'oeuvres, and a special screening curated from the Walker's Ruben/Bentson Film and Video Study Collection.

  • Includes complete museum and gallery access
  • Exclusive/hosted food and beverages
  • Walker-curated film and video screenings

 

ONGOING DAILY PROGRAMS, SEPTEMBER 7 - 8

  • NAMAC Media/Arts Expo: The Expo will feature a variety of film, video, and multimedia organizations looking to build their networks, promote their services, and meet the larger community of both Twin Cities locals as well as visiting NAMAC members.
    • The Media/Arts Expo will run for the duration of the Conference, and with the Screening Room, will be open to the general public for $15 daily or $25 for both days.
  • Evidence: NAMAC 2012 Documentary Screening Program: Showcasing a wide variety of contemporary and archival film and video output from the NAMAC community, the conference screening room will present feature-length movies and documentaries, plus a diverse array of shorts made for cinema, television, and the Internet. The Evidence Documentary Program is curated by Aimee Le Duc, Gallery Manager, San Francisco Arts Commission.
    • The screening room and Media/Arts Expo will run for the duration of the conference and will be open to the general public for $15 daily or $25 for both days.
  • Conference Hacker Space: Hacker spaces are open-source, intensely collaborative, tech-savvy, and intellectually unbounded — places for people to share in the act of imagining and creating do-it-yourself technology and art. Join the members of Twin Cities Maker in this mobile version of their open-source workspace, the Hack Factory. Hack Factory workshops and demos will include:
    • Interactive LED Artwork Basics
    • Making Interactive Art with Arduino (Arduino kit available for $50 at the workshop)
    • Simple Two-Transistor Light Theremin (Theremin kit available for $10 at the workshop)
    • Learn to Solder (Soldering Kit available for $10 at the workshop)
    • Crafting Wooden Bows: The Art of the Bowyer
    • Introduction to Locksport
  • Wonder/Think Project, Daily at the Greenway Promenade at NAMAC 2012
    Chris Houltberg and Max Harper
    Commissioned by Northern Lights.mn for Northern Spark 2012
    • The Wonder/Think Project explores how the shift towards an online, social culture has shaped what we wonder about, and changed how we think about the unknown. The Wonder/Think Project consists of multiple simultaneous projections that invite the audience to consider what people worldwide are thinking and wondering right now. It is an installation that displays real-time Twitter messages that start with “I wonder” or “I think,” and pairs those messages with related images found via Flickr.com. The resulting stream of information offers a spontaneous glimpse into the lives of others, while giving participants a chance to examine and reflect what they themselves wonder about.
       

 

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7

8 AM - 9 AM

All NAMAC participants and attendees are invited to join us for a breakfast buffet before we convene for our opening breakfast plenary.

9:00 AM - 10:30 AM

♦ Breakfast Plenary: Artists As Leaders

"Leadership" is a tricky concept in a world where peer-to-peer Internet technologies are decentralizing traditional social hierarchies. The nuance of being an inspiring facilitator, the pressure of being the primary "decider," the natural self-governance of empowered peer groups — all these are in the mix as the idea and practice of leadership adapts to a time of rapid social change.

10:30 AM - 3:30 PM -- Technique and Technology Workshops

  • 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM -- Comics Journalism Online: How To Do It
    • Simple tools to do-it-yourself: Bunmi Oloruntoba, 3bute.com
  • 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM -- From Digital Media Making to Artistic Expression: Realizing Your Smart Phone's Full Potential
    • Have you ever thought of your smart phone as a mobile production studio or as a means to broadcast your message live? After this hands-on workshop you will have a new appreciation for the wealth of applications that allow you to record, edit, upload, and broadcast media from almost anywhere: Vanessa Graber, Prometheus Radio Project
  • 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM -- Mozilla Popcorn: Networked Transmedia Made Easy!
    • Mozilla Popcorn is a free, open-source application for producing and posting your own transmedia and multisourced online video projects. Learn about how Popcorn helps developers and authors create interactive pages that supplement video and audio with rich web content, allowing your creations to live and grow online: Jacob Caggiano, Mozilla Foundation
  • 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM -- Media and Communications for Social Movements: Experiences and Tools from the Media Mobilizing Project
    • Over the last 6 years Media Mobilizing Project (MMP) has produced a number of video projects in collaborations with groups from a wide range of social struggles to tell the untold stories of poor and working people. This session will share MMP's collaborative production process for creating engaging media on social struggles with those most impacted. MMP will also share SwitchBoard, an SMS text tool it has developed to assist with our organizing, outreach and distribution. Bryan Mercer, Media Mobilizing Project (Philadelphia)
  • 2:30 PM - 3:30 PM -- Audiences on the Go: Mobile Engagement
    • By 2014, more people in the United States will be accessing Internet content through mobile devices than through laptops and desktops combined. U.S. adults currently spend an average of 94 minutes per day using mobile apps compared to an average of 72 minutes per day using web browsers. Many of us believe that we don't have the money to engage with mobile audiences. Not true! You can engage mobile audiences even if you have NO budget.This session will explore a variety of options for connecting with audiences via mobile devices, including QR codes, mobile websites, mobile apps, and more. For each option, we will highlight engaging features, discuss costs, and determine the time involved for implementation and maintenance: David Dombrosky, InstantEncore.com

11 AM - 12:30 PM

♦ The New Networks

Peer-to-peer media technology is flattening societal hierarchies and giving power to previously marginalized sectors. Amidst this tide of change, new ideas and opportunities for networks and collaboration are emerging. How can like-minded media producers and arts organizations work together? How can cities link up diverse, complementary resources and organizations to create a more productive gestalt? This panel explores the limits and possibilities of the new networks.

♦ Mobile Media: Defining Places, Engaging Communities

Mobile media have taken computing and communication power off the office desktop, and into the diverse, public places where people live, work, and traverse every day. Increasingly, mobile media has come to define these places — revealing histories, updating context, sharing experiences, and even connecting users with the policymakers who influence places and lives, both public and private.

♦ Supporting Independent Production

What sort of institutional alliances can support independent media and visual-arts productivity within and outside the mainstream? What infrastructural innovations can activate unaffiliated producers? From artist services to fiscal sponsorship, independent production can flourish with intentional and responsible support.

♦ Using Data for an Arts Policy Agenda

Policymakers are hungry for data. Leaders in our field are collecting data and stories through expansive research to allow our field to visualize a proactive policy agenda. Learn about two major arts data projects, Future of Music Coalition's Artist Revenue Streams and NAMAC’s Mapping the Field, and consider how this work can allow us to have our seat at the policy table.

♦ Teaching (and Learning) Media and the Arts

What does it take to teach media and the arts? What does it take to learn? From individual mentorships to comprehensive curricula, this panel explores diverse methodologies in media and arts education, and why kids do or don't pay attention and gain from the experience.

12:30 PM - 1:30 PM

♦ NAMAC Media/Arts Exposition + Open Lunch

Open conference period focused on networking over lunch and at the NAMAC Media/Arts Expo.

1:30 PM - 3 PM

♦ Journalism’s New Directions

As the economic model of news-for-profit undergoes unprecedented retreat, nonprofit alternatives are emerging. New market opportunities and funding models, open-source technologies, divergent viewing and reading habits for news seekers — plus a profound re-evaluation of the role of news media in our lives — have all sparked a slow-burning renaissance for the daily news. Here are some new sprouts coming up through the scorched but fertile earth. 

♦ Creating Equity, Representing Community

Does "diversity" amount to mere tokenism? Is "inclusion" meaningful if it is passed down by would-be benefactors rather than claimed by the excluded? Communities around North America are creating equity, claiming power, and representing themselves by creating their own media and art, rather than waiting for someone else to do it for them. 

♦ Pennies from Heaven: Crowdfunding and Community-Supported Media/Arts

Crowdfunding and microgrants can give communities power and activate productive capacity for independent media and visual-arts organizations. Yet there are also considerable challenges to tapping into public support. From crowds to communities, this panel will explore how individual giving has evolved in the peer-to-peer Internet era.

♦ Being Strategic About Transmedia: Making a Big Impact with Limited Resources

Transmedia has become a buzzword — but how do you focus your limited funds and time? Will your flashy app remain in use once you move on to your next project? This workshop will discuss goals, audiences, partners, and creating transmedia tools that will extend your narrative and make a tangible impact.

♦ Workshop: Creating "Leaderful" Organizations and Networks

To  fulfill our missions in an era of complexity and growing interdependence, we need to sustain our own leadership and develop the leadership capacity of others. What does it take to create leader-full organizations and networks? What stands in the way? In this highly participatory workshop, we will co-create a visual matrix of strategies for growing and sustaining arts leadership. We will also touch base with current practitioner-based research to glean lessons learned about shared or distributed leadership.

♦ Grantmaker Speed Dating

A full list of participating philanthropists and funders will be available at the Conference!

  • Participants to include: John Lightfoot, Alyce Myatt, Frances Phillips, K.C. Price, and more!

4 PM - 6 PM

♦ Media/Arts Twin Cities Tours: Public Art, Alternative Spaces, Creative Services & Local Gems

NAMAC takes the conference out of the hotel's hermetically sealed interior to meet a few members of the diverse, thriving community of organizations that make up the Twin Cities' independent media and visual-arts sector. At the Conference registration desk, attendees can register for any of the following tours:

  • Alternative Spaces Tour: Intermedia Arts and Franklin Art Works
    • Two Twin Cities gems that have altered commercial spaces into creative playgrounds: an auto garage turned ArtsHub and a former silent-film era movie palace that now serves as venue for solo exhibitions by emerging artists.
  • Experimental Ecosystems Tour: The Soap Factory and Juxtaposition Arts
    • A behind-the-scenes look at two Minneapolis organizations that lead the way in creating platforms for creative experimentation.
  • Creative Service Tour: Juxtaposition Arts and Minneapolis Television Network
    • Two organizations offering unique creative skills training. Juxtaposition Arts combines design education and youth empowerment with a social-enterprise business model. Minneapolis Television Network is a TV station dedicated to community and free speech, a station without commercials, a station for citizens, not consumers.
  • Youth Media/Arts Tour: In Progress and Kulture Klub Collaborative
    • Kulture Klub Collaborative brings together artists and homeless teens at a crisis drop-in center. In Progress is a nonprofit space for young people to develop their skills as storytellers, artists, and leaders.
  • Public Art Highlights: Presented by Forecast Public Art
    • Veteran tour guide and public art expert Jack Becker (Forecast Public Art and Public Art Review magazine) will lead this amazing journey and reveal the back stories of compelling art projects around town.

 

6 PM - 7 PM:  DINNER ON YOUR OWN

7 PM and Beyond...

♦ Art Opening @ Franklin Art Works: Sighthouse, by Jonathan Bruce Williams, and The Two Stories by Alejandro Cesarco

Franklin Art Works will present two concurrent solo exhibitions. In the Main Gallery, the Minneapolis artist Jonathan Bruce Williams will premiere a major sculptural installation of a giant wooden lighthouse incorporating two 16mm projections. The adjacent Franklin Art Works Screening Room will feature Alejandro Cesarco's black-and-white single channel projection, The Two Stories, based on a story by Felisberto Hernández.

 

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8

8 AM - 9 AM

All NAMAC participants and attendees are invited to join us for a breakfast buffet before we convene for Saturday's breakfast plenary.

9 AM - 10:30 AM

♦ Breakfast Plenary: Creative Placemaking

Placemaking. It's a buzzword, but it's also a reality. Recognizing that art defines the places in which we live is the first step towards more intentional design, deeper collaboration and more positive outcomes.

Breakfast will be served.

10:45 AM - 11:30 AM -- Technology and Technique Workshops

  • 10:45 AM - 11:30 AM -- ITVS OVEE
    • OVEE is a social-TV widget that streams PBS content online and allows simultaneous online chat. Steve Goldbloom and Dennis Palmieri, ITVS.

10:45 AM - 12:15 PM

♦ Public Art: Engaging Communities, Claiming Space

Public art has moved far beyond the abstract sculpture in the front plaza of your local office tower. It's become interactive, multimedia, and occasionally lacking in official permits. Some of the Twin Cities' finest public-art presenters and provocateurs join us for this thoughtful and inspiring presentation.

♦ Digital Frontiers: Copyright, Censorship, the Commons, and Privacy

Can freedom of the press and the right to know survive the rough-and-tumble politics of lobbyist-addled Washington? Is your mobile device secure from search and seizure over whatever content you load onto it? Will the documentary feature you've labored over be accessible to your target audience? The Digital Frontier is up for grabs — and your participation in the debate will make a difference. 

♦ Youth Media Networks: How We're Connected

Media and visual arts organizations play a crucial role in providing young people with the skills, savvy, and access required for them to participate fully in today's profoundly networked democracy. This panel explores how youth media and arts organizations are collaborating to effectively serve young people at a time of economic hardship and social change.

♦ Open Space Documentaries

We love their  gutsy vigor, but long-form documentaries loom a bit like skyscrapers from the 1960s -- overbuilt and probably not sustainable. In comparison, more modest, “open space” transmedia projects seem more agile, more adaptable, more alive, more responsive, less predictable. This panel explores how legacy documentary practices transfer to the multi-sourced transmedia environment.

♦ Collaborating With Museums: Sharing Resources, Activating Capacity

How can a grandly colonnaded art museum in the heart of a major metropolitan area collaborate with innovative ventures both small and large, locally, regionally, and nationally? What can each type of organization offer the other, given the vast differences in expertise and resources? This panel offers a detailed look at how the major cultural institutions like the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Science Museum of Minnesota, and others are building regional collaborative partnerships with community-based arts, media and cultural organizations, as well major educational peers in the Twin Cities region. At a time of economic scarcity and technological change, the gestalt of collaboration truly exceeds the sum of its parts.

12:15 PM - 2:15 PM

♦ Plenary Luncheon: NAMAC Awards Presentation + George Stoney Celebration

The NAMAC Awards Presentation will showcase the great works of leading members of the NAMAC community. Additional programming will include a retrospective on the life and work of the storied and inspirational documentarian, George Stoney.

NAMAC is pleased to announce that the Awards Presentation will be opened with a dazzling performance by Iny Asian Dance Theater.

2:15 PM - 3:45 PM

♦ Distribution: Brave New Digital Worlds

Networked digital media have changed the distribution game. How are traditional film and video organizations responding? What are new streaming and digital platforms bringing to the table? What are the policy issues that independent media advocates and producers need to keep in mind? Will independent producers ultimately benefit from this epochal shift in technology and social norms? 

♦ Prodding the Sleeping Giants: Media, Arts & Citizen’s Movements

The power of independent, community-based media and visual arts has rarely been in more evidence nationally than with the #Occupy phenomenon. Constituencies were mobilized; and viral messages, such as the concept of the 99% and the 1%, went on to inform front-page coverage of the New York Times and other national news media. But beyond the glory of the national spotlight, how do the independent media and visual-arts fields inspire community engagement and civic participation every day?

2:15 PM - 4:15 PM

♦ Power Mapping and Social Network Analysis

Running an advocacy campaign requires thoughtful planning to ensure you’re using your limited resources wisely and not spinning your wheels on ineffective strategies. In this session, we’ll go through the basics of campaign planning, from setting realistic goals, developing a strategy, choosing tactics and targeting policy makers.

  • Beth McConnell, Executive Director, Media and Democracy Coalition

2:15 PM - 5:15 PM

♦ Arts on Air I and II: How to Start a Community Radio Station

Arts On Air I: How Community Radio is Amplifying the Arts

This workshop will provide an introduction to community radio and its impact on communities, arts organizations and artists. We will share examples from amazing stations, including Minneapolis' own KFAI, and we'll talk about how arts organizations can partner with community radio stations to celebrate and support local creative scenes. With a one-time-only chance to apply for community radio licenses on the horizon in 2013, we'll share how organizations can get involved to start new stations or spread the word locally.

Arts on Air II: How to Start a Community Radio Station

2013 brings an unprecedented opportunity to apply for community radio stations in urban and rural areas. This nuts-and-bolts overview of the application process will include the technical and legal requirements to win an FCC broadcast license, a discussion of community collaborations and strategic partnerships needed to build successful stations, and an overview of the support that organizations such as the Prometheus Radio Project will provide to applicants.

2:45 PM - 3:45 PM

♦ Workshop: A Brief History of the Alternative Spaces Movement, 1995 - Present

This presentation will explore the recent and ongoing renaissance of alternative spaces in the United States, beginning with the rapid and simultaneous launch of multiple exhibition spaces in the late 1990s. The workshop and following discussion will explore evolving concepts of exhibition practice, the reasons behind the resurgence in alternative spaces, and the impact these spaces have had on the wider field of contemporary art.

 

6 PM - 7 PM:  DINNER ON YOUR OWN

7 PM - 11 PM

♦ The Soap Factory: Art opening & reception, Andy DuCett’s immersive, site-wide installation, “Why We Do This"

Saturday night caps off Leading Creatively with an epic, site-specific installation at The Soap Factory by Minnesota artist Andy DuCett. "Why We Do This" stitches together fragments of pop culture, workaday symbols and collective memory to create a single, 12,000-square-foot installation of interlocking, interactive vignettes. Join a giant game of Battleship, peruse a thrift store, watch the clouds roll by from the seat of an airplane, or catch a glimpse of a sasquatch through the window of a log cabin — all within The Soap Factory's sprawling, post-industrial interiors along the banks of the Mississippi River.

 


 



Do the tags, contact information, or descriptions in this profile need updating?

If so, send your updated info to Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz at aggie [at] namac [dot] org!