Blueprints for Arts and Policy will be a guide to leveraging the arts as a unifying superpower, providing policy influencers from all occupations with a toolbox of invaluable information for achieving societal transformation.
The Manual: Blueprints for Arts and Policy (WT), an upcoming publication documenting the most esteemed global voices in arts and policy, offering case studies, and recommending action. Through encouraging collective creativity in all its guises as the scaffold for change, we can narrow the divisions we face ideologically, economically, culturally, emotionally, and socially. The Manual seeks to ensure that this fundamental truth is documented as an actionable guide.
A series of salons will be held in contribution to the project, bringing together leaders in a variety of fields to discuss how the arts can be harnessed for social and policy interventions.
Salon No.1
September 30, 2024
Harvard University
Contributors
Christina Lessa
Currently working as a Senior Arts and Culture Advisor in Riyadh, KSA. Christina Lessa specializes in strategic practices and cultural diversity as it relates to arts master planning in the public realm. This has involved creating Riyadh’s, and the country’s, first ever public art masterplan, acting as a catalyst towards the city’s transformation, and implementing the “Grand Projects” in the city and now nationwide.
José Luis Falconi
An Assistant Professor of Art and Human Rights at the University of Connecticut. He is also an editor, writer, researcher, artist, and serves as the President of Cultural Agents Inc. José is a specialist in Latin American art, and focuses on the power of art as a driver of societal change, as well as its potential for the advancement of human rights.
Doris Sommer
Ira and Jewell Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of African and African American Studies, alongside director of the Cultural Agents Initiative, both at Harvard University. Over her career, Doris has advanced a program of development through engagement with the arts and humanities, exemplified by her “Pre-Texts” initiative, practiced internationally.
William Bain
A Philosophy and Politics student at the University of Edinburgh, focusing on how cultural narratives come to bear on both domestic and international politics. He is working as a researcher on this project and assisting in the process of producing The Manual.
Partners
Art Life Lab
A think-tank with a mission of enhancing the standing of Latin American Arts, and the Arts as a whole, across the United States. In pursuit of this goal, Art Life Lab works alongside universities and museums, supporting artists’ projects, as well as those of researchers pertaining to the arts. In addition to this, there is an educational aspect to their work, with the creation of instruction courses, conferences, and exhibitions, as well as publishing research and academic texts.
Cultural Agents, inc.
Based out of Harvard University, is a platform for academics, artists, community leaders, and active citizens in general. It promotes the idea that the arts and humanities are of the utmost importance to civic life, and central to the functioning of democracy and society. Through artistic education initiatives, creative thinking and social flourishing are encouraged, challenging rigid paradigms with artistic alternatives.
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