The conference theme this year was Building a Civil Society through Art. We got to enjoy a couple of sessions before we presented our own. The first one was over social art with Marie Watt. The guest speaker talked about quilting and communal quilting as a way to get society to interact that may not think they have things in common. She used an example from her class of a grandmother figure that enjoyed sewing setting right next to a goth young gentleman. The two who may not normally have anything in common set 6 hours together to enjoy and share their joint passion for quilting and sewing. I have attached a link below if you are interested in seeing some of the social and cultural artwork of Marie Watt.
http://www.mariewattstudio.com
When it was time for Danielle and me to give our workshop we went early to set up shop. Of course like at all conferences we had technical difficulties. Thankfully we had almost 45minutes to figure out the problem and come up with a way to fix it. When we finally had people coming into our session we realized that attending our session was the current USSEA/InSEA National President and former USSEA/InSEA International Vice-President. We presented for about 35 minutes introducing The Museum of Street Culture and then the Big Idea/Question of, What is the social role of the museum. The rest of the session we lead a think tank style discussion over this question and some possible situation and outcomes that may arise in answering this Big Question. The group discussion never once lacked or felt awkward and I was glad for my partner to help facilitate the conversation.
After the session, both the president and former vice president came up to us and told us what a great job we had done in leading the session and our presentation. I feel very lucky that I got this experience and that it went so well! We needed the validation for all our hard work and our presentation couldn't have been more aligned with their theme of Building a Civil Society through Art.
Hooray for you, Candice! What a great experience to have had in your first full year of your PhD! Congratulations on what sounded like a really terrific session. I wish I could have been there! And, to hear how well you did from the President and former Vice President of USSEA/InSEA... you must have felt (and should feel!) very proud!
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