A Native FASHION Curriculum: Cultural Conversations with Native Artists Patricia Michaels and Teri Greeves by Teri Giobbia

Session explores the art forms of Native designers Patricia Michaels and Teri Greeves, who continue to influence the development of American fashion style by taking advantage of their own cultural roots within their designs. Session includes textile arts-based lessons appropriate for the K-12 art classroom. Interaction Lecture
 

Art education, Joy, and Resistance Pedagogy by Ketal Patel

This session is an artmaking workshop that centers the ways art educators can and do cultivate and foster acts of joy to promote acts of resistance against status quo and oppressive forces.    Participants will identify points of joy within their pedagogy, art making, and research practice(s) to design ideas for their unique sites and stakeholders. Take-Action Workshop
 

Americans: Whose Story? by Liz Langdon & Lori Santos

Indigenous images, names and stories, are an integral part of US history, culture, and identity and foci of “Americans”, a touring Smithsonian exhibition. Having participated in the premiere exhibition, we build on themes of how Indigenous peoples’ stories can be told, sharing proven lessons and ideas. Interaction Lecture.
 

Art Education and the More-than-Human: Re-framing Climate Responsibility by Mira Kallio-Tavin

This interactive lecture engages contemporary climate conversations through artistic inquiry, exploring how art education can foster interspecies advocacy and student engagement. By approaching human–nonhuman relationships as structural rather than individual concerns, the presentation invites collective reflection on environmental responsibility through art-based practices. Interaction Lecture
 

A/r/t/ography Fabric Art Books by Lucy Bartholomee

Create a fabric A/r/tography book while exploring your identities as an artist, researcher, and teacher. Participants will select varied fabrics to fill with playful and thoughtful designs, then stitch together creating a text/ured record of the workshop and the conference. Take-Action Workshop
 

A Workshop Exploring the Ancient Art of Japanese Shibori Dying by Teri Giobbia

Make your own silk scarf and learn the ancient art of Japanese shibori dying! Explore the history of shibori and experiment with dying, folding and binding techniques used to create unique indigo patterns on fabric. Includes materials and lesson plan suitable for secondary school students. Take-Action Workshop
 

Be a Good Ancestor: Land Re-matriation through Garden Eco-Kinship Pedagogy by Lori Santos

What does it mean to be of the land and to act as a good ancestor? Inspired by gardening, eco-based art practices, and Indigenous voices participants are invited to consider eco-kinship and Indigeneity as pathways toward a more interconnected pedagogy and healthy society. This session provides participants examples for growing a pedagogy based in relational respect and reciprocity with all our relations. Interactive Lecture
 

Beyond "I Know It When I See It": Portfolios as Equalizers for Gifted Arts Education by Peter Edwards

This presentation examines portfolio-based assessment in visual arts as a tool for equity and social advocacy. Moving beyond traditional gifted identification models, we will explore how holistic portfolio review can create culturally responsive pathways that validate diverse student talents and amplify marginalized voices. Interactive Lecture
 

Chrysalis: Teaching with Love by Steve Willis

We will present our narratives about teaching with love, kindness, grace, and compassion by discussing our teaching strategies which ultimately leads to more meaningful educational outcomes for students and teachers alike. Interaction Lecture
 

Classroom Gamification: World-Building Lessons from Popular Video Games Essential for Students’ Holistic Artmaking Experiences by Stefan Robinson

In this session, I examine how video games promote equitable learning through choice, agency, and feedback. Drawing on world-building principles, participants explore how “gamified classrooms” disrupt punitive practices, foster resilience, and create inclusive environments that empower learners to challenge inequity, becoming advocates for their communities. Interactive Lecture
 

Creating Classroom Conversations through Story Circles & Oral History Bookmaking by Elizabeth Healey-Mainoo

This presentation will share experiences using Story Circles and creative oral history projects in Higher Education to foster dialogue, community building, and individual introspection. Participants will experience a guided story circle and explore applications for teaching, learning, and research in today’s divided social climate. Take-Action Workshop
 

CREATIVE COACTION: Exploring Creative Work Applied to Human Services by Graham Hackett

CREATIVE COACTION explores a dynamic array of artistic projects, events, and educational opportunities deployed to enhance human services work and improve social health across the country. Grounded in educational theory and best practices for community empowerment, participants will leave with both actionable information and inspiration! Interaction Lecture
 

Collaborative Visual Journal Exchanges in Teaching and Learning Practices By David Modler

The question, “What does pedagogy that includes cultural conversation look like?” will be embraced in this hands-on workshop. We will wrangle with this key issue in images and words, as attendees engage in a one-to-one visual journal exchange with a fellow art educator. Take-Action Workshop
 

Curating Access: Disability, Voice, and Cultural Conversation in Art Education  by Kathleen Keys

Exploring “James Castle: Perspectives,” this presentation examines curatorial practice as art education scholarship and social advocacy. Drawing from disability studies and museum pedagogy, ways exhibitions and classrooms foster cultural conversations challenging ableist narratives and expanding ethical approaches to teaching self-taught and disabled artists are discussed.

 

Darticulum as Cultural Conversation: An In-Between Curriculum for Advocacy in Art Education by Cindy T. Davis

A DT-based “in-between curriculum” framework (Aoki) where cultural conversations and iterative artmaking generate transformative learning experiences—supporting emergence, becoming, and advocacy in art education. Interaction Lecture
 

Decoding GenAI Bias through COIL: Cultivating Cultural Conversation for Authenticity in Art Education by Jhih-yin Diane Lee

This session examines a COIL-based exchange between U.S. and Taiwan students that uses cultural conversation to identify and address Generative AI bias in art education. Participants will explore how international dialogue supports social advocacy by promoting cultural authenticity and challenging digital stereotypes in classroom practice. Interactive Lecture
 

Decolonial and Slow Pedagogies for Social Advocacy in Art Education by Amanda Alexander

This interactive lecture explores cultural conversation as a decolonial and slow pedagogical practice grounded in my intercultural research, Indigenous-informed curriculum work, and sensory-based approaches to art education. Participants will examine how relational dialogue fosters social advocacy, wellbeing, and compassionate learning communities. Interaction Lecture
 

Dragging the Self: Manifesting Genderqueer Identity as a Drag King Performer and Teacher by Jasmine McMasters

Drag performance is more than spectacle—it’s an artistic medium with the potential to be a pedagogical practice. Drawing from experiences as a drag king performer and educator, this presentation explores how drag is a tool for gender formation, embodied learning, and self-reclamation of queer identity. Student Presentation
 

Echoes, Silences, and Poems in Between: Arts-Based Pedagogy for Asian American Civic Dialogue by Siyao Lyu

Drawing on a 5-cycle action research, the session shares 6 practical arts-based dialogical teaching strategies that support Asian American civic learning and social justice. It offers adaptable pedagogical tools for educators seeking socially responsive, dialogue-centered teaching within and beyond Asian American contexts. Interaction Lecture
 

Empowering Abused Women Through Art by Mary Stokrocki

Explore the transformative power of art in aiding recovery and personal growth at a Women’s Center for Abused Women. Interaction Lecture
 

Engaged Pedagogy as Cultural Conversation: bell hooks and Complexity Thinking in Art Education Research by Cindy T Davis

This session connects bell hooks’ engaged pedagogy with Davis & Sumara’s complexity thinking to examine cultural conversation as social advocacy in art education research. Participants will explore how learning emerges through relational curriculum design, reflection, and iterative teacher inquiry. Interaction Lecture
 

Flowing Memory: Suminagashi, Environmental Justice, and Cultural Conversation by Ling-Yu Chou

Grounded in MOCA Tucson’s Living With Injury, this session models cultural conversation through visual inquiry and community memory. Using water as metaphor, participants practice hands-on Suminagashi to explore environmental justice and how art holds memory, supports healing, and builds connection through flow, diffusion, and trace. Take-Action Workshop
 

From Observation to Advocacy: Teaching Students to “Talk Back” to Museums by Kathleen Keys

This hands-on workshop engages participants in teaching strategies that position students as ethical critics of museums. Using the exhibition “James Castle: Perspectives” as a case study, participants will practice identifying institutional silences and develop advocacy-based classroom tools that transform cultural observation into social action. Take-Action Workshop
 

From Still Images to Moving Narratives: Accessible and Engaging 2D Animation Processes by Peter Edwards

This workshop will provide visual arts educators with strategies for teaching animation as a vehicle for student voice and cultural storytelling. Participants will explore traditional and digital techniques, examine animation principles, and develop lessons that empower students to transform personal narratives into meaningful animated stories. Take-Action Workshop
 

Have You Ever Tented? Transnational Feminist Tenting Art Pedagogy Working with East Asian Immigrant Women by Pin-Hsuan Tseng

Have you ever tented? Did you know that tent and tension share the same linguistic root? Explore transnational feminist tenting art pedagogy that goes through US transnational tensions and opens inside out and outside in, cultivating transnational porosity with East Asian immigrant women to make space, time, and matterings in art education. Interaction Lecture
 

Juxtaposition as Social Advocacy: Pairing Historic and Contemporary Works to Surface Silenced Narratives by Carlyn Wilder

This exploratory lecture examines how cross‑temporal artwork pairings can function as tools of social advocacy by surfacing historically silenced narratives and fostering critical cultural conversation. Participants will engage in live artwork analysis and explore interpretive strategies that can be adapted for classroom and museum contexts. Student Project Presentation
 

Leadership in Threads: The Culture of Leadership in Art Education Through Fiber, Embroidery, Research, and Co-Creation by Abi Paytoe Gbayee & Yichien Cooper

Join us for a shared exploration of leadership culture in art education through fiber-based making, reflection, and dialogue. Together we will use embroidery and textile processes as a form of reflective inquiry to surface leadership narratives, consider how policy and professional contexts shape practice, and examine how leadership is built through everyday relational work in schools, programs, associations, and communities. You will leave with a small made artifact, adaptable reflection prompts, and practical language for naming and shaping the leadership cultures you are participating in and influencing. Take-Action Workshop
 

Making a MUSHroom: Mushrooms as Non-human Mentors for Eco-Justice and Pedagogy by Lynn Sanders-Bustle

Working from a post-human perspective, artist/educator and facilitator of a living installation, titled the MUSHroom, explores the imaginative potential for social justice through collaboration with mushrooms as non-human mentors in a participatory art project designed for a social justice symposium. Interaction Lecture
 

On Crafting the Visual Response:  Documenting Cultural Conversations by Todd Johnson

Do cultural conversations appropriately support our curriculum and instruction?  This session is a philosophical reflection on guiding principles. Interactive Lecture
 

Preparing Students for an Unknown Future by Allan Richards

This presentation explores how conceptual art and project-based learning prepare students for an unknown, increasingly diverse future. Drawing on lived experience and critical pedagogy, it examines how decolonizing practices in art education disrupt White supremacy while cultivating consciousness, critical awareness, and creativity. Interactive Lecture.
 

Promoting the Visual Arts in Health and Wellness Through Interdisciplinary Conversations by Angela LaPorte & Susan Whiteland

This presentation provides pathways for interdisciplinary conversations in the visual arts to promote a healthy society. Compelling stories and research from diverse cultural contexts will provide means to encourage advocacy and implementation of stronger connections between the visual arts, health, and wellness. Interaction Lecture   
 

Questioning Personal Truths Through Arts-Based Conversations by Rebecca Shipe

During this interactive lecture, participants will explore two projects that showcase how conversations surrounding visual art can generate collective insights into the experiences and truths held by others. Both arts-based projects address the common theme “conflict transformation,” or viewing conflicts as opportunities for personal growth. Interaction Lecture.
 

Radical Vision: Looking at Art Together by Ashley Mask

Amid rising social and political division in the United States and globally, this session explores how dialogue across differences can be rebuilt through shared art looking and discussion. By anchoring discussions in art, participants will practice slowing down, listening deeply, and fostering respectful conversations about democracy, justice, and other contentious issues. Take-Action Workshop
 

Slow Circus, Brave Classrooms: Repositioning Confidence as an Art Inter-Educator by Brittany Paul

This interactive lecture reframes circus arts as a critical, inter-cultural chronotope of pedagogy—a time–space for learning where risk, relation, and reflection co-exist. Drawing from “slow circus” and social circus practices, I explore how educators can cultivate responsible, manageable subjectification among peers and students—self-making that is relational, ethical, and grounded—while modeling a confident, compassionate stance within and across school hierarchies. In a culture where adult confidence is often misread as arrogance (or its absence), K–12 art educators can embody a different paradigm: be the example, say “yes,” and do things with intention. Interactive Lecture
 

Speculative Cultural Conversations: LaPaperson X 2 & Art Education by Kathy J. Brown

This session briefly unpacks aspects of two of LaPaperson's seminal works and their implications for art education in the 2020's: the book A Third University is Possible (2017) and journal article "The PostColonial Ghetto Seeing Her Shape in His Hand" (2008). Interactive Lecture
 

Star Search! Charting Cultural Connections by Chris Bain and Jenny Evans

Hands-on workshop exploring the semiotic meaning of stars while creating Swedish inspired stars from various media.  Stars serve as sources of inspiration and navigation, as we chart new directions in art education. Participants will leave with handouts and the stars they have created. Take-Action Workshop
 

Stitch and Bitch: Mothering, Teaching, and Social Advocacy by Jennifer Combe & Cortni Harant

This interactive workshop invites participants to stitch, listen, and converse as a form of collective reflection and advocacy. Through textiles and guided dialogue, presenters share Montana-based case studies showing how relational, hands-on practices support art educators, community care, and civil action. Take-Action Workshop
 

Surviving the Storm: Navigating the sea change in academia by Lucy Bartholomee, Amanda Alexander and Angela LaPorte

This panel will address aspects of legislative restrictions confronting education related to DEI, academic freedom, and the false flag of free speech. Strategies for navigating these storms through creative expression will be shared, strengthening our network of like-minded art educators for the road ahead. Interaction Lecture
 

The International Art Biennial as Cultural Conversation: Comparative pedagogical practices in Taipei and São Paulo by Justin P. Sutters

Highlighting recent experiences in Taiwan and Brazil, the presenter will share findings of a comparative analysis of the two respective biennials and the related thematic framings as a contemporary cultural conversation. He also will share pedagogical practices at both institutions that advocate for museum attendees. Interaction Lecture
 

The Role of the Arts in Healing a World Entire by Marjorie Manifold

An art-based way of seeing differently, knowing differently, acting differently, and bringing others into accord with inclusive and caring ways of being in the present world are described. Interaction Lecture
 

Teaching and Learning in Art Education for Dialogic, Disability Engaged, Transformative Practices by Debrah Sickler-Voigt & Monica Leister

This interactive presentation advances dialogic, transformative art education by demonstrating multisensory, disability-engaged approaches shaped by a 15-year-educational partnership and Teaching and Learning in Art Education’s second edition, enabling K–12 learners and educators to co construct knowledge, foster epistemic agency, disrupt ableism, and strengthen community engagement. Interaction Lecture
 

Therapeutic Sewing Pedagogy (TSP) by Edward Berchie Osei

Sewing is explored as a therapeutic practice and pedagogical approach in art education, supporting emotional resilience and sustainable material culture. The workshop uses imaginative theory and rhythmic repetition to teach sewing skills, emphasizing emotional regulation and mindfulness. Take-Action Workshop
 

Transcending Grades: How Formative Critique Transforms Visual Arts into Authentic Conversation by Peter Edwards

This research examines how high school visual arts teachers used formative critique to develop student voice and cultural expression. Drawing from interviews with veteran educators, the session explores how individualized, conversational assessment practices create equitable classrooms where diverse student perspectives flourish through authentic artistic development. Interactive Lecture
 

Understanding Cultural Conversations as Fuel for Enacting Transformational Learning Environments: An Empirically-Grounded Approach by Stefan Robinson

Students enter classrooms carrying diverse cultural narratives, shaped by histories of privilege, marginalization, resistance, and even resilience. In transformational environments, perspectives meet, dominant narratives are challenged, instead of remaining silent. This session provides an empirically-grounded-model for participant, highlighting these crucial connections, prioritizing justice and advocacy. Interaction Lecture
 

Unsettling dialogues: What it meant to be modern in the Dominican Republic’s 19th-century Drawing Instruction by Felix Rodriguez

I discuss how the principles for drawing instruction introduced by Eugenio Maria de Hostos in the late 19th century in the Dominican Republic aligned with liberal democratic and civic ideals fostered by industrialized nations. Interactive Lecture
 

Untold Stories of Aging in Art: Advocating for All by Liz Langdon

Intergenerational conversations about aging inspired by an art exhibition served as advocacy for older people’s attendant concerns, helping all envision our future selves and build helpful relationships. Learn theory, resources, methods and results from four sites of intergenerational art learning and 60 participants. Interaction Lecture
 

We will Draw with Anyone about Anything: Pedagogy and Social Advocacy through Collaborative Drawing by David Modler

Addressing the questioning, “How do our personal and professional conversations lend themselves to support and advocate for the health of our society?” will drive this workshop. Participants will create collaborative dialogical drawings to trouble this key issue in images and words with fellow art educators. Take-Action Workshop