A Blended Conference
For over 30 years, Common Ground has been invested in developing technologies that seek to break down barriers of access in scholarly communication. In each phase, we’ve built media platforms to support spaces for interdisciplinary dialogue, before such approaches were in vogue; connected international voices, when disciplines were too often isolated in national silos; and supported an agenda of access and equality, by offering pathways and opportunities for diverse voices.
We now propose another kind of intervention -- to build a scholarly communication infrastructure for a blended future.
Our blended model seeks to transcend physical boundaries by offering a platform to extend in-person conference content online, while ensuring online-only delegates are afforded equal participatory and experiential spaces within the platform. At the same time, the model offers participants a legacy resource to which they can return in the Event application, with access to a social space in our Community application where fellow participants can keep connected long after the conference ends.
Themes and Special Focus
The Seventeenth International Conference on the Arts in Society offers an interdisciplinary forum for discussion of the role of the arts in society. It is a place for critical engagement, examination, and experimentation, developing ideas that connect the arts to their contexts in the world – on stage, in studios and theaters, in classrooms, in museums and galleries, on the streets and in communities We seek to build an epistemic community where we can make linkages across disciplinary, geographic, and cultural boundaries. As a Research Network, we are defined by our scope and concerns and motivated to build strategies for action framed by our shared themes and tensions.
The Seventeenth International Conference on the Arts in Society features research addressing the following annual themes and special focus.