The 6th International Teaching Artists Conference
2022, ITAC6 in Norway
Date: September 1st~3rd, 2022
Host: Seance & ITAC
Seanse Art Center and the International Teaching Artist Collaborative (ITAC) are delighted to announce that ITAC6 will be held in Oslo, Norway from 1 - 3 September 2022.
ITAC6’s theme will be ART AS A CATALYST FOR CHANGE, exploring the intersections of arts with education, health, environment, and society in the 2020s. The conference will offer both in-person and online programming for delegates.
ITAC conferences are a dedicated gathering space for artists who work in communities, schools, and beyond, using their practice to create positive social change. Our conferences take place in a different part of the world every 2 years, and provide Teaching Artists (known by different titles such as community artist, participatory artist, socially engaged artist etc.) with space for international networking, professional development, accessing next, best, and radical practices, partnership building, knowledge exchanges and more.
Want to come along? Applications to attend as a delegate are now open!
Join us for 3 jam packed days of hands-on workshops, keynote speeches, roundtable discussions, co-creations, communal art projects, and more, led by Teaching Artist colleagues from all over the world. We have received proposals to present sessions from every continent (40+ countries) and are excitedly programming the most innovative and urgent international experience possible. Our newly launched ITAC Hubs will also take centre stage, guiding us through examples of best, next and radical practice in their region. We welcome practitioners of all experience levels, backgrounds, and art forms to join us. The power of our gatherings comes from the diversity and collaboration from people in our sector.
As always, ITAC is committed to convening an inclusive and diverse cohort of colleagues. For this reason, we ask delegates to apply to attend (rather than offering first-come-first-served-ticketing), and the number of in-person participants who can attend from any one geographical region will be capped. A robust virtual component will be offered for those who wish to attend remotely, and full and partial scholarships will be available for those who wish to attend in-person but face financial barriers.
ITAC conferences offer a space for artists, Teaching Artists, participatory artists, community artists, art educators, art organizations, community institutions, funders, and researchers to share, learn, and engage with one another. As always, ITAC is committed to convening an inclusive and diverse cohort of colleagues. A robust virtual component will be offered for those who wish to attend remotely, and full and partial scholarships will be available for those who wish to attend in-person but face financial barriers.Would you like to join as a delegate and/or do you have a workshop or other contribution you’d like to present? Make sure you mark your calendars for the key dates and deadlines noted below. Stay tuned for more exciting announcements—we can’t wait to welcome you in September!
The 5th International Teaching Artists Conference
2020, ITAC5 in South Korea(Online)
Date: September 14th~17th, 2020
Host: KACES & ITAC
Over 3 full days of programming, the conference offered more than 60 sessions led by colleagues from 19 different countries and a diverse range of art forms.
In addition to a jam-packed workshop schedule, there were break out spaces to connect with colleagues from around the world, collaborative online art projects, keynote speakers and more.
After the event, project funding was made available for 2 projects arising from the conference. As a result, we are happy too announce the Teaching Artist Asia project has now launched!
Although the conference was online, we asked all delegates to commit to spending these 3 full days in deep inquiry with us. To create the ITAC community we all love, we challenged our participants to engage fully in these three days as if we were together in person.
It is of course hard to schedule live events when we join from so many time zones, so we made sure all delegates had live, interactive content wherever they live. Workshops primarily took place between 9am and 10pm Seoul time (which meant every time zone could engage with different portions of the day). In addition to the workshop hours, there were staggered live reflective sessions available, which happened during the day for other parts of the world. Delegates could join with colleagues in time zones similar to their own, to chat and check up on what they missed.
Registration fees were purposefully kept low (no travel or housing costs either!), and significantly reduced registration fees were available to those hit especially hard by COVID-19. To allow us to offer this, we asked that those who are joining from larger institutions (or have been less financially affected by the pandemic) pay it forward and contribute the full amount. As an experiment, we also offered free spectator passes for the first time. These spaces allowed people to observe selected content and watch certain pre-selected sessions. Free passes did not allow for real time interaction with participants, but they were hugely popular and more than 1,000 teaching artists from around the world took us up on the offer!
Boundaries into New Pathways:
- Unlearning
- Local & Nomadic Practices
- Peace & Reconciliation
We created 2 custom built conference sites,
which offered extensive engagement opportunities, since we couldn't be together in person.
The 4th International Teaching Artists Conference
2018, ITAC4 in USA
Date: September 13th~15th, 2018
Host: Lincoln Center, Dreamyard & ITAC
Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and Dreamyard joined together to co host our fourth ITAC conference in New York City from 13th- 15th September 2018. The conference brought together over 300 teaching artists along with organizations, funders, researchers, and other leaders from more than 28 countries, to explore key issues of participatory arts practice in a dynamic mix of practical workshops, keynote speeches, site-specific observations, and round-table discussions. ITAC4 followed three previousInternational Teaching Artist Conferences, the first held in Oslo in 2012, the second in Brisbane in 2014, and the third in Edinburgh in 2016.
ITAC4 investigated:
-What is the role of teaching artists as contributors to social justice?
-What is the responsibility of 21st century artists as they engage in different communities?
-How can artists transform schools and institutions of learning in radical ways?
Online Conference
ITAC4 went digital! Individuals and organizations around the world, who were not able join us in New York City, were able to participate through livestream videos of plenary sessions, curated interviews and conversations, and access to special web-only content. All of our Keynote sessions have been archived here on the ITAC website, so you can continue to relive the excitement of this vibrant community long after the conference itself.
Access
We want to make sure that our conferences are accessible to everyone who wishes to attend.Access provisions for ITAC4 included:
-All venues fully wheelchair accessible
-Large print conference materials available upon request
-All keynote sessions and panel discussions included real-time transcription
-A number of financial assistance packages were made available for individuals who found the conference fee a barrier to attending and who met the assistance criteria.
The 3rd International Teaching Artists Conference
2016, ITAC3 in Scotland
Date: August 3rd~5th, 2016
Host: Creative Scotland & ITAC
Creative Scotland managed and hosted ITAC3 in partnership with Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Artworks Alliance and the conference originators Eric Booth and Marit Ulvund of SEANSE, Norway and previous hosts, Brad Hasseman from Queensland University of Technology Brisbane.
For Scotland and the UK ITAC 3 was an opportunity to share, discuss and disseminate the significant body of learning from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation ArtWorks Special Initiative: developing practice in participatory settings. It was also an opportunity to build on previous ArtWorks Scotland conferences (2011-14), consciously creating a sense of ‘continuity’ for the Scottish community of practice.
The ITAC3 conference aims were to:
-share practice, learning and research in the field of participatory arts (including through hands on/ participatory activity).
-showcase best and next practice for the host and visiting nations.
-generate new connections and building a palpable energy towards an international community.
The Conference Themes were led by the following questions:
-How can we collectively strengthen support for artists working with people?
-How is participatory arts practice evolving to meet the challenges of the 21st century?
-What can the world learn from radical approaches to socially engaged art-making?
The 2nd International Teaching Artists Conference
2014, ITAC2 in Australia
Date: September 13th~15th, 2018
Host: Lincoln Center, Dreamyard & ITAC
The conference was jointly hosted by the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) through its iconic Out of the Box festival for children and the Queensland University of Technology’s Creative Industries Faculty (QUT CI).
The 1st International Teaching Artists Conference
2012, ITAC1 in Norway
Date: August 29th, 2012
Host: ITAC(Host: Booth and Marit Ulvund)
In late August 2012, 130 eager individuals gathered for three days in Oslo, Norway, for the World’s First International Teaching Artist Conference.
Representatives came from 23 countries, some with a clear sense professional identity as a “teaching artist,” others with mere curiosity about the term, all with a mix of experience and uncertainty about the hybrid way art and education combine and live in different cultures around the world.
