Arts, Identity & Belonging
Explore how the arts serve as powerful tools for identity, cultural understanding, and connection. Sessions highlight strategies for fostering inclusive, responsive classrooms where student voice and lived experience are central to the creative process.
Recommended for: Elementary Educators, Art Instructors, Academic Instructor In this interactive session, we will explore the elements of portrait design as symbolic representations of culture. Attendees will engage in examining the self-portraits of well know artists to explore identity, empathy, and cultural understanding. We will explore how visual arts can provide "windows" and "mirrors", examining how art can help us better understand people from other cultures. Attendees will leave with an understanding of self-portraits and a ready-to-implement structure to foster empathy and cultural connectedness between students.
Recommended for: High School Educators, College Educators, Art Instructors Truly present and engaged actors learn to identify with their characters in a way that assists them in building empathy for diverse perspectives. Explore how a truly rigorous acting practice can help build the engaged and empathetic artists and humans that our world desperately needs.
Recommended for: K-12 School Administrators, Middle School Educators, High School Educators, Art Instructors, Academic Instructor Compassion and kindness combine with middle and high school visual art students’ creativity to bridge international cultures and bring joy to orphans and refugees in The Memory Project. Each year, art teachers select a country from a list provided by The Memory Project, which then sends photos of children who are orphans and/or refugees in that country. Visual arts students each choose one child’s photo and create a handmade portrait or identity art piece that is then sent back to the child as a precious keepsake. Portraiture works well for advanced high school visual art students, while the identity art option allows middle high school students to participate regardless of visual art experience level. Countless cross-disciplinary collaborations are possible for schools, using the country where the children live as the springboard for math, social studies, and science units and projects. Through creating such a personal work of art and learning about the young subject’s culture and life circumstances, students experience our shared humanity with children a world away. Session participants will create their own mini-Memory Project artwork and brainstorm potential academic collaborations.
Recommended for: K-12 School Administrators, Higher Ed Administrators (Deans, Recruiters, Enrollment, etc), Middle School Educators, High School Educators, Fundraising Professionals/Foundations, School Counselors, Art Instructors, Academic Instructor Arts school students already create with skill. But what if they also created with purpose, using their artistic practice to investigate the world's most urgent challenges and imagine real responses to them? This 75-minute workshop introduces the Sing for Hope Global Goals Arts Curriculum, a free, standards-aligned digital platform that connects arts education with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Designed for educators in theater, music, visual art, dance, and creative writing, the curriculum gives students in grades 5-12 a creative-service-learning framework that builds empathy, critical thinking, and informed global citizenship alongside rigorous arts practice. Participants experience the curriculum firsthand through a complete model drama lesson focused on Global Goal 1: No Poverty, using applied theater techniques including image theater, collaborative scene creation, and ""change the story"" storytelling. By the end of the workshop, participants will: -Understand how the Global Goals can serve as powerful thematic entry points for arts education. -Experience practical drama techniques that foster empathy, dialogue, and student voice. -Learn a replicable lesson structure adaptable across all five arts disciplines. -Gain concrete strategies for integrating global citizenship and social-emotional learning into existing arts curriculum. Educators leave with tools they can put into practice immediately, and with a new frame for what the arts classroom can do. More importantly, participants leave with a new perspective on the potential of the arts classroom. Beyond creative expression, it becomes a space where students explore the challenges of their world and imagine how they might change it.
Recommended for: K-12 School Administrators, Higher Ed Administrators (Deans, Recruiters, Enrollment, etc), Elementary Educators, Middle School Educators, High School Educators, College Educators, Art Instructors, Academic Instructor, Special Educators and Arts Therapists For us as arts educators, there is nothing more exciting and satisfying than witnessing the learning and growth of our students. We all went into arts education because of our dedication to the arts, to people of all ages, and to learning. In recent years, the population of students that we meet in our lessons, classes, studios, and rehearsal halls has become increasingly diverse in many ways, including how they learn best. This presents new challenges facing today’s arts educators, as we struggle to reach and teach every student. The challenges increase when it comes to larger classes and ensembles, where there is often tremendous diversity among the students in terms of their learning schemes. In this session, you will learn how to turbocharge your teaching with Accessible Arts Education so that you can meet and teach every student. Accessible Arts Education is an interdisciplinary field that brings together arts education, special education, and arts therapy with the aim of ensuring that all students can have access to and be fully included in meaningful arts learning and participation. Join Dr. Rhoda Bernard, an internationally renowned expert in Accessible Arts Education, to learn how to nurture rich, effective educational environments that promote neurodiversity and affirm learning differences. You will learn how to plan, teach, and assess using evidence-based accessible arts education strategies. You will gain new insights into anticipating, reducing and removing barriers to student engagement, participation and learning. Attend this session, and you will head home with new tools to turbocharge your teaching and make the arts education that you provide truly accessible for all learners.
Recommended for: K-12 School Administrators, Higher Ed Administrators (Deans, Recruiters, Enrollment, etc), Elementary Educators, Middle School Educators, Fundraising Professionals/Foundations, Art Instructors Cultural Arts merges cross sections of art, performance, history, and cultural traditions - it allows discovery through art exploration and play. In our session, members from OCSA, Think Together, Relampago Del Cielo, and Pan American Chinese Dance Alliance will endeavor to share our experiences, challenges, and successes in creating culturally responsive after school Cultural Arts experiences for students across California. Sharing strategies that have worked along with our forecast on the future of arts education - we will share our belief in how arts schools are specially equipped to meet the challenges ahead serving through innovation and collaboration.
Recommended for: K-12 School Administrators, Higher Ed Administrators (Deans, Recruiters, Enrollment, etc), High School Educators, College Educators, Art Instructors This workshop equips arts educators with practical tools to prepare students of all cultures and backgrounds for performing arts conservatory admissions. Participants will learn how to make the audition and application process more transparent, teach the “hidden curriculum” of admissions, and support students in selecting strong audition material and preparing competitive portfolios. Using a strengths-based approach, the session emphasizes how students can leverage their cultural identities and lived experiences as artistic assets. Educators will also explore strategies to address access gaps through mentorship, early training, and resource navigation. Attendees will leave with actionable frameworks to help students become confident, competitive applicants and develop as artists.
Recommended for: Elementary Educators, Middle School Educators, High School Educators, Art Instructors This session explores the critical role of relationship-building as a foundation for student success in arts education. In classrooms where students are asked to take creative risks, express vulnerability, and collaborate with others, relationships are not secondary—they are essential. This workshop addresses the ongoing challenge of student disengagement and behavior by reframing connection as a core instructional practice rather than an “extra.” This work is especially timely as educators navigate increasing social-emotional needs, diverse student populations, and the lasting impacts of disrupted learning environments. Arts educators are uniquely positioned to lead this work, as their classrooms naturally foster shared experiences that build empathy, trust, and belonging across differences. What makes this session distinctive is its combination of mindset shifts and immediately applicable strategies. Participants will engage in interactive activities such as “mingling moments,” peer connection structures, and reflective prompts that can be seamlessly embedded into daily instruction. The session also introduces the concept of “sandpaper people,” encouraging educators to view challenging relationships as opportunities for growth and deeper connection. This session is designed for arts educators, instructional leaders, and anyone seeking to strengthen classroom culture and student engagement. Both new and experienced educators will benefit from practical tools that support inclusive, relationship-centered learning environments. Aligned with the conference theme, Borderless Creativity: Arts Bridging Cultures, this session highlights how intentional relationship-building transcends visible and invisible barriers—whether cultural, social, or academic. By fostering authentic connections, educators can create arts spaces where all students feel seen, valued, and empowered to contribute, ultimately bridging divides and building stronger, more connected communities.
Recommended for: Middle School Educators, Academic Instructor This workshop will explore ways to learn about the Holocaust, through literature and the arts. The goal is to focus on identity, memory and resilience, NOT simulations of suffering or graphic reenactments. Using The Devil’s Arithmetic as a literary anchor, participants will explore how arts integration - through visual arts, music, drama and poetry - can help students process the complex historical narratives while building empathy, identity awareness, and emotional connection. The goal for this workshop is not simulation of trauma. The focus is on humanization, empathy, and connection. Across cultures and across history, people have turned to art in times of struggles - not just to survive, but to preserve identity, express hope, and build community. When students explore these connections, they begin to see both the uniqueness and universality of the human experience. This workshop is best for intermediate grades (4-5) and middle school 6-8.
Recommended for: Elementary Educators, Middle School Educators, High School Educators, Art Instructors, Academic Instructor This interactive workshop explores how arts educators can guide and support identity exploration and authentic expression by creating conditions for students to move across invisible borders, such as cultural expectations, assumptions, and internalized limitations, within the creative process. In many arts classrooms, students navigate unspoken pressures around how they should create, respond, or participate. These pressures can shape engagement and limit meaningful connections to their artistic work. This interactive session centers on a practical, cross-disciplinary protocol of Notice, Name, Express, Reflect, guiding students from awareness to intentional artistic choices and reflective meaning-making. Participants will engage in accessible experiences with multiple entry points, working within their own arts disciplines to explore how identity-based processes can be integrated into instruction without requiring performance pressure or personal disclosure. The protocol emphasizes student choice, multiple modes of expression, and reflection as essential to the creative process. This work is especially relevant as educators seek to create inclusive, responsive classrooms that honor student voices and lived experiences. By centering identity within the arts, educators can expand how students engage in creative work and deepen connections across perspectives. The session directly connects to the conference theme, Borderless Creativity: Arts Bridging Cultures, by addressing invisible borders within the classroom and offering approaches to support students in expressing who they are while engaging with the perspective of others. Educators across arts and academic disciplines, as well as counselors and instructional leaders, will benefit from this session. Participants will leave with practical tools, adaptable prompts, and a clear protocol that can be immediately applied to support authentic expression, student voice, and meaningful engagement.
Recommended for: K-12 School Administrators, Elementary Educators, School Counselors, Art Instructors, Academic Instructor In the face of systemic trauma, how does a school maintain its soul? When 3,000 federal immigration enforcement agents patrolled our students’ neighborhoods, our community was pushed to its breaking point. Serving a diverse population, including targeted cultural groups during Metro Surge, our Pre-K through 5th-grade Public Arts school turned to the arts as our lifeline. This session examines specific strategies we utilized across in-person and virtual platforms while sustaining our community and providing a vessel for collective grief. Participants will view a curated digital gallery of culturally responsive ""All-School Arts Integration"" projects. Attendees will engage in ""Freedom Songs"" that anchored our community. We will share how the arts became the primary lifeline for connection, hope, and survival when our students, staff, and community needed it most. In our final segment, participants will contribute to a community ""Idea Bank"" for art-based healing and kickstart your journey by creating an immediate artistic response to the workshop's themes.
Recommended for: K-12 School Administrators, High School Educators, College Educators, Art Instructors, Academic Instructor The Resonance of Identity: Today’s vocal classroom is a vibrant, multilingual tapestry, yet our pedagogy often remains mono-linguistic. Many of our students navigate worlds in languages they never hear in the studio—tongues that can no longer be called ""foreign"" because they are the very heartbeat of our communities. For many educators, this linguistic diversity feels like a hurdle; in reality, it is our greatest professional opportunity. By embracing our students' native languages and cultural frameworks, we do more than teach notes; we validate identities. This shift flips the traditional hierarchy, driving a student-centered model that uses the ""hook"" of the familiar to unlock the sophisticated demands of the vocal arts. The modern landscape of classical singing is expanding. A new era of publishing and artistry is finally spotlighting the overlooked composers and poets of every continent, redefining the ""master teacher"" as one who can reach a truly global demographic of learners. We now know that music and the mind are inextricably linked. By applying the OPERA hypothesis—leveraging the neural overlap between music and speech—we can lower the ""affective filter"" of anxiety that blocks learning. When a student sings in a language that resonates with their home and history, we don’t just improve their auditory discrimination; we ignite their neuroplasticity, creating a safe, high-performance environment where technical mastery of both traditional and non-traditional repertoire can flourish. This is a call to reframe the canon. By centering meaningful content that reflects our students’ unique backgrounds, we aren't abandoning tradition—we are preserving it. We are ensuring that the centuries-old art of classical singing remains a living, breathing practice that sparks curiosity, joy, and passion in a new generation. Let us reach new audiences by first reaching the student standing right in front of us.
Recommended for: K-12 School Administrators, Elementary Educators, Middle School Educators, High School Educators, College Educators, Art Instructors What if public art became a core part of how we teach, not just something we visit? This interactive session invites educators to explore how public art can transform teaching and learning by connecting students to the communities around them. Drawing from district-wide initiatives and partnerships with artists and cultural institutions, this session introduces a replicable model for integrating civic art into K–12 classrooms. Participants will experience how public art can serve as a framework for culturally responsive teaching, student voice, and meaningful community engagement. Through a hands-on activity, attendees will engage in an inquiry-based process that can be immediately adapted for their own students. The session will also share practical tools and strategies for designing community-connected projects, building partnerships with local organizations, and navigating the logistics of taking learning beyond the classroom. Rather than one-time projects, this approach centers sustainable, relationship-driven practices that position students as contributors to the cultural life of their communities. Whether you are new to public art or looking to deepen existing programs, this session offers accessible entry points and scalable ideas across grade levels and disciplines. Participants will leave with ready-to-use strategies, planning tools, and a clear pathway to bring civic art into their teaching practice.