Join the Arts Extension Service and Rhode Island State Council on the Arts for a series of new webinars exploring the role that arts and culture organizations can play to inspire their staff and community, mitigate the climate crisis and work to ensure an equitable transition to clean energy. The climate crisis is affecting communities across Rhode Island, including the creative sector. In response, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts is hosting Culture for Climate Action RISCA, a free virtual webinar series designed by UMass Amherst Arts Extension Service and Culture Climate Strategy to empower Rhode Island arts and cultural organizations to develop, fund, and implement creative climate actions that align with their unique organizational mission, values, and priorities.
The three-session series is created for staff and board members from Rhode Island’s arts and cultural sector who own or lease facilities for their organizations and each session will feature a guest presenter from an Rhode Island arts organization who will share the work they are doing to address climate work.
Presented in collaboration with the UMass Amherst Arts Extension Service’s Culture for Climate Action program, virtual sessions will be held from noon to 1:15 p.m., as follows:
October 30: Creative Climate Action for a Just Transition
- Cultivate new narratives of possibility and creative potential for an equitable, just, resilient, and regenerative climate future in Rhode Island.
- Explore unique opportunities that arts and culture organizations can undertake to create meaningful climate change.
- Featured guest speaker from a Rhode Island arts and culture organization.
November 6: Strategies for Organizational Resilience and Sustainability
- Learn strategies for clean energy and resilience in facilities and operations.
- Discover state and federal funding and financing strategies and opportunities.
- Featured guest speaker from a Rhode Island arts and culture organization.
November 20: Evaluating Your Facility and Operations
- Develop a basic understanding of evaluating current facilities and operations.
- Explore examples of SMART goals for climate action.
- Featured guest speaker from a Rhode Island arts and culture organization.
Space is limited to the first 75 individuals that register on a first-come, first-served basis. Recordings of workshop sessions will be made available only to registered participants.
Presenters
Dee Boyle-Clapp
Dee Boyle Clapp, Director of the Arts Extension Service at UMass Amherst, is a sculptor, installation artist and works to bridge art and sustainability. She has taught studio, art history and arts management courses for 25 years at UMass Amherst, museum schools, and community colleges. She is the co-founder of the Arts Entrepreneurship Initiative, the National Arts Policy Archive and Library, and the ArtsHub of Western MA, an online resource for creatives. She founded the Culture for Climate Action pilot project supporting arts organizations transitions to equitable clean energy and use of programming to inspire communities to get involved. Dee created and has taught the groundbreaking course Greening Your Arts Nonprofit Organization since 2010. She is currently working with colleague Lauren de la Parra and Clean Energy Extension to expand the Culture for Climate Action (C4CA) work to inspire arts leaders to transform their organizations into sustainable, equitable, and resiliency hubs, by reducing their carbon footprint, tapping green/clean energy, creating programming that engages their constituents in joining them to equitably address the climate crisis at their local level.
Dee’s background includes both art making and arts management. She co-owned the Artemis Gallery and was a founding member, first director, and restoration team member for the ArtBank, located in an 1860's bank building in Shelburne Falls, MA. Dee was program coordinator for the Fostering the Arts and Culture Partnership creative economy project organizing business and marketing training, exhibition and web opportunities, and networking for artists. She joined the staff at the Arts Extension Service in 2008. She holds bachelor's degrees in art and art history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, an MFA in sculpture from UMass Amherst, and a Master's in Nonprofit Management (M.N.M.) from Regis University in Denver, Colorado. Dee lives on an off-the-grid llama farm in Western Massachusetts.
Lauren de la Parra
Lauren de la Parra is an interdisciplinary sustainability consultant, artist, and activist committed to cultivating the intersection of arts and culture, climate action, and community resilience. She has a background in municipal and state climate action, adaptation, and resilience planning with a focus on equity, justice, and regeneration. She has also served as a consultant, researcher, fabricator, installer, and youth mentor on creative climate action projects with individual artists, K-12 schools, nonprofits and local governments across New England and California.
Lauren holds an M.S. in Sustainability Science with a concentration in Urban Sustainability, and a Graduate Certificate in Climate Change, Hazards, and Green Infrastructure, both from UMass Amherst. While at UMass, she co-founded Paperbark, an interdisciplinary magazine of creativity and stewardship around the climate and ecological crises. She is also a Creative Climate Leader certified by UK-based international nonprofit Julie’s Bicycle, and an organizing member of the Bay Area nonprofit Art + Climate Action. You can find her at www.cultureclimatestrategy.com.
Cathleen Carr
Cathleen Carr is an arts and culture nonprofit leader currently serving as executive director of newportFILM, a year-round documentary film series based in Newport, RI. An alum of Goddard College (RIP) in Vermont, Cathleen is a graduate of the New York Community Trust Leadership Fellows program and University of Pennsylvania’s Executive Program in Arts and Culture Strategy.
Howie Sneider
Howie Sneider is an artist and sculptor and the Executive Director of the Steel Yard in Providence. He is an educator and collaborator who has spoken about accessibility, sustainability and public art in community practice. During his time at the Steel Yard he has directed investment in multiple alternative energy systems and explorations of many sustainable practices. The Steel Yard believes that It is our responsibility to understand the environmental impact of our programs and operations to make the most sustainable choices possible. He lives in Warwick and Loves the Narragansett Bay.
Pippi Zornoza
Pippi Zornoza is an interdisciplinary artist working in sound, performance, installation, video, and printmaking and is a co-founder of the Dirt Palace feminist art collective in Providence Rhode Island. Zornoza's work has been featured internationally and is housed in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. Her work has been published in the Bell Gallery's Building Expectation: Past and Present Visions of the Architectural Future, Anthony Alvarado's DIY Magic, Mathew Barney and Brandon Stousy's Tubal Cain, and in the art-poster anthology, the Art of Modern Rock.
Xander Marro
Xander Marro has been living the good life in the feminist sub-underground for too many years to count on her long bony fingers. She draws pictures (usually narrative), makes movies (usually not narrative), produces plays with elaborate sets and costumes (usually narrative, but confusing), and then makes stuff like posters, quilts and dioramas (probably narrative?). Her work is often about spiritual relationships to the material stuff of this world. Co-founder of the Dirt Palace in 2000 (feminist cupcake encrusted netherworld located along the dioxin filled banks of the Woonasquatucket river, which is to say in Providence, RI USA). Her studio (and heart) is there still.
She cut her teeth in arts management on the jagged edges of spreadsheets at AS220 while working as the Managing Director. She currently serves as Co-Director of Dirt Palace Public Projects which manages facilities in Olneyville Square and in the Wedding Cake House on Broadway. She's been involved with issues around affordable housing, and equity within the changing landscape of urban America for nearly two decades.