Torrance Festival of Ideas
Friday, April 23 - Sunday, April 25
https://mfecoe.shorthandstories.com/FestivalofIdeas2021/index.html
The Festival features 21 speakers from across the globe who explore themes and questions relevant to creativity, imagination, art, music, humor, empathy, consciousness, wellbeing, mindfulness, childhood, aging, education, equality, data, identity, healing, health, crisis, curiosity, innovation, entrepreneurship, authenticity, political resistance, and sociocultural change. The spirit of Athens will also be showcased, with spotlights on local non-profit organizations that serve the community in creative and crucial ways. Registration for this event is free and is limited to the first 1,000 attendees.
Schedule:
**Friday, April 23**
10 AM
Divine Charura
Love, Loss, Trauma: Interconnectedness and Being Human
Divine Charura, Ph.D., is a professor of counseling psychology at York St. John University in the United Kingdom. He is a Chartered psychologist, UK licensed counseling/practitioner psychologist, registered psychotherapist, and author.
11 AM
Richard Blissett
We Are More Than Numbers
Richard Blissett is an assistant professor of education policy and quantitative methodology in the Mary Frances Early College of Education. His work focuses on the attitudinal politics of justice-oriented education policy as well as how information affects those attitudes.
Noon
Kizmet Adams
Mindfulness 101
Kiz Adams is a human resource specialist in well-being and human relations at the University of Georgia. She is an advocate on campus for promoting balance and well-being among faculty and staff and for creating a healthy, positive, productive work environment at the University. Kiz is certified in Hogan Personality Assessments, Sherpa Executive Coaching, Real Balance Health and Wellness coaching, and Koru Mindfulness and Meditation training.
1 PM
Nonprofit Spotlight: Athens Chautauqua Society
The Athens Chautauqua Society is a non-profit, community cultural organization in Athens-Clarke County providing humanities-focused educational programs, such as History Comes Alive! events for the general public. We celebrate the diversity of our culture through a variety of voices from the past because history belongs to all of us. In addition, we develop programs that encourage and support civic discourse, public deliberation, and engagement.
1:30 PM
Nonprofit Spotlight: Books for Keeps
Books for Keeps works to improve children's reading achievement by addressing barriers related to the accessibility and appeal of reading material. Since 2009, Books for Keeps has distributed more than 660,000 books to children across four Georgia counties - and growing.
2 PM
Melisa (Misha) Cahnmann-Taylor
Aging and Dying with A Sense of Humor: An Improvisation in Diaspora
Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor is the director of the 2021 NEA Big Read Program. NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest. In addition, she is a professor of language and literacy education at the University of Georgia's Mary Frances Early College of Education.
3 PM
Sycarah Fisher
Racial Identity: A Promising Protective Factor for Minoritized Populations
Sycarah Fisher, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of school psychology at the University of Georgia's Mary Frances Early College of Education. Her research focuses on mental health and substance use in minoritized populations.
4 PM
Adam Zeman
Blind Mind's Eye: The Science of Extremes in Visual Imagery
Adam Zeman, Ph.D., is a clinical neurologist with research interests in visual imagery, memory in epilepsy, and, more generally, the relationship between mind and brain. He is the author of "Consciousness -- a User's Guide" and "A Portrait of the Brain".
5 PM
Rebecca Kamen
Crisis, Curiosity and the Creative Process: Awakening Scientific Discovery Through Art
Rebecca Kamen investigates the dynamics and poetics of curiosity and the creative process in her work as artist in residence in the Computational Neuroscience Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania.
**Saturday, April 24**
10 AM
Joan Koenig
The Musical Child: Are we missing the developmental window?
Joan Koenig began her musical life at the age of five winning several awards including the National Symphony Young Soloists competition. After Juilliard, she moved to France and worked as a soloist before founding the Ecole Koenig and dedicating her life to innovation in early childhood musical practice.
11 AM
Surviving and thriving post-retirement and stroke
Jerry Gale
Jerry Gale, Ph.D., LMFT, is an emeritus professor in the department of human development and family science in UGA's College of Family and Consumer Sciences. He is now a recovering academic and has a private family therapy practice. He embraces improvisational theater, relational meditation, and values social activism and engaged presence.
Noon
Susan Cohen
From Creative Seeds to Commercial Success
Susan Cohen is an assistant professor in the department of management in the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business. Her research interests include entrepreneurship, innovation, venture finance and acceleration, industry evolution, and corporate strategy.
1 PM
Nonprofit Spotlight: Athens Area Arts Council
The Athens Area Arts Council is a non-profit arts organization, staffed entirely by volunteers, whose mission connect the arts to the community through promotion, education, and funding.
1:30 PM
Nonprofit Spotlight: ESP (Extra Special People)
ESP exists to create transformative experiences for people with disabilities and their families, changing communities for the better. Our mission is carried out daily not only through engaging people of different abilities but also by inviting others from the community to join us.
2 PM
Mark Johnson
Is Pain Real? A Journey into a Peculiar, Perplexing and Paradoxical World
Professor and director of the Centre for Pain Research at Leeds Beckett University, U.K., Mark Johnson has been investigating pain since the mid-1980s focussing on how non-pharmacological techniques such as electricity, acupuncture, laser, and mirrors alleviate pain to improve well-being.
3 PM
Fred Quinn
Where We Are With COVID-19 and How Vaccines Are Helping
Fred Quinn, Ph.D., is the Athletic Association Professor of Infectious Diseases and department head in the University of Georgia's College of Veterinary Medicine. His current research focuses on understanding the pathogenesis and transmission of tuberculosis in humans and animals.
4 PM
Rosanna Smith
The True Selfie: Beauty, Authenticity, and Instagram
Rosanna Smith is an assistant professor of marketing in the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia. She enjoys analyzing TV shows and playing ultimate frisbee.
5 PM
Chris Denson
Empathy + Innovation: The Unexplored Intersection of Creativity
Chris Denson is an award-winning innovation advocate, author, host, and recovering comedian. He is the author of the 2018 Amazon #1 bestseller, "Crushing the Box: 10 Essential Rules for Breaking Essential Rules," creator and host of the Innovation Crush podcast series, and serves as the first-ever U.S. Director of Innovation at MullenLowe, an award-winning IPG creative agency.
**Sunday, April 25**
10 AM
Simon James
The Durham Commission on Creativity and Education
Simon James is a professor of English Literature at Durham University, UK. His interests include Victorian fiction, textual editing, literature and education, prison education, and teaching for creativity.
11 AM
Pip Thornton
Zoom Obscura, and Other Digital Mischief
Pip Thornton is a Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Her research and practice exposes and critiques the value of our personal data in an age of digital capitalism.
Noon
Sideth Ung
Survival, Escape, Rescue, and Renewal
Sideth Ung acquired a patent signature and published a book, "No Mama, No Papa," in 2020. He is passionate about family and making a difference with his life and his work. His greatest achievement to date -- being a father to his three boys.
1 PM
Love.Craft Athens
Our mission is to promote community inclusion and empower differently-abled adults through art and music exploration and educate the local community on how to engage in customized work opportunities for this population.
1:30 PM
Nonprofit Spotlight: Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development
The Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development is a service, research, and instructional center based in the University of Georgia's Mary Frances Early College of Education. The focus of the Torrance Center is in the identification and development of creative potential across the lifespan.
2 PM
Laetitia Vancon
The Domino Effect in Photography
Laetitia Vancon is a French freelance award-winning photographer based in Munich, Germany. Her work appears in the New York Times, National Geographic, Geo Magazine, Liberation, and Spiegel, among others.
3 PM
Shodekeh Talifero
Breath Art: The Past, Present, and Future of Creative Breathing
With 34 years of personal, professional, and community-based experience, Dominic "Shodekeh" Talifero continues to make musical strides as a beatboxer, vocal percussionist, and Breath Artist who pushes the boundaries of the human voice within and outside the context of hip-hop music and culture. Shodekeh currently serves as Towson University's very first Innovator-in-Residence.
4 PM
Harry Ballan
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911): Music as Religion, Then and Now
Harry Ballan is senior director of the Tikvah Fund and the founding dean of the Abraham Lincoln Teachers Fellowship. Harry holds a Ph.D. from Yale University and a J.D. from Columbia Law School. He clerked for Chief Judge Wilfred Feinberg of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He has taught at several leading universities on subjects ranging from law and intellectual history to neuroscience and was dean of Touro Law School before joining Tikvah.
5 PM
Peter O'Connor
The Arts as Political Resistance
Peter O'Connor is director of the Centre for Arts and Social Transformation at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He has created and researched theatre in marginalized spaces including prisons, psychiatric hospitals, with the homeless, and in disaster zones for more than 30 years.
---
Ideas for Creative Exploration is an interdisciplinary initiative for advanced research in the arts at UGA, supported in part by the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School, and the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts.
ice.uga.edu
facebook.com/ideasforcreativeexploration
For more events and opportunities visit:
a2ru.org
art.uga.edu
arts.uga.edu
athica.org
calendar.uga.edu
ced.uga.edu
dance.uga.edu
drama.uga.edu
english.uga.edu
flagpole.com
georgiamuseum.org
music.uga.edu
pac.uga.edu
willson.uga.edu
|
