Community Engagement is all about connection – connecting individuals to one another and to the world around them. Art is an excellent, if not necessary, component of community engagement because it is an impetus, conduit, and culmination for sharing the human experience. As a graduate assistant for Arts Share, I am the liaison to the School of Art and Art History helping to connect studio artists to the broader Iowa community. I hope to further the work of this office by encouraging graduate students to share their work, knowledge, and skills.  

As an emerging scholar in art history, I like to say that I prefer to study the world based on what people create rather than what they destroy. I choose to participate in and uplift discourse that highlights the histories of marginalized communities and individuals. My current research examines how working women in nineteenth-century Paris influenced new directions in representing the female body – a significant site for the development of modernity and the avant-garde.

Art reflects the world and how we see it. I believe community engagement is the best way to shine light on subjects and connect audience to new form and aesthetics. Making dance accessible to all with or without any knowledge to remove the veil of elitism and give a supportive creative environment to foster creative growth.

As an Arts Share assistant, I will help coordinate different dance experiences through performances as well as other outreach events throughout the year. This is an important experience to contact performance artist and the community they visit.

As an Artist I am interested in giving a platform to enhance the voices of undervalued dance performers and their embodied experiences.

Community engagement means bringing the arts to everybody, regardless of their background. It's all about making sure that everyone has the same resources and opportunities to engage with the arts, to hopefully inspire new musicians and artists to begin their journey. As an Arts Share assistant, my role is to coordinate musical performances all across Iowa, and it's great to see the joy that music brings to the communities!

As a cellist, I love to perform with my peers. I find that working with other musicians, creating something personal, and then sharing it with an audience is one of the most rewarding things a musician can do. It's a privilege to work with the talented people at the University of Iowa!

Community engagement is about creating and fostering relationships. As a socially and culturally minded artist, I see community engagement as an essential part of the art itself.

In the theater, my hope is that the audience is more than a spectator but a witness to the struggles and triumphs that emerge onstage. Witnesses have a responsibility to testify and share what they have experienced. Community engagement is a crucial piece in establishing that relationship.

My role as an Arts Share Assistant is to build bridges between the Theatre Department and the broader university community. By creating opportunities for connection through workshops, facilitated discussions, and performances, we can better understand and uplift each other.

As a director, I view the world through the lens of many possibilities for connected storytelling and engaging moments. I have numerous questions that I seek to explore through my art in conversation and collaboration with the work of many other brilliant artists. The question itself is my guide to connected, dynamic work that satisfies my itch to make things.

Some consider the arts a luxury, I think it's a necessity. Imagine life without story, poetry, music, song, dance, created and captured images, how would we express what we feel, how we live, and even more, how we survive?

Community engagement in the arts, helps us converse about how our shared and foreign experiences move through the world without us.

As someone who joined the creative writing community later in life, I want to help others tap into that creative side and surprise themselves. To feel what it's like to create something that hasn’t been in the world the same way before.

As a creative writer and poet, I enjoy stretching my imagination to push creative boundaries. I want to ignite conversations around art and expression that expands our thinking, no matter the boxes we feel placed in. Advocate for and support the art that speaks to you, and if you haven’t found that art, create it!