OCTOBER 8 – 10, 2027
CINCINNATI, OHIO
ABOUT
What do socially engaged artists do today?
What do socially engaged artists need today?
Where does socially engaged art go from here?
What do socially engaged artists need today?
Where does socially engaged art go from here?
THROUGHLINES 2027 will take place October 8–10 at the
Art Academy of Cincinnati and a constellation of sites throughout the city.
THROUGHLINES 2027 is co-organized by the Art Academy of Cincinnati and Wave Pool, with advisory support from Jen Delos Reyes and funding from the Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr. Foundation.
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
THROUGHLINES will continue to explore some of the key themes of past gatherings and reflect on where we are now as a field, in addition to exploring emergent themes connected to some of the most pressing issues of our time. Proposals are reviewed by volunteer committees composed of local and national partners, artists, activists, students, community members and scholars.
THEME: THROUGHLINES
As a title, it marks continuity. The gatherings that held this field together have closed, and what they carried persists in the work of the people who made them. This convening picks up those lines.
As a theme, it asks what persists. A throughline is whatever runs through a field and carries it forward: concerns, commitments, and methods that recur across generations and outlast projects and institutions.
As a process, it determines how the program is built. The Artist Leadership Committee reads the proposals and identifies the throughlines that run across them; the program takes shape around those. Your proposal should describe what's important to you right now.
WHO THIS CALL IS FOR
This is a field gathering for socially engaged art, and we use this term as a starting point. Your ideas will define its meaning. We welcome hybrid work that resists categorization, that is done collaboratively across disciplines, geographies, institutions, communities, and cultures, taking the form of participatory projects, creative gathering formats, activist and civic work, pedagogy and research, performance and ritual, ecological practice, or any other. You do not need a title, degree, or vocabulary to belong here.