OCTOBER 8 – 10, 2027

CINCINNATI, OHIO

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ABOUT

THROUGHLINES is a socially engaged art convening emerging from the legacies of Common Field, Open Engagement, and Hand in Glove. Planned in conversation with participants and organizers of these past gatherings, Throughlines continues the spirit, energy, and spaces of support the field needs. Amidst a changing institutional, cultural, and political landscape, we ask:

What do socially engaged artists do today?

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

We are currently accepting proposals for THROUGHLINES 2027. Local, national, and international artists, activists, academics, cultural producers, administrators, curators, educators, writers, thinkers, doers, and makers of all ages with a vested interest in art and social practice are encouraged to propose programming through our free call.

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.

Learn More and Apply Here

THEME: THROUGHLINES

Throughlines is the convening title, the theme, and the program design process.

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

We encourage anyone with a vested interest in art as a way of engaging with society to propose programs: artists, activists, academics, cultural workers and producers, administrators, curators, educators, writers, thinkers, doers, makers of all kinds and ages, located anywhere.

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.

Learn More and Apply Here

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