The Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme has been named a 2020 #MillionsofChangemakers finalist by Ashoka U for its broad-based support of meaningful community initiatives. A visual presentation of some of our initiatives can be viewed on the Ashoka U website.
 

About Ashoka U and #MillionsofChangemakers

Ashoka U is an organization that advocates for the expansion of changemaker education: an educational approach that advances the competencies of empathy, collaboration, creative problem-solving and systems thinking. Their goal is to prepare our graduates to become agents of change in the workforce and the world. The #MillionsofChangemakers campaign promotes college and university programs that support partnerships between educational institutions and other stakeholders in a variety of communities. Receiving a #MillionsofChangemakers award indicates a broad-based institutional commitment to continuing to build and support these bridges.

Our submissions

Global Arts + Humanities was awarded for its support of projects including Be the Street; Design Matters in Brazil, DaNCe2U #MentalHealth; and the Livable Futures Field Schools, among others. Each of these programs is anchored in what Ernst Boyer believed was the mission of higher learning institutions: “The academy must become a more vigorous partner in the search for answers to our most pressing social, civic, economic, and moral problems;” what he referred to as 'the scholarship of engagement.'

• Be the Street | A community-engaged theatre devising project giving voice to marginalized members of a neighborhood experiencing social injustices and mobility inequities. Faculty members representing three distinct disciplines have partnered with five community organizations and created more than 100 workshops using theatre-based methods to provide creative and expressive ways for residents to tell their stories about mobility, migration and placemaking.

• Design Matters in Brazil  | A community-engaged, design-build course that provides students from Ohio State's Department of Design and Mackenzie Presbyterian University’s School of Architecture and Urbanism with experiential learning — engaging with the National Movement for the Street Situation Population (PopRua) and NGO, Design Possível, to address the needs of an underserved homeless population in São Paulo, Brazil.

• Dance2U #MentalHealth | A collaborative arts and health campus community project featuring the creation of a performance and community-engaged conversation panels about mental illness.

• Livable Futures Field Schools | A part of the Livable Futures initiative — a community of practice of grassroots network of artists, scholars and activists seeking to foster creative solutions to survival under planetary conditions of unpredictability and crisis.

Other 2020 winners

University of Virginia, Tec de Monterrey, Florida International University

2020 jury

Winners were selected from a pool of 37 applicants by a panel of five judges made of up Ashoka staff from around the world.