ICAT Playdate — Creativity, Arts, and Technology to Build Civility

The Creativity, Arts & Technology to Build Civility project was initiated in the summer of 2020 with the goal of integrating the arts, technology, and best practices in building empathy and understanding from the social sciences to promote civil discourse. The project objectives are to: Develop a new suite of tools that foster civil discourse, utilizing new technologies and approaches derived from the performing arts; test these new approaches with community members both from campus and beyond; assess the efficacy of these new approaches; and more broadly disseminate tools and approaches found to be useful. To date, the team has staged a virtual production, called The Race 2020, that reached over 800 viewers and participants; run five workshops on civil discourse with over 300 participants; and developed an online version of our ‘Civility 101’ training (www.civility.vt.edu). This year, the team is continuing to develop our interactive website; developing more advanced workshops (e.g., on anti-oppression); and developing a concept for an event in the Cube that would utilize some of its technical possibilities to facilitate a truly interactive, multidimensional conversation on civility.

Submit a question

Speakers: Courtney Surmanek, Todd Schenk, Bob Leonard, and Diksha Pilani
Date: September 3, 2021
Time: 9am EDT