During NPAC, participants will create an agenda that activates the performing arts community in America. This process will engage every single convention participant in a series of dialogues held at caucus meetings on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, culminating in a 21st Century Town Meeting® on Saturday morning. While contributing to a blueprint for action for our emerging performing arts community, each delegate over the four days will collaborate closely with some 35 other participants from all aspects of the performing arts in energized, focused discussions in which all ideas are welcomed. Make sure your voice is heard: join as many of these sessions as possible. Play a part in building a vital performing arts future! You'll find your room assignments for each caucus on the back of your NPAC badge. If you are unsure of where you should report, please proceed to the Korbel Ballroom foyer for assistance.
Add your voice to facilitated cross-disciplinary conversations identifying goals and action steps designed to create a vital performing arts future. Each participant will be seated at a table with 10 colleagues. You will be presented with a draft vision statement for the performing arts community that expresses the aspirations of what our community hopes to accomplish by working in concert with one another. A trained facilitator at your table will lead your group in a discussion exploring this vision and where the community is most and least successful in realizing it. Your ideas will be captured, synthesized and reported back the next day.
Missed yesterday's session? Join in today!
We will begin with a presentation of the major themes from the first caucus as to what has been most/least successful toward building the performing arts future to which we aspire. We will then engage in a discussion about the major opportunities and challenges that the performing arts community needs to address to further realize the vision.
All are welcome to participate in this final discussion that leads to tomorrow's Town Hall Meeting on the performing arts.
Our third caucus will begin with a presentation of the top opportunities/challenges for the performing arts community that emerged from the second caucus. Your table will then work together to identify the major actions that need to be taken to productively address each of these top opportunities/challenges.
All convention participants will be seated in the Korbel Ballroom at assigned discussion tables. We will work with each of the top opportunities/challenges, one at a time. First, we will consider the major action ideas that emerged from caucus three. Then using wireless keypads, each person will vote on the top priority actions to be taken—at both a national level and a local level. By the end of the meeting we will have established clear priorities for action toward a stronger future for the performing arts in America. Leaders from the national performing arts community will respond to this collectively-developed action agenda—noting steps to ensure that this agenda is enacted.
The NPAC steering committee selected AmericaSpeaks to lead this meeting approach because of the impressive results that AmericaSpeaks has achieved in engaging large groups of people—as many 4,500 people in a single room—in focused and productive conversations that lead to action. AmericaSpeaks developed the 21st century town meeting® as a response to the growing disconnection between citizens and leaders across the U.S., so that people can have a genuine voice in the most important decisions that affect their lives. AmericaSpeaks has employed this approach in addressing a wide range of issues including the rebuilding of the World trade center site, the recovery of New Orleans, and health care reform in California. We believe that our performing arts community can benefit from this approach—especially in this nascent stage of our development as a community, where the need to create accountability, trust and action is so essential.
Case Study: The Juilliard SchoolJuilliard Students Recommend Actions for a United Performing Arts Community
Seventy Juilliard students gathered in two town meetings, facilitated by the faculty/staff leadership team of the Juilliard Mentoring Program, to talk about actions needed to advance the performing arts in the coming years. The students also established criteria used to select the NPAC delegates coming to Denver. Every idea for action was then included and submitted for an on-line survey sent to the entire Juilliard community. The results of the Juilliard community voting on priorities for performing arts community action are just in. This included actions to be taken at the national, regional and individual level. We submit these recommendations from the Juilliard community, mostly from the students, who have undertaken a dialogue and voting process similar to the one you will follow in Denver at the Convention.
Over 90% of the students who responded agreed that the following actions are needed by a united performing arts community: