Adam Falkner, founder and executive director of the Dialogue Arts Project (DAP), will present Carleton College’s weekly convocation on Friday, Jan. 30 from 10:50 to 11:50 a.m. in the Skinner Memorial Chapel. Entitled “How Can Writing Change the World,” Falkner’s presentation profiles the mission of DAP, an organization dedicated to using creative writing and the arts as tools for generating difficult dialogue across lines of social identity, conflict and difference.
This event is free and open to the public. Carleton convocations are also recorded and archived online at go.carleton.edu/convo.
DAP partners with organizations to create energizing training experiences in order to help students and leaders collaborate and communicate more effectively across lines of social identity. DAP’s leading-edge workshops use the arts as a shared entry point into critical discourses around identity to increase awareness of self and social diversity.
In an increasingly multicultural society, the need for self-awareness, tolerance and open communication has never been more critical. Despite this, the field of diversity education has struggled to meaningfully respond to that challenge and educators and organizers have grown weary of professional development sessions that seem to merely “fill a quota” in addressing critical issues of race and social identity in the classroom. By combining performance, creative writing and intergroup dialogue practices, the DAP reaches beyond those safe, cookie-cutter efforts to help individuals and communities collaborate more effectively across lines of social identity and difference. Learn more at www.dialogueartsproject.com.
Twice-nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Falkner’s written work has been published in Painted Bride Quarterly, Thrush Poetry Journal, Anti-, The Literary Bohemian and elsewhere, and has been incorporated into coursepacks for use in sociology and social work curricula throughout higher education. Falkner was the featured performer at President Obama's Grassroots Ball at the 2009 Presidential Inauguration.
He has been featured on HBO, BET, Michigan and New York Public Radio, in Time Out New York, The New York Times, and elsewhere. A former high school English teacher in New York City’s public schools, Falkner currently teaches English education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, where is also pursuing a PhD in Sociology and English Education. More about Falkner at www.adamfalknerarts.com.
This event is sponsored by the Carleton College Convocations Committee. For more information, including disability accommodations, call (507) 222-4308. The Skinner Memorial Chapel is located on First Street, between College and Winona Streets, in Northfield.
