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CVPA Shines at the Imagining America National Gathering

Faculty, students, and New Bedford community stakeholders take the Black Spaces Matter project to New Mexico.

Vignette courtesy of Professor Michael Swartz

A team of CVPA faculty, students and New Bedford Community stakeholders just returned from a very inspiring trip to Imagining America National Gathering. Since its 1999 launch at the White House, Imagining America has been a thriving consortium of colleges, universities, and cultural organizations, which aims to bolster the public roles of arts, humanities, and design fields through research, partnership, and leadership. This year’s national gathering, which took place at the University of New Mexico, included hundreds of participants from all over the nation.

The collaborative team of CVPA faculty & students as well as New Bedford experts, delivered the multi-media session, “Learning from Spaces of Migrants: The Case of Abolition Row in New Bedford, MA.” The content of the session was based on the traveling exhibition, Black Spaces Matter, which has turned the decades-long efforts of the New Bedford Historical Society into an educational platform for art students. Celebrating this important community contribution, the exhibition highlights the history of the abolitionist movement in the city of New Bedford in the South Coast of Massachusetts.

Team members who participated in the Imagining America National Gathering. From left to right: Michael Swartz (Professor of Animation & Game Arts), Don Burton (New Bedford-based filmmaker and CVPA alumnus), Ben Guan-Kennedy (undergraduate student), Jennifer McGrory (architect at Perkins & Will Boston), Pamela Karimi (Professor of History of Art and Architecture).

The team’s presentation at the Imagining America National Gathering included a film screening and individual lectures, including an inspiring talk by Benjamin Guan-Kennedy who represented the very best of the student body in CVPA. Using VR technology, the team then immersed the audience in New Bedford’s historic Abolition Row. Team members who were present at the National Gathering were Don Burton (New Bedford-based filmmaker, CVPA alumnus), Jennifer McGrory (architect at Perkins & Will Boston), Pamela Karimi (Professor of History of Art and Architecture), Michael Swartz (Professor of Animation & Game Design), and Ben Guan-Kennedy (undergraduate student in Animation & Game Design and Art History).

Undergraduate student, Ben Guan-Kennedy (majoring in Animation & Game Arts and minoring in Art History) discussed the ways in which he contributed to the Black Spaces Matter Project and learned from it.

This trip was a true confirmation of the value of the collaborative and community-engaged work done in CVPA. The depth and breadth of the project and its advanced technological features struck a chord with the conference attendees. The team opened their eyes to the power of technology and how it can be incorporated in storytelling projects as well as in the humanities fields such as art & architectural history. While there was cross pollination, CVPA/New Bedford team was certainly one of the most technologically compelling, media rich and multifaceted panels.

***Special thanks to the New Bedford Historical Society and its President, Ms. Lee Blake, The Leduc Center for Civic Engagement, Perkins & Will Boston, and CVPA Dean Lawrence Jenkens. VR goggles donated by Perkins & Will and designed by Professor Michael Swartz.