Imagining America (IA) advances public scholarship, community building, civically engaged learning and campus change through the bold power of the arts, humanities, and design.
As a national consortium of university and cultural institutions, we build partnerships among public scholars, artists, students, designers and cultural organizers who are addressing the most pressing issues of our time.
In the summer of 2017, IA moved its national headquarters to the University of California, Davis. IA and UC Davis share a deep commitment to public engagement as a core value and measure of excellence.
IA regularly hosts community events where local organizers, scholars, artists, and designers can meet and connect.
Our organizing platforms include:
- Annual Conferences | IA’s conference is a space where members of the national consortium and their partners come together in a three-day immersive experience to learn from one another about how the arts, humanities and design are being leveraged locally, regionally and nationally toward transformative action.
- Graduate Fellows Program | PAGE (Publicly Active Graduate Education) is a national, interdisciplinary community of emerging scholars who are creating opportunities for collaborative knowledge production, peer support and bold experimentation.
- Research Initiatives | IA’s action research portfolio includes a groundbreaking report on assessing tenure and promotion for creative and engaged scholars by our Tenure Team Initiative, Assessing the Practices of Public Scholarship (APPS), which studies campus community engagement and metrics to assess its impact, and the Commission on Publicly Engaged Design (CoPED), which convenes leading design thinkers and doers to reflect upon and assert the importance of design in a robust democratic culture.
- Regional Demonstrations Projects | Performing Our Future is a national development partnership with Roadside Theater/Appalshop that combines the expertise of economists, humanities scholars and artists to advance economic development driven by cultural assets.
- Regional Networking and Campus-Community Organizing | Scholars, artists and citizens participate in our cultural organizing institutes and regional gatherings to explore the theories and practices of broad-based and cultural organizing, and develop creative strategies for realizing the civic purposes of higher education.
- PUBLIC: A Journal of Imagining America | PUBLIC is a peer-reviewed, multimedia e-journal focused on humanities, arts, and design in public life.
You can reach us at our new campus home at UC Davis, 207 Third St., Ste. 120, Davis, CA 95616.
Contact us virtually at [email protected] or visit imaginingamerica.org to learn more.
