The AMC is growing!
This year’s AMC includes more than 300 hands-on workshops, film screenings, strategy sessions, and parties – nearly 100 more sessions than we had last year. The dynamic and diverse content of the AMC has been curated and developed with care over the past year by the Allied Media Projects staff and 95 volunteer coordinators of tracks, practice spaces, and network gatherings.
The panels and strategy sessions of AMC2015 get to the heart of some of the most urgent questions facing our communities and our world right now:
- How will we dismantle anti-black racism, as it operates in our media, in the design of our cities, our school systems, and in ourselves?
- What are the “grieving arts” that will heal us and move us to transform loss and devastation into collective action?
- Who is a technologist?
- What values are embedded in our technologies?
- How will we govern our communications infrastructure?
The hands-on workshops of AMC2015 offer the practical skills we need to begin to transform our worlds – everything from fashion hacks for abundant bodies to DIY audio cables, data visualization, PSA-making, and seed libraries.
The nighttime events of AMC2015 are the fertile soil in which lasting relationships grow. Whether at the dinnertime meetups for sober folks, the queer global bass party, the all-ages punk show, or our ginormous “Dance Dance (R)evolution” party Saturday night at MOCAD, opportunities for connectivity abound.
At any given moment you may have as many as 23 exciting things to choose from at the AMC. In an effort to minimize the “New Years Eve” effect – in which no one commits to a party out of a fear that there is a better party happening somewhere else – we encourage you to embrace the session you choose. Rather than showing up and waiting to be entertained, engage with your full self to ensure you get what you need out of a session.
As the AMC grows, we want to maintain the trust and intimacy that makes this a unique community space, different from other national conferences. This year, we invite you to make an extra effort to create the world you want to see within the context of every session you attend. To do so, we recommend you adhere to these basic agreements:
- engage with an open heart and mind
- be patient
- don’t make assumptions
- ask for what you need
- listen when others ask for what they need
- default to direct communication before a public “call-out”
- if something feels incomplete or missing this year, remember: you can propose a track, network gathering, practice space or session for AMC2016!
With all these things in mind, let’s set off on the adventure of building a more just, creative, and collaborative world.
With love,
Jenny and Mo