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Imagining America’s Leading and Learning Initiative is a three year action research project concerned with expanding the ways in which academic institutions understand, value, and support public, engaged, and activist scholarship. A critical part of this project is to document and share powerful examples of public scholarship and campus culture change efforts. Towards this goal, the LLI invites campus and community partners to apply to participate in the Stories of Change multimedia documentary project. The LLI’s Stories of Change project will provide funding and creative support to selected applicants to document their own work, to be promoted and shared widely through a national IA communication and advocacy campaign. The LLI seeks case studies in the following categories:
(1) Expanding Understandings of Knowledge Production: The work of individuals and collectives of public, activist, and engaged scholars who expand our understanding of knowledge production beyond the limits of traditional disciplinary norms through decolonized, collaborative, community-based, public, and/or movement aligned theories, methods, and practices. In this category, we aim to center those who most directly experience the structural contradictions and enduring institutional inequalities experienced by public, activist, and engaged scholars described in the LLI Year One Report. In this category, we welcome both higher education and community based projects.
(2) Catalyzing Institutional Change: Cases of impactful strategies of institutional leaders, offices, and initiatives (from within and outside of institutions of higher education) that represent a long-haul commitment to culture and policy change in academic institutions on behalf of public and activist scholarship.
(3) Demonstrating the Power of Public, Engaged, and Activist Arts, Design, and Humanities: This category includes collaborative projects that reveal the power of creative and narrative based public, engaged, and activist work that address the pressing public challenges of our time. We invite submissions from project leaders, community-based centers of knowledge production, students, staff, and faculty of all appointment types, and other collaborators.
Where applicable, applicants may submit a proposal that fits within more than one category. Selected projects will receive funding, creative support in producing the case study, promotional support, and engagement in IA learning platforms via a national communications campaign. Each awarded applicant will produce a multimedia documentary case study, also including a written 3-5 page short story with photo documentation for publication on IA’s website and in other venues.