Step 1. Engage Workshop

Assess local interest and build enthusiasm.

Work with Air, your regional Air Affiliate, and your community to discover your way forward with a simple first step. A two-hour Engage Workshop will inspire hope, build empathy and self-reliance, develop new leaders, increase local investment, and diversify your economy. To get the full package of Engage Materials contact your State Activator or send an email to Air.

Start Where Your Community Is Ready to Engage

Air is leveraging its processes into big systems like economic development, emergency management, and education to raise the value of creativity and create resilient communities.

We’ve identified different topics and sectors to help your community begin to use creativity to grow and thrive. Pick the best focus for your community and these two-hour workshops can get you started. When people move to action together, relationships, ownership, and learning become deeper, and real change is possible.

Engage Workshop Options

Creative Economy

Learn about the creative economy, brainstorm your community assets, and practice design thinking with people from all walks of life — artists, makers, farmers, mechanics, nurses, accountants, and small business owners. Spark understanding and collaboration between creative and business-minded individuals.

Emergency Readiness

Our world is changing and we need to be prepared for natural and human-made disasters more than ever. This workshop helps build deep relationships and trust between the emergency management and the arts and creative sectors to build stronger, more resilient, ready communities that serve everyone well.

Education

We’re piloting a new workshop focused on the education sector that will connect educators, administrators, parents, and students in the summer and fall of 2022. Stay tuned for this new way to use Air programs.

Engage Workshops

Nelsonville, OH Engage Workshop

Nelsonville, OH 2019

Engage Workshop:Creative Economy included dozens of participants from Athens County, Ohio at Stuarts Opera House.

Orangeburg, SC 2018

Engage Workshop:Creative Economy activated South Carolina arts leaders as Air Facilitators to gauge community interest in growing their local creative economy.

Pikeville, KY 2020

Our first online Engage Workshop helped activate community members during COVID. Participants discovered that creative businesses were important to recovering their local economy.

Waco, TX 2022

The first in-person Engage Workshop pos COVID activated the Waco community. Information sessions with the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and local arts groups led to a competitive selection process for the first cohort of Air Certified Facilitators serving Waco and small cities in Texas.

Milwaukee, WI 2022

Dozens of people from the emergency management and arts sectors in Milwaukee participated in Wisconsin’s first Air Engage Workshop: Emergency Readiness. A new network has formed and is planning a Shift Workshop that will focus on emergency mitigation projects later in 2022.

Houston, TX 2022

The Houston Arts Alliance has the only fulltime staff in the nation focused on serving the arts and emergency management sectors. They hosted the first Engage Workshop: Emergency Readiness and got rave reviews. Now they are planning their first Shift Workshop and are creating a new training and guide for other arts organizations that want to do this work.

Engage Workshop Materials

We want every community to raise the value of art and creativity. We put together a step-by-step plan for convening partners in your community so that you can grow your creative sector and thrive. Our workshop content and exercises give your community an idea of what they can do to make your community more vibrant. Contact your regional Air Affiliate and they will share everything you need to gather new partners and host a workshop: logistics, agenda, PowerPoint slides, marketing materials, and a survey to help assess your community readiness for this work and the other Air programs. Reach out to us.