NEWSROOM
Katrina:
After the Storm Summit, Sept. 27-30 at University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign
September 21, 2006
A year after
hurricane Katrina's devastation of the Louisiana and Mississippi
gulf coasts, rebuilding efforts are finally moving forward. But
it's the remaining, deeper tears in the region's social fabric
that will be the main focus of a unique series of dialogues and
events at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (and
webcast online at www.hastac.org)
designed to build community, connect diverse local and national
audiences and ignite real and long-lasting positive change.
The four-day
summit "Katrina: After the Storm - Civic Engagement Through
Arts, Humanities and Technology" will take place Sept. 27-30.
The free summit is being organized to engage the public in critical
conversations about issues that arose in
>Katrina's wake, including social justice and equity, broken
connections and the need for community healing. The summit is
also part of the HASTAC ("haystack": the Humanities,
Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) InFormation
Year 2006-07, a yearlong program that promotes the human and humane
dimensions of
>technology. HASTAC is an international consortium of humanists,
artists, scientists, social scientists, and engineers, with over
80 participating institutions.
Using advanced
multicast audio and video technology, the summit also will connect
members of the U. of I. and local communities with virtual communities
at many venues.
Lectures,
panel discussions and other activities will focus on topics ranging
from understanding and predicting dangerous weather, disaster
preparedness and deployment of mobile hospitals to re-imagining
public schools and the role of
>social entrepreneurship in rebuilding communities. Also, ongoing
throughout the summit will be "MiX TAPEStry: A Hip Hop VR
Experience," a collaboration between the U. of I. Krannert
Art Museum's Collaborative Advanced Navigation Visual Arts Studio
(CANVAS) and Duke University that will give middle school students
hands-on experience with virtual-reality technology while learning
history.
The summit
opens with "A Cajun Fais Do-Do C-U Style" beginning
at 6 p.m. Wednesday, September 27. The event will feature a screening
of excerpts from "Perseverance: Putting It Back Together
One Day at a Time," a documentary ethnography project about
one man's determination to rebuild his home in New Orleans' Lower
Ninth Ward, produced by U. of I. graduate student Maria Lovett;
a panel discussion, musical and spoken-word performances, and
an opportunity for the public to record personal stories.
Following
two days of presentations and performances, the summit culminates
with "New Orleans Rising: A Town Hall Meeting," from
2 to 3:30 p.m. Saturday, September 30. The meeting was engineered
with the vision of bringing together participants from Champaign-Urbana
and sites across the country to share ideas for creating strong
communities that can effectively manage future disasters.
More information
about the summit, including registration instructions, event times
and locations, sponsors and partners, is available on the Web
at www.katrinasummit.uiuc.edu.
For those unable to attend the "Katrina: After the Storm"
events in person, a live webcast feed will be available on the
HASTAC website. Please register at https://www.hastac.org/user/register/
and then visit http://www.hastac.org/live/
for more information. [Quicktime, VLC or other MPEG-4-compatible
media player required.] Podcast and vodcast versions of the webcasts
will also be made available after the event. Everyone is invited
to contribute to discussion about the events and related issues
on the online forum (http://www.hastac.org/forum/29).
<<
Back to 2006 News Page
