INTERESTED IN PRESENTING AT THE 2021 ASN ANNUAL CONFERENCE?

Below is everything you need to know about our proposal process

Thank you for your interest in presenting at the 2021 Arts Schools Network Conference. Your experience and expertise are valued here, and we love giving our members, colleagues, and friends a platform to share, explore, and engage with our audience. 

Below are guidelines, tips, and information for submitting an effective ASN proposal.

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS

To ensure highly engaging and meaningful sessions for conference attendees, ASN invites you to submit a presentation/session proposal for consideration. Prior to completing a submission, please review the following presenter information for our 2021 conference: Charting the Unknown & Paving the Way: The Arts Lead.

Choose a Session Format

All sessions must fit into one of the following time frame options:

•          90-minute session

•          60-minute session

•          Workshop format (2-3 hours)

•          Pre-Recorded session (60-minutes)

Choose a Content Pathway

All proposed sessions must fit within an established content pathway (see list below). Please determine which pathway your session best aligns with and select only one content pathway.

1.         Emotional/Mental Health & Mindfulness

2.         Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

3.         Leadership

4.         Innovative New Practices

5.         The Student Experience

Participation and Engagement

All proposed sessions should actively engage participants in hands-on experiences, collaborative challenges, in-depth discussions, or the development of new ideas and hands-on application.

Align your proposal to a Content Pathway

Please select one content pathway to model/design your proposal around. Descriptions of each pathway are detailed below:

Emotional/Mental Health & Wellness:  Empowers learners to develop internal resources that give rise to healthy habits and connected relationships.  Do you have specific wellness tools that are simple and incredibly powerful to use in a classroom? Do you have techniques or a program that builds interest in cultivating mindfulness and building stronger, more connected relationships? Have you helped your students to become more self-aware and responsible for making healthy decisions?  Do you have tools and techniques that help students overcome performance anxiety?

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI): Diversity is often perceived to be about perspective, representation, tough conversation, and supporting inclusion. Inclusion prompts answers about creating environments conducive to feedback, supporting diversity, and being open. Equity can be described as fairness, sameness, and valuing diversity and inclusion.  Do you have innovative practices that you have put in place?  Have you developed a comprehensive and robust professional development program for staff addressing these topics?  What have you learned from starting this work and what advice can you offer to others?  How are you serving marginalized communities?

Leadership:  During the 2020 ASN Virtual Conference our leaders discussed how to change and adapt leadership during these changing times.  Sessions in this strand should align with new skills tailored to an environment of urgency, high stakes, and uncertainty—even after the current health crisis is over.

For leaders to change and adapt they will  have to: 

• Foster adaptation, helping people develop the “next practices” that will enable the organization to thrive in a new world, even as they continue with the best practices necessary for current success.
• Embrace disequilibrium, keeping people in a state that creates enough discomfort to induce change but not so much that they fight, flee, or freeze.
• Generate leadership, giving people at all levels of the organization the opportunity to lead experiments that will help it adapt to changing times.

Do you have new practices in leadership that have been successful and helped your organization thrive?  How have you embraced disequilibrium in human capital, crisis management, budget and fundraising,  virtual performances, marketing, and safety practices and policies?  Have you successfully adapted a collaborative model of leadership that adapts to changing times?

Innovative New Practices:  The past year will have a lasting impact on educational practice moving forward.  Schools will need to become more student-centered and update antiquated curriculum and policies. Do you have an innovative new practice that you are using in your classroom?  Has your institution changed the way in which auditions are handled, how casting for theatrical performances takes place, have you shifted from western centered curriculum to a more diverse curriculum?  Has technology changed your teaching practices and what have you learned that can be shared with other educators? 

The Student Experience: Description:  The simplest definition of Student Experience is how students perceive interactions with your institution.  These areas could include student networking opportunities, how the arts and academics interact, how the arts promote social change, how your institution nurtures the cultural, political, and artistic interests of your students.  Do you have a unique lesson that you would like to walk fellows educators through so they can replicate your lesson in their institutions?

Tips to make your proposal stand out:

Pick a topic that is timely, relevant, thought-provoking, and one that genuinely interests you. What challenges and successes are you witnessing on school campuses and how can those lessons be applied more broadly?

• Be clear and captivating in your title and description. A good title will invite the attendee to join by making the topic and coverage distinct and engaging. Make sure that your description supports the title
• Proofread and edit what you’ve submitted so reviewers know you’ve taken the time to perfect your submission.
• Have a captivating lesson for your students- take your peers through this lesson.

What criteria are used to review proposals?

Presentation proposals should be timely, carefully considered, and prepared, interactive, and provide resources, takeaways, and action points. To ensure that every participant feels their time spent in workshops is valuable, reviewers will consider some of the following criteria when evaluating presentation proposals:

• Relevance: The proposed session should interface with the felt needs, challenges, and opportunities in today’s schools, organizations, and society.  The session proposal aligns with the conference's overall theme.
• Approach: The following should be clear: the session description and objectives; how the session adds value to the conference and serves attendees; who the target audience is; what modes of facilitation the presenters will use; and what takeaways participants can expect.
• Creativity and innovation: The session should bring to bear a new lens or perspective on its topic.
• Demonstrated expertise: The session should present original research, applied knowledge of (others’) recognized research or theory, models or use of evidence-based practices, personal mastery, and/or reflective practice.
• Impact: The session should lend itself to professional or personal application. It should be designed to encourage attendees to contemplate follow-up, continued exploration, and action planning on various levels.

Virtual Conference Component

In order to reach all possible participants and ensure equity for the ASN Conference certain sessions during the conference may be designed as a recorded event.  These recorded events will fall into two categories:  live presentations that are either live-streamed or the live presentation is recorded or a pre-recorded session that will be posted for future viewing.

Proposal Submission Process

All proposals must be submitted via the online Google form by March 5, 2021. All proposals should be completed in full and to the best of the presenter(s) ability.  Submit your proposal below!

2021 Proposal Submission/Review Timeline: