Arts as a Catalyst for Global Dialogue: A Conversation with the Team Behind the Initiative
The Leveraging the Arts for Global Dialogue: Exploring the Racial and Social Transnational Justice through Creative Expression initiative was launched in the Summer of 2025 as a partnership between the School of Social Work and Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. It seeks to combine academic insight with the transformative power of the arts to confront racism and advance transnational racial justice. Events will continue throughout 2026 and into 2027, open to students, faculty, staff, and the community. Moderated dialogues with the artists can occur at any time during their time on campus, not just post-performance, and the initiative is looking into hybrid options to encourage online participation.
In the School of Social Work, the initiative is headed by Hellen McDonald, Associate Director of International Programs and Clinical Professor and Amy Frederick, Associate Director of Professional Education. They are assisted by BSW student Gianna Camacho.
Amy Frederick
Keeping the goal of the initiative in mind, how do you plan and guide your events and the discussions that follow?
We will largely be relying on subject matter experts to serve as moderators for these sessions. We want to make sure the discussions are guided in a way that is beneficial for everyone involved from all areas of campus and beyond. The moderators we are planning to select for these sessions have experiences in post-performance dialogues that can bring about challenging conversations. Our grant team has full confidence in their ability to make the post-performance discussions both meaningful and impactful!
The events are designed to engage students, faculty, staff, and community members in meaningful ways. Can you talk about some of the tangible benefits available to these groups—such as professional learning opportunities or access to events—and how people can take advantage of them?
What is so great about these performances and the discussions afterwards is that any associated costs are covered by the grant. If someone is attending for professional development hours for their social work, counselor, or educator licenses, they will not be required to pay a fee. Additionally, students have been interested in engaging in the performances we’ve already collaborated on, and tickets have been provided to them at no cost. We want to make sure there are no barriers in accessing these educational opportunities.
What key takeaways do you hope attendees leave with after participating in one of the events?
There is such a beautiful intersection between arts and social justice work, and it might not be something you think about right off the bat. The artists and performers who are already doing the work to fight transnational racism should be brought to light – this work is already being done and a lot of us don’t know about it. The post-performance dialogue helps to bridge that gap; we are having these important conversations when the performance is fresh in our minds, we get to process it in a safe space and both students and professionals can advance that work out in their communities.
Hellen McDonald
What key takeaways do you hope attendees leave with after participating in one of the events?
I hope that attendees will be able to understand and appreciate the importance of reflecting on, thinking writing and talking about, while incorporating into their personal and professional work even, matters of transnational justice. Regardless of how uncomfortable some of these topics can make us feel, through performing arts, we can soften the intensity and transform not only how we feel, think or perceive such topics, but also encourage deeper reflection, dialogue and potentially even embodied, materially and symbolically metamorphic implications.
What are some of the plans you have for Leveraging the Arts for Global Dialogue in 2026?
We have two big events coming up, with the second event culminating the grant itself. The cycle of the grant runs from August 2025-July 2027. Coming up on February 26, we have co-sponsored the Center for the Study of Global Gender Equity’s event with University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alum Anida Yoeu Ali. CSGGE has many events around Ali’s work and presence in residency on campus at that time, but Dr. Patricia Turner will be leading a guided discussion with the artist on February 26 at 4:30pm specifically around her work and transnational justice. All events are free and offer CEU’s and PDH’s to our licensed social workers and teachers. We invite those interested to register for this event, Transcending the In-Between: Provocation, Humor, and Joy in Performance.
The big culminating event will bring in another University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alum and internationally renowned jazz vocalist, composer, writer and performer, Somi Kakoma in September 2026, tentatively September 16-17. We are collaborating with Krannert Center for the Performing Arts on this and are planting seeds with our very own Dr. Dora Watkins, our BSW Program Director and Teaching Associate Professor. Dr. Dora Watkin’s scholarship and practice center expressive and healing-centered arts, embodiment, and justice-oriented pedagogy. Her work attends to how memory, story, witnessing, and creative expression, such as poetic inquiry, testimonials and storytelling as resistance are experience in the body and shape processes of meaning-making, care, and refusal. During Somi’s visit, Dr. Watkins will support arts-informed reflection and dialogue spaces that invite participants to engage performance as an embodied site of connection and justice, in conversation with transnational themes. Students, staff, faculty, licensed professionals, and all community participants are encouraged to join in the discussions and transformative learning that happens when imbibing in these difficult yet necessary discussions around transnational and social justice matters.
If you are interested in watching Dr. Watkins in action with her work and imbibing in reflections and dialogue with Somi, be on the lookout for all these events for next Fall. Students, campus and local community participation is encouraged. Again, all events will be free, there will be a limited number of free Krannert tickets for Somi’s performance, and as always, free CEU’s and PDH’s too.
Gianna Camacho
Keeping the goal of the initiative in mind, how do you plan and guide your events and the discussions that follow?
The format of our events is instrumental to our ability to intertwine academic insight and the arts to create thoughtful discussions. To access a conversation that welcomes discomfort, challenges perspectives, and creates academic discourse, our events include a performance and a dialogue. The performances may be interactive physically or verbally, but are consistently engaging the audience’s mind. A beautiful part of our events is that the performance can be described as a process. In events that have transpired, audience members were invited to join the performer on a journey. Whether this process followed a story, a body, or an emotion, the audience is involved, which allows for incredible discussions to occur afterwards. The discussions that follow are crafted to continue the participant’s journey in community. Inviting participants to discuss the performance and other thought-provoking questions allows people to be introduced to new perspectives and consider how they might use this new knowledge and experience. Additionally, the performers, participants, and other people involved come from diverse disciplines, identities, and backgrounds, which facilitates diversity of thought and transformative discussions.
Is there anything else you would like readers to know about Leveraging the Arts for Global Dialogue?
After participating in our previous events, I recognized hope, relief, and kinship within myself and others. I believe that our initiative is distinct in its ability to bring people together to learn and heal. In a world hungry for collective healing, we hope to provide opportunities for meaningful conversations. I would like everyone reading to know that they are welcome. Attending any or all of our upcoming events will be rewarding and meaningful.