Attention Activism Toolkit, Vol. 1 emerges from C21’s Story Cart: Attention, a mobile, community-based storytelling project that brings humanities practices into public spaces across Milwaukee. Developed through workshops led by C21’s Story Fellows, the toolkit introduces attention activism, a practice that pushes back against the fragmentation of attention by cultivating deeper, more intentional ways of noticing.
Created by Ladasia Bryant, this Story Cart Zine is a portable invitation to slow down. Within its pages is a series of creative, community-based exercises designed to help us notice, more deeply and more intentionally, the worlds we move through every day. These exercises are rooted in the idea that attention shapes how we experience ourselves and others and offer simple, grounded practices that reconnect attention to memory, place, and collective experience.
Inside, readers will find guided activities like sound-based listening exercises, neighborhood attention walks, beach-based storytelling prompts, and memory activation practices that use personal photographs as portals into lived experience. These exercises can be done alone or with others, requiring only minimal materials but inviting expansive reflection.
Rather than prescribing a single way of engaging, the toolkit opens space for noticing, remembering, and being present. It asks what becomes possible when we treat attention not as something to be captured, but as something to be cared for.
Upcoming Events
Volume 2 of the Attention Activism Toolkit will continue this work through new Story Cart: Attention workshops and community activations across Milwaukee. See below for upcoming events. For a full listing of C21 events, visit https://uwm.edu/c21/events/.
- April 1 @ 5:30pm-7:30pm: Cactus Book Club with C21: Attensity!
- April 7 @ 5:00pm-6:30pm: En-Vision Embodied Writing Workshop
- April 11 @ 10:30am-12:30pm: Story Cart with Symphony Swan – Stills in Milwaukee