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Attention Activism with the Strother School of Radical Attention
May 3 @ 9:30 am – 4:30 pm
Palmer Room @ Turner Hall, 1040 N Vel R. Phillips Ave, Milwaukee, WI
Overview:
Join C21 and the Milwaukee Turners for a day-long series of workshops led by the Strother School of Radical Attention (SoRA), an organization that promotes human well-being through attention activism.
As the 21st century waxes, our attention wanes. Digital platforms drown us in endless noise, diverting our awareness from the real people and spaces around us to a haze of information overload, hot takes, and commodity-over-community. We’re losing the focus required to nurture embodied connections and create the vibrant spaces of care that enliven our city.
How might our capacity for sustained attention affect how we see each other and our city, and how might these perceptions lead to actions that reshape our respective communities and environments? What happens when we get quiet, stay still, and take it all in? Do we miss the world beyond the screen?
During this day of attention activism, SoRA facilitators will lead participants through two of their signature attention-cultivation workshops—an Attention Lab and Sidewalk Study.
Attention Labs are an experiential, participatory workshop curriculum dedicated to the exploration of radical human attention. Through group attention practices and guided discussions, participants create and test tools to build sanctuaries of attention — as well as networks of solidarity to sustain them.
Sidewalk Study is a form of group inquiry combining theory, practice, and public space. Participants meet at a predetermined location where they read through a selected text. They are then given the address of a second location along with an exercise that activates questions posed by the text, to be performed en route and in relation to the streets and sidewalks around them. Upon arriving at the destination, participants share their experiences in an open-ended discussion.
Free and open to the public, but space is limited. Prior registration is required.
Workshop Schedule:
- 9:00 AM – Doors open
- 9:30 AM – Coffee, tea, and opening remarks
- 9:30 AM to 12:00 PM – Attention Lab
- 12:00 to 1:00 PM – Lunch (provided)
- 1:00 to 3:30 PM – Sidewalk Study
- 3:30 to 4:30 PM – Reconvene for discussion at second location (TBD)
- 4:30 PM – Event end
About:
The Strother School of Radical Attention (SoRA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to Attention Activism: the movement to push back against the fracking of human attention by coercive digital technologies. We advance this mission through the study and practice of radical attention, or those diverse forms of attention which resist commodification. SoRA’s seminar courses, experiential Attention Lab workshops, and other hybrid forms of group teaching and learning seek to deepen our shared understanding of attention’s relation to human flourishing.
The Center for 21st Century Studies (C21) fosters innovative research and community engagement at the intersection of the humanities, arts, and sciences. C21’s theme for 2024-2025 is Slow Knowing: The Pace of Being Human, with programming and sponsored research that calls attention to embodied processes of building and maintaining collective life that resist the fast-paced efficiency models and short attention spans that increasingly define human responses to 21st century social, political, and ecological challenges.
Founded in 1853, the Milwaukee Turners are the oldest civic group in the city with a rich history of civic engagement; they offer non-partisan civic educational programs and mental and physical wellness programming for all Milwaukeeans.
Humanities Under Threat:
The Center for 21st Century Studies was awarded a Major Grant from the Wisconsin Humanities to support this event.
On April 2, Wisconsin Humanities, which relies on the National Endowment for the Humanities, received notice from the Acting Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities that effective April 2nd all awarded grants — including their 5-year General Operating Grant and other program-specific awards — were canceled in their entirety. As a result, C21 lost the Major Grant, but we were able to make alternative arrangements to cover the costs of this event just in time to ensure it’s continuance for the May 3 date.
C21 leadership believes that the erosion of attention, or attention fracking — a term coined by members of the Strother School — is one of the most pressing issues of our time, and is a major contributor to the precarious political, social, economic, and media environment that we must now not only fight, but survive. It is our great pleasure to welcome Peter and Quinn from the Strother School of Radical Attention to Milwaukee to share the attention-building tools SoRA has developed over many years of practice.
We hope you will join us on May 3, as we work together to build sanctuaries of attention.
Wisconsin Humanities, unfortunately, will not be able to sustain the loss of NEH funding, and will close its doors very soon. State agencies across the country share their fate. We urge you to learn more about the scope of this loss. If your work is being impacted by DOGE’s actions against NEH, please, share your story with the National Humanities Alliance.