Slow Care

Programs & Initiatives

From panels to podcasts, C21’s year of Slow Care programming revealed the importance of reciprocal relationships, human-centered technologies, and committed stewardship of body, mind, community, and the natural world. From our State of the Humanities MKE panel, which affirmed that the future of the humanities is local and collaborative, to the relaunch of our Story Cart as an adaptive space for intimate community conversations, to Human Club events that gathered fellow humans around Milwaukee simply to be together, to our our Aesthetics, Art, and AI programming that asked what care means at the boundaries between human and machine creativity, we practiced what it looks like to attend to our various worlds in slowness and with intention.

The artist Kite speaks at a podium in a darkened room, backlit by a giant projected slide, during her artist talk, part of C21's Aesthetics, Art, & AI program series.
Aesthetics, Art, & AI
February 12 – March 12, 2026
Aesthetics, Art, & AI explored how AI-generated aesthetics reshape creative production, authorship, and interpretation. C21 programs included the Generation to Generation: Conversing with Kindred Technologies exhibition and programming, and a talk by Kite, an Oglála Lakȟóta artist, composer, and scholar.
Learn more about Aesthetics, Art, & AI programming
Collage materials and a blackout poem in progress at the Envision Embodied Writing Workshop, organized by Izzy Fincher (April 7, 2026).
Envision: Toward a Queer Ethics of Slow Care 
Spring 2026
Selected for C21’s inaugural graduate-led public humanities program, Isabella Fincher’s Envision project explored creative practices and embodied experiences of slow care for individuals living with chronic illness and impairments.
Learn more about Envision: Toward a Queer Ethics of Slow Care
A workshop participant adds seeds to soil blocks at the Human Club's MUD Potluck, organized by Graduate Fellows Chloe Kwiatkowski and Ceceilia Loeschmann, February 2026.
Human Club
Fall 2025 – Spring 2026
Human Club offered human-friendly humanities gatherings and free field trips around MKE, including grad-organized events such as the Milwaukee Urban Demo Farms Network Potluck and the Little Free Library Walking Tour.
Learn more about Human Club
Two panelists look at panel moderator Jennifer Johung during C21's State of the Humanities MKE panel (October 30, 2025).
State of the Humanities MKE
October 30, 2025
This panel about the future of the humanities in Milwaukee brought together Michael Carriere (MSOE), Art Derse (MCW), Jodi Eastberg (MIAD), and Maggie Nettesheim Hoffmann (Marquette) for conversation about how Milwaukeeans might sustain, expand, and care for humanities institutions and practices.
Learn more about State of the Humanities MKE
Story Cart: Attention
Fall 2025 – Spring 2026
C21’s mobile story collection program hosted pop-up workshops in community spaces, introducing Milwaukeeans to practices of radical attention. All activations were designed or curated by Story Fellows Adam Carr, Madeleine Doelker-Berlin, and Symphony Swan.
Learn more about Story Cart: Attention
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