Et Al. imagines kaleidoscopic possibilities for the stewardship of culture and land as decolonizing practices. Culture and the arts can enhance society by strengthening our connections to each other and to the earth. This arts management book was born during a racial reckoning and accelerated by a global pandemic. What exactly is the business of no-business-as-usual? The ethical challenge for arts management is far more complex than asking how to get things done; we must also ask who gets to do things, where, and with what resources? Our task is to generate cultures that refuse to annihilate themselves or each other, much less the planet. Et Al. contributes to the conversation about arts and cultural management by providing rare, behind-the-scenes insights on justice-centered arts management praxis — ideas tied to action. The book makes space for people to publicly reflect, write, and share insights about their own ideas and ways of working. Its polyphonic voices speak to pragmatic strategies for arts management across cultures, genres, and spaces. Its stories are told from the perspective of individuals and families, micro businesses, artist collectives, and civic institutions. As a digital publication, the platform lends itself to multi-media knowledge objects; the experiences documented within it include ethnographies, qualitative social research, personal and communal manifestos, dialogues between peers, visual essays, videos, and audio tracks. This open source, multimedia book is structured into six streams which are numbered for their exponential powers: Stream¹ : Center is Everywhere; Stream² : Gathering Community; Stream³ : Honoring Histories; Stream⁴ : Shifting Research; Stream⁵ : Forging Paths; Stream⁶ : Generative Practice. The book discusses imaginative ways of generating cultural equity in praxis, and is an invitation for further imagination, conversation, and connection. Et Al. presents an interactive landscape for readers, thinkers, and creators to engage with multimedia and intergenerational essays by Amy Shimshon-Santo, Genevieve Kaplan, Gerlie Collado, Abraham Ferrer, Julie House, Britt Campbell, Delia Xóchitl Chávez, Sean Cheng, Yvonne Farrow, Allen Kwabena Frimpong, Kayla Jackson, Erika Karina Jiménez Flores, Cobi Krieger, Loreto Lopez, Cynthia Martínez Benavides, Christy McCarthy, Janice Ngan, Cailin Nolte, Michaela Paulette Shirley, Robin Sukhadia, Katrina Sullivan, and Tatiana Vahan.
Michael O’Brien’s Theological Aesthetics