Barbara, an artist/researcher/educator and my life-partner has just posted an interesting piece, and expresses her concern of "fear of diversity" that is growing in America and with it and Trumpism a climate of anti-intellectualism like I have not experienced before where I am living. Here is her letter and post link.

Dear all,
I hope this finds you well. I am sharing new blog I have written in response to a fake news story that aired on an American national TV news channel last week regarding an art installation that I installed with students at Southern Illinois University entitled Dreaming Diversity. If you are want to know the back story go to my blog at

http://barbarabickelart.tumblr.com/

We are in a time of much fear of diversity in America-- and democratic education through the arts is more than ever being called for.  -BB

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  • I was just informed that Fox News TV did a second story on Nap-Ins and the art/social intervention that Barbara and her students at SIUC created for the month of March, i.e., Women's History Month here at the university and part of the diversity education programming overall. The Fox News stories won't be hard to find if you search Google, using "Nap-in" and "Fox News" TV and/or Southern Illinois University. Anyways, there are many responses going on and I think it is all a good 'study' of how fear of the new, the strange, the foreign and terror of "napping" itself as an unconscious location of learning/dream/intuition and connection with diversity of the Other in non- or arational ways (very different from irrational ways, especially when the irrational as fear-based attempts to mock and disguise being "rational"--as the news reporters at Fox News clearly are caught in and, not to blame them, as it is so part of the overall culture of fear phenomenon in the USA, and was learned by them since they were young children being socialized into "fear of the Other" and "strange" and "new"--which the Arts is always exploring, as is this Nap-in art/social intervention into the problem of fear of diversity in this country). Okay, if you want to read the PSA (and artist statement) for the installation you can down load this excellent summary written by Barbara "Nap-In" and "Dreaming Diversity":

    Dreaming Diversity: A Participatory Art Installation In the Morris Library Rotunda from March 6– 31, 2017

    Facilitated Nap-In Dates:

    March 8, 10 and March 24, 6:30-8, March 27, 7-9, & March 29 6:30-8

    Closing Panel Discussion with WGSS RSO members:

    Making our Dreams come True: Strategies for Change

    March 31 at noon followed by a closing reception for the Nap-Ins

    From Sit-Ins to Teach-Ins, artist/activist/educators have been interested in alternative sites of learning. Nap-Ins originated with the Gestare Art Collective and are an on-going participatory arts-based inquiry project that began in July of 2011 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The Nap-Ins have taken place at artist residencies, galleries, community centers, churches, universities, libraries and educational conferences in Canada, the USA, Puerto Rico, Italy and Egypt. This is the second Nap-In to take place in the Morris Library Rotunda. The prior one took place in February of 2013.

    The Nap-In room is a liminal space where the event-encounter of napping and creative process intersects being and doing, and stillness and action, offering a stopping place for self/other re- attunement and reflection on diversity in the midst of the day's activities. Over the course of the installation participants are invited to walk the labyrinth, nap, add dream(s) to the Dream Wall and attend the facilitated Nap-In workshops where your dreams for diversity can be added to the Dream Scroll. This Dream Scroll was begun in the Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program at SIU in the fall of 2013. Students, faculty and community members have added to it over the years and during its installation at the Morris Library others can add their dreams for diversity to it.

    Combining napping and walking the labyrinth with the reflective creative process of drawing, writing and sewing in this interactive installation is intended to bring to light the collective awareness of a community. The different aspects of the installation hold the potential to assist participants to dream and witness themselves with/as the other. This installation is part of a socially-engaged art practice that integrates aesthetics with the ethical, and political.

    There is something simultaneously powerful and playful about the collective growing Dream Scroll, created by many hands, some seasoned sewers, others novice, as it borderlinks unknown others across dreams, time, cultures, identities, place and space. It resembles an uncanny object more than a piece of fine art. It has become a dynamic living curriculum. Installed in the rotunda, with the labyrinth path, the Dream Scroll and Dream Wall beckons the artist in each person to co-emerge and co-learn with it; each prior dreamer becoming a wit(h)ness for the next arrival.

    Initiated and facilitated by SIU students and faculty, Aster Arseneau (BFA student in School of Journalism), Margaret Lebeau (BFA student in School of Art and Design) Barbara Bickel, Assoc. Prof. of Art Education, School of Art & Design and Director of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Kathleen Frye (Instructor of Art Education, SoAD)

    Contact WGSS@siu.edu for more information

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