Expanding professional identities and toolkits: Arts-based and community-engaged methods of knowledge generation

The bold power of art and design holds the key to bringing people together in imagining and embodying a better future. Creative practices force us to suspend belief, step outside of dead-end thinking, and imagine a different way of being. Collaborative creative culture-making brings people together in ways that foster empathy, joy, play, and connection. 

- Imagining America’s “We Believe” statements

Milad Mohebali’s introductory blog post for the IARSLCE Graduate Student Network (GradSN) Blog Series: Pluralizing Engagement and Engaging Pluralities asked “What if poems, fictions, academic writings, multimedia and creative forms of expressions could all have a home in this third space of blogging?” My post responds to this invitation for a more expansive and creative approach to blogging, and it encourages readers to expand their professional identities and work through creative methods.

One of the avenues that allowed me to delve deep into the world of community engagement, as well as expand my own professional identity and work through creative methods, was my previous professional role as the Membership Director for Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life (IA). Like IARSLCE, IA is a professional association in the higher education and community engagement field. It fills a special niche by encouraging knowledge generation through the methods of the arts, humanities, and design.

At IA, I worked alongside then Managing Director, Mina Maton, who encouraged me to further develop my program design and management skills through artistic endeavors. Mina’s professional background is diverse (e.g., dancer, lawyer, researcher, organizer), and in a recent interview with California Humanities, she explained that as a cultural worker she views her “hyphenated identities as a toolkit to bring to whatever work and project I’m working on.” I love the idea of embracing hyphenated identities and the knowledge and skills gained from each of those identities as part of a professional toolkit, and this idea aligns with what I was exploring in my research as a doctoral student and professional experience at IA.

While working at IA, I was also working on my dissertation, which focused on community-engaged practitioner-scholar identity development through participation in professional associations as a graduate student. My study participants were alumni of IA’s graduate student program - the Publicly Active Graduate Education (PAGE) Fellowship. These graduate students, along with many other IA members, identify with the idea of “hybrid-hyphenated identities,” like activist-scholar or artist-scholar. In my own collaborative scholarship, I have also used the term “boundary spanner” to describe individuals with similar multifaceted professional identities and work. 

With Mina’s encouragement, I used my time at IA to further hyphenate my own professional identity and add to my professional toolkit through the creation and launch of the first ever IA Mail Art Project. In fall 2021, I invited IA members to register for the mail art project, and the IA team prepared a small kit which we mailed to everyone who registered. Participants were encouraged to use whatever materials they might prefer and have at home, as well as the art supplies and materials included in the kit, to create artwork inspired by the theme and prompt for that year. To make participation more accessible (i.e., lower cost), once participants completed their artwork, rather than mail it back to IA, I asked them to use a digital form to submit a photograph or scan of their artwork, a description, and any reflections they would like to share for inclusion in a digital display on the IA website.

Childhood memories of the farm well house by Trina Van Schyndel for IA Mail Art Project #1

What resulted were submissions from 26 IA member institutions and 67 individuals and groups. These submissions came together in a beautiful online collection for IA’s Mail Art Project #1, “Water Ways and Movements,” which focused on the reflection prompt, “How has water (literally or metaphorically) influenced, impacted, inspired or challenged you, your community, family, work, culture, or another facet of your identity?”

In their feedback at the end of the project, participants called the art project “therapeutic,” as well as “powerful and energizing.” They were also excited by the prospect of being “free to explore and go into any direction” with their art. On an individual level, participants shared the project “gave a really good theme/prompt/question to think about and had me learn something about myself.” Some also “felt more connected with the topic due to how important it is for us” and reflected that “the prompt forced us to really understand how something as ordinary as water can have so much more to it.”

Participants pointed to the communal nature of the project as a “unique experience to be sent the supplies and produce artwork with them as a group,” and they “loved the feeling of being part of a big, collaborative project.” Some participants even used the project as a “template for creating art kits for multiple participants on campus and hosted a few events.” Students whose instructors incorporated the project into coursework stated that it “challenged our whole museum studies class to participate as an opportunity to experience what an accessible, inclusive project looks like.”

I am grateful so many individuals chose to participate in the project and that some even chose to utilize the project with groups in classrooms, student organizations, and across campus. I also appreciated the variety of perspectives offered on the topic of water from across the U.S. and internationally, reflections and artwork shaped by various academic disciplines, and submissions from less experienced artists (like myself), as well as more experienced artists, poets, and other creatives.

The IA “We Believe” statement at the beginning of this post is exemplified through the artwork, reflections, and feedback from this project. They also portray the power of collaborative artmaking to create communal knowledge on a topic important to all our futures - water. The success of that first year led IA to decide to continue offering the mail art project. In 2022 IA’s Mail Art Project #2, “Rituals of Repair and Renewal” focused on the reflection prompt “What rituals (embodied, mundane, reflective, energizing) have been part of your personal or communal experiences of repair and renewal?” While I no longer work for IA and support the IA Mail Art Project, I am hopeful that this project will continue to take place in the years to come.

Walks with Sammy by Trina Van Schyndel for IA Mail Art Project #2

I wasn’t sure what to expect when planning and launching this project. Not only did it require me to think creatively about designing and managing the program, but it also asked me to do personal reflection and creative art-making as a participant and to share my experience engaging with the materials and the prompt through monthly participant reminder emails. I came away from the project feeling more confident in my ability to organize creative projects, as well as more comfortable creating and sharing my own artwork as a less experienced and untrained artist. I now consider the identity “creative” part of my professional toolkit.

I plan to continue to stretch myself by expanding my professional identities and toolkit through my current role as a Recruiter for the U.S. Peace Corps and in whatever future roles lie ahead of me. I encourage graduate students and emerging professionals who are exploring new identities and areas of work to seek out mentors who can support you. Organizations like IARSLCE and IA provide networks and programs (e.g., IARSLCE Graduate Student Network or IA PAGE Fellowship) where you can join a community of peers and mentors and find support and encouragement to try new things, like community-engaged or arts-based methods of knowledge generation. Keep expanding your toolkit!

Trina L. Van Schyndel, Ph.D. (she/her) previously held leadership roles in multiple community engagement professional associations (e.g., IARSLCE, Campus Compact, and IA). In her current role with the U.S. Peace Corps she continues to support community-engaged approaches to capacity building, as well as fostering peace and friendship across countries and cultures. She can be reached at trinavphd@gmail.com.