Each year Open Engagement creates a shared platform and resource for learning through an online blog project. Launched in the lead up to the conference, the blog changes form to address the conference theme, and is used as an opportunity to continue dialogue sparked by the previous year’s programming.

Open Engagement 2016 — POWER is guided by the curatorial vision of René de Guzman and will feature keynote speakers Angela Davis and Suzanne Lacy. The conference will take place April 29–May 1, 2016 at the Oakland Museum of California and additional sites throughout the Bay Area.

The 2016 blog project is A Reader on POWER. This reader will grow over time, be published incrementally, and will feature didactic responses from a wide range of contributors. These blog posts will provide a designated space to share ideas, provoke questions, and focus our interests leading up to the conference.

We have approached activists, writers, thinkers, artists, teachers, arts professionals, community leaders, cultural workers, and more, to provide us with their interpretation and response to the theme of POWER by sharing a resource or media of their choice. This could be a video, an article or excerpt, a song, poster, artwork, or ephemera that is accompanied by a short explanation.