Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 AICAD Academic Symposium will now be held virtually from November 5-7. By moving the symposium online, we believe that it will provide the best option for equitable participation by a broad audience. Even though we won’t be meeting in person, we still plan to work just as hard to produce meaningful and timely content, as well as the collegiate interaction that has been an integral part of previous years gatherings.
The topic of this year’s symposium is “What We Learned in Crisis: Crafting Our Future”. The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust art and design education into the future, whether we were ready for it or not. A traditionally hands-on learning experience was forced into a virtual world, which required us to be quick on our feet with implementing change in order to mitigate disruption. These months have served as a learning opportunity, allowing artists and designers to do what they do best: use critical thinking and creativity to change mindsets and transform pedagogy. We’ll use this opportunity to learn from each other during this symposium.
Seeking inspiring and challenging content in this new digital frontier, forms of presentations may include individual prompts, organized panels, participatory workshops, and roundtable discussions. Presenters will need to be able to virtually conduct their session, pre-recorded or live, in an hour or less.