AATE 2025 National Conference

This 75-minute will explore how to embed social justice practices meaningfully into arts organizations whose mission doesn’t specifically include social justice. Centering care, agency, and identity, this interactive session invites participants to consider how theater and performing arts can serve as pathways for community change-making. New Victory Education has been working to embed equity practices more deeply in its core values. Inspired by drafted language: “We are dedicated to honoring and uplifting identity, fostering joyful resistance, and empowering kids, families, and teachers to take positive action through the arts”—as a foundation, this session will examine how to move beyond reactive approaches to create proactive, sustainable frameworks for addressing societal challenges. Participants will explore how to share power in learning and art-making spaces, diminish hierarchical structures, and center collaboration, collective care, and joy. The session will highlight New Victory’s “Speak Up, Act Out” program, which empowers young people to examine activism and artivism, identify hyperlocal issues, and create advocacy works through performing arts. Drawing from this model, the facilitators will showcase strategies for co-creating messaging around timely social issues and fostering impactful action plans that can directly benefit the local community. Participants will engage in meaningful dialogue and reflection while considering theater-based techniques to facilitate social justice-based conversations in their own communities. Whether you’re an educator, administrator, or artist, you’ll leave with actionable tools to embed equity and justice into your practice. Now is the time to meet the moment, transforming arts organizations into catalysts for change. This session offers vital insights for advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion while ensuring the arts remain a powerful force for social transformation.