Civic Imagination Commissions Award

MISSOULA, MT, August 13, 2023. UM’s Co-Lab for Civic Imagination (CCI) congratulates the recipients of the first annual Civic Imagination Commission Award for Montana culture-makers: Sarah Aswell, Dave Hutchins, and Jackie Vetter. 

 

The three recipients of this year’s Civic Imagination Commission have each received a $2,500 project commission to develop and implement a small project, program, or process that aspires to bridge differences and cultivate connections. The three recipients of this year’s award have projects that engage with NLGBTQIA+ rights, environmental justice, and elder isolation. 

 

CCI Director Michael Rohd describes the importance of these projects: “It may be fair to say we have never been a collective ‘we’ in this nation. It may also be fair to say that if we don’t learn to build and activate an inclusive, comprehensible ‘we’, then the crises we face, from the local to the planetary, will be beyond our capacity to truly address. If there is no ‘we’ to imagine change together, how can we make change that works for everyone? Culture makers are uniquely positioned and skilled to build, through creativity and collaboration, a place-based ‘we’. Cultural activity makes space for connection and care. We need connection and care.” 

 

Jackie Vetter is a Theatre/Film Actor and Theatre director based in Anaconda, MT who is currently the Founding Aritstic Director of Anaconda Ensemble Theatre (AET). Her project is an AET community reading series featuring a new play for young audiences called The Strand that Beads You, by Allison Fradkin. This play is one of the five plays in the Community Reading Series at Anaconda Ensemble Theatre. The Strand That Beads You focuses on the use of pronouns and inclusivity in a way that can reach any generation, and this production is part of a fundraiser for Anaconda Pride. 

 

Dave Hutchins is a biomimetic materials scientist, an environmental engineer, and an “assembler of rusty bits.” His project, Interference Patterns, is an installation of sculptures and documentation at the intersection of art, science, and activism at the nation's largest Superfund site in Butte, America. It is a retrospective of a decade of a place-based practice and conversations outside of the prescribed public engagement process. 

Sarah Aswell is a writer and comedian living in Missoula, Montana. Stand-up comedy is a storytelling art that can connect us in deep ways through laughter — and yet historically the stage has been dominated by certain demographics. Her project, Not Your Grandma’s Comedy Show, centers the voices and stories of older performers, creating a night of stand-up that builds bridges and grows empathy – in a very funny way.

 

Co-Lab for Civic Imagination (CC)I demonstrates the role civic imagination can play in healthy and equitable communities by operating within and beyond its campus community to make work, build capacity, tell stories, amplify practice, and support possibility.