Social Imagination & Engagement

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Social Imagination & Engagement

As of January 1st 2019, this program is now included within the Dignity, Freedom and Solidarity Program.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of COAL + ICE / Asia Society

"I see theater as a gathering place, a place to come together and look at civic matters… I am always trying to be part of the broader conversation. If we say that art can make social change, how do we pull people into it? This is the moment to look at ourselves in the mirror… The challenge is how to move people from outrage to action."
- Anna Deveare Smith, grantee, Notes from the Field Project
"Of all our cognitive capacities, imagination is the one that permits us to give credence to alternative realities. It allows us to break with the taken for granted, to set aside familiar distinctions and definitions."
- Maxine Greene, Releasing the Imagination
"Begin with art, because art tries to take us outside ourselves. It is a matter of trying to create an atmosphere and context so conversation can flow back and forth and we can be influenced by each other."
- W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963)

At Panta Rhea, we believe that the arts are at the heart of a healthy democracy, whether in a classroom setting or in society at large. The Social Imagination & Engagement program is guided by a vision of the power of the arts as an essential means by which all people make sense of their lives and for their capacity to help us walk in another persons’ shoes, to build empathy, to open dialogue and—in the words of philosopher educator Maxine Greene—to open possibilities in order “to see the world as if it could be otherwise.”