do you or someone you know want to present a workshop at the summit?  well, by golly, here’s your chance!

* * * CALL FOR WORKSHOPS * * *

The Asian Pacific Islander American (APIA) Spoken Word & Poetry Summit is welcoming workshop proposals for our 5th annual convening this summer, July 30 – August 2, 2009 on the UC Berkeley Campus in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The APIA Summit is a national gathering of spoken word artists, poets, writers, musicians, thespians, activists, and organizers who convene based on the commonality of our Asian American, Asian, and/or Pacific Islander heritage and our practice as artists.  Since 2001, the Summit has gathered every two years in a different city in the United States, and for a span of four days engage in workshops, performances, and discussions directed toward the empowerment of our APIA community.  Past Summits have been hosted in Seattle (2001), Chicago (2003), Boston (2005), and New York City (2007) and will be in the San Francisco Bay Area this summer.

The APIA Summit is the only event of its kind—it is national in scope, politically progressive and artistically critical.  The Summit is rooted in the perspective that art and its production should never simply be for art’s sake, but for the purpose of helping to hammer out a more just and equitable society for APIAs and all other marginalized communities.  We recognize that despite the multitude of differences between every people and culture within the APIA umbrella, the strength we have is in our unity, solidarity, and collective voice.

The MISSION:
•    to cultivate a home for APIA artists organizing for social change
•    to establish a national network of spoken word artists, poets, and performers in the APIA community
•    to promote the arts as a critical, elemental component in building, empowering and transforming our communities and ourselves.

The VISION:
We are out to spread the word, cipher with our ancestors and family, and cultivate our personal text into actions. The aim of the Summit is simple: to learn to love our impending selves through the reflections, exchanges and stories of our Asian Pacific Islander American community. Although we self-identify as APIA we simultaneously redefine the term to be inclusive of West Asian (Middle Eastern), South Asian, and Multi-Racial peoples. Participants range from youth workers, teachers, poets, organizers, actors, emcees, writers, artists, and performers—history keepers to the future of Asian and Pacific Islander America.
The word is just the medium. What you put into this gathering is what you get out of this gathering. As contemporaries, our responsibility is not only to serve as each other’s peers but also as each other’s mentors. Make each moment count. Create connections. Break down walls. This summit asks for honest participation and unfiltered moments, moments so much bigger than our selves, our self-deprecation, and our notions of community. We are building living history. We are part of a cultural continuum.

BAY09
This year’s installment of the Summit has been nicknamed “BAY09” (Bay Area 2009) and the theme for this convening is “Where You’re From to Where You’re At.”  We chose this as our theme to highlight the importance of sharing and learning about what issues APIAs all over the United States face, as well as the conditions of our homelands that forced our families into the diaspora—or the conditions by which the United States swallowed our homelands into becoming U.S. territories—in the first place.  We must also ask ourselves and one another how these conditions—from my block to my homeland to your block and your homeland—are connected and what they have in common.  Furthermore, we must also dialogue about how we can support one another and how we can harness our art as a tool to address these issues.

WORKSHOPS:
Although this is a “spoken word and poetry summit,” workshop topics are not restricted to writing, performance or arts-based topics or workshops related to managing one’s writing career.  Issues-based workshops and sessions discussing recent political happenings in APIA communities, whether here in the United States or elsewhere in the world, are definitely welcome and highly encouraged.  There are no restrictions on the topic of workshops acceptable for proposal, but it must be an issue or topic of interest or related to APIA peoples.
Workshop sessions are scheduled for Friday, July 31 and Saturday, August 1.  There are five workshop tracks (two on Friday, three on Saturday), with approximately ten workshops each track, each workshop session lasting 1.5 hours.  Please include the following information in your workshop proposal:

•    Facilitators’ names, short bios, and contact information (phone number and email)
•    Organizational affiliation, if any
•    Workshop topic, title, short summary
•    Agenda
•    Equipment/materials needed
•    Are you available to facilitate the workshop more than once?  If so, how many times?

If your proposal is accepted we will contact you with what day and time your workshop will be scheduled for.

* * * We are especially interested in having workshops by and about Pacific Islander (e.g., Chamorro, native Hawaiian, Samoan, Tongan, and others), West Asian/Arab (Palestinian, Iraqi, Lebanese, and others), South Asian (e.g., Indian, Sri Lankan, Nepalese, and others) and Southeast Asian (Thai, Khmer, Viet, and others) peoples, art, and issues. * * *

All proposals and questions should be directed to apiasummit@gmail.com no later than Friday, July 17, 2009.  You will be notified regarding acceptance of your workshop by Monday, July 20, 2009.

For more information about the APIA Spoken Word & Poetry Summit, please visit us at www.apiasummit.com or follow us on www.twitter.com via @APIAsummit