Creative Community Conversations

    Once a year, the Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement partners with the Cincinnati Art Museum to produce a symposium on a chosen topic to be discussed by a panel that includes NKU faculty alongside experts from outside the university. This annual symposium on the interdisciplinary connections between the arts and civic engagement. The format of this symposium may differ from year to year, and may include presenters such as artists, art administrators, community advocates, university students, city representatives, and journalists. This program will also be considered an iteration of the Scripps Howard Center’s Six@Six lecture program, which takes place at venues throughout the region. 

The Creative Community Conversations represents NKU's commitment to its role as a public intellectual, offering thoughtful discussions of research and creative work held at community venues and open to the public.

The next conversation will be hosted by the Cincinnati Art Museum in its elegant Fath Auditorium on January 29, 2025 - featuring the work of photographer and NKU professor Matthew Albritton, whose recent body of work documents abandoned filling stations throughout Kentucky. These filling stations were once central to rural life and served as de facto meeting places for the community.

PAST EVENTS

Home Waters: A Legacy Renewed, October 27, 2022 with journalist and author John Maclean. Maclean revisits his family’s ties to Montana’s beautiful and remote Blackfoot  River. The family’s story was immortalized by his father, Norman Maclean, in A River Runs Through It – an instant classic when  it was published in 1976 and today among the most beloved books in fly fishing’s extensive literary canon.

Topophilia: The Art of Place April 3, 2019 with Richard Taylor, George Ella Lyon, Jessica Hindman, Mike Oberst, and Rachael Banks

We, too, sing america: A Literary Event April 6, 2018 with Ann Hagedorn, Frank X Walker, Sheila Williams, Kathy Y. Wilson

Appalachia: An American Story, April 28, 2017: Two novelists, a poet, a nonfiction writer and a photographer discussed the continuing resonance of Appalachia in American culture.

The Environment as Muse: Artists and Nature, April 29 2016: A painter, a poet, an essayist, and a novelist discussed how and why nature inspires them.

Moby-Dick: How a 19th Century Novel Speaks to the 21st Century, April 25, 2015: An NKU student, professor, and graduate joined other Moby-Dick experts to discuss how Herman Melville's classic novel remains relevant.

Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince: Celebrating 500 Years of a Unique and Dangerous Genius, Dec. 10, 2013: On the 500^th anniversary of Machiavelli’s masterpiece, experts from around the world discussed the lasting impact of The Prince.