Grief is an ongoing process that ebbs and flows depending on the day, the month, the weather, a random song, or the unexpected encounter with my mother’s handwriting in one of her sewing journals. Last September, in my essay In the Wake of Slow Care, I wrote about sitting with her in her final hours, bearing witness to her life through story and memory. I ended with the belief that grief asks us to sit with it, to appreciate the quiet moments when we are compelled to remember, to feel, and to listen.

In the year since, those quiet moments have taken new form. They have emerged through my participation in Story Cart: Attention workshops with Symphony Swan, a Milwaukee-based artist and community archivist. In these spaces, memory is not static or fixed; it is activated through looking, through storytelling, and most recently, through listening.

At the Stills in Milwaukee workshop last weekend, we practiced what Swan described as “listening as archive.” Each participant brought an object and spent five minutes describing it. Afterwards, photographer Terrance Sims photographed those participants with their objects. What began as a simple description unfolded into something more expansive. Objects became entry points, portals into memory, emotion, and lived experiences. Stories stretched beyond the material, connecting personal histories to broader questions about why we hold on and what it means to remember. Through listening, we activated memory.

My object was one of my mother’s favorite purses: a small black leather Coach bag she purchased thirty years ago. I started carrying it a few months ago. It holds my phone, my keys, my wallet, but also something less tangible. I remember her at my age, carrying this same bag. Now I carry it as a version of myself she will never meet. The object collapses time. It brings past and present into conversation, while quietly gesturing toward a future that feels both connected and incomplete.

But as I listened to others, I began to question the role of the object itself. One participant, in describing the difficulty of letting objects, and the memories attached to them go, said, “The memory has served its purpose.” Another asked, “If you let the object go, do you forsake the memories? Or can they be addressed in a new way?”

These questions lingered with me.

The essence of Swan’s listening as archive workshop reminds me of Tina Campt’s Listening to Images. In her work, Campt invites us to think about listening not simply as hearing, but as an attunement to the quiet frequencies of everyday life, the affective, often overlooked dimensions of experience that resist traditional forms of documentation. For Campt, archives are not only visual or material; they are sonic, embodied, and felt. They reside in the subtle vibrations of memory, in the pauses, in what is carried forward through attention rather than possession.

This framework shifted how I understand what I am holding onto. Perhaps the purse is not the archive itself, but one way into it. The archive lives in the act of remembering her, in the stories I tell, in the way I listen for her presence in my own gestures and routines. Space, too, becomes archival, holding layers of time that can be accessed not through preservation, but through presence.

I still have some of my mother’s things. But I have started to let others go.

Not because they no longer matter, but because I am beginning to understand that memory does not reside in objects alone. It moves. It surfaces. It listens back.

The views, information, and opinions expressed in Slow Digest do not necessarily represent the views, policies, or positions of the Center for 21st Century Studies, the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, or the University of Wisconsin System. The Center for 21st Century Studies supports scholarly debate about, and engagement with, the pressing issues of our time.

Work Referenced:

Campt, T. (2017). Listening to Images. Duke University Press.

The post Slow Digest: Listening as Archive appeared first on Center for 21st Century Studies.

Created by Ladasia Bryant, this Story Cart Zine is a portable invitation to slow down. Within its pages is a series of creative, community-based exercises designed to help us notice, more deeply and more intentionally, the worlds we move through every day. These exercises are rooted in the idea that attention shapes how we experience ourselves and others and offer simple, grounded practices that reconnect attention to memory, place, and collective experience.

Inside, readers will find guided activities like sound-based listening exercises, neighborhood attention walks, beach-based storytelling prompts, and memory activation practices that use personal photographs as portals into lived experience. These exercises can be done alone or with others, requiring only minimal materials but inviting expansive reflection.

Rather than prescribing a single way of engaging, the toolkit opens space for noticing, remembering, and being present. It asks what becomes possible when we treat attention not as something to be captured, but as something to be cared for.

Upcoming Events

Volume 2 of the Attention Activism Toolkit will continue this work through new Story Cart: Attention workshops and community activations across Milwaukee. See below for upcoming events. For a full listing of C21 events, visit /c21/events/.

• April 1 @ 5:30pm-7:30pm: Cactus Book Club with C21: Attensity!
• April 7 @ 5:00pm-6:30pm: En-Vision Embodied Writing Workshop
• April 11 @ 10:30am-12:30pm: Story Cart with Symphony Swan – Stills in Milwaukee

The post A Story Cart Zine: Attention Activism Toolkit, Vol. 1 appeared first on Center for 21st Century Studies.

On April 1, C21 will lead an edition of the Cactus Book Club focusing on the book  by The Friends of Attention. Attensity! expands upon the attention activist manifesto championed by C21’s partners at the , and it offers an opportunity for the attention activism-curious to explore why our attention matters, how to choose attentional agency over digital enthrallment, and why awareness is even better with friends.

Many readers will recognize the uneasy feeling that opens Attention! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement: the sense that something about everyday life—especially life online—has gone profoundly wrong.

We live in a moment when our lives are structured by the rhythms of digital capitalism: consumption, production, and endless circulation through feeds. The creeping awareness of the fragmenting effect, the digital environment in which we are perpetually immersed, has, at the time of this writing, accelerated to an unbridled gallop. The algorithms that typically dump run-of-the-mill commercial content into feeds everywhere are punctuated by images of oil raining down on an inferno in the Middle East, followed by what may or may not be an AI-produced video of a family of racoons jumping on a trampoline, followed by announcements that a film adaptation of a Thomas Pynchon novel won Best Picture at the Oscars (too on the nose?). It’s one distraction after another.

Distraction from what?

(Yes, sure, ok, the Epstein files. But not just the Epstein files.)

The argument at the heart of Attensity! is that the consequence of this constant disruption and redirection of our attention is a growing sense of alienation—from our interior worlds, ourselves, and each other. Attention, the book insists, is not merely information-processing or screen-focused concentration. It is the fundamental act of giving our minds and senses over to something, whether it’s a difficult concept from a challenging book, a heartfelt conversation, or the precise texture of your dog’s fur when you know you are scratching his ears for the very last time. Attention is the connective tissue between ourselves and everything else—the natural world, lived experience, one another, and consensus-based reality.

If attention is the medium of human connection, then the stakes of the modern “attention economy” become clear. Over the past three decades, the authors of Attensity! argue, the drivers of digital capitalism turned attention into a resource to be extracted. Platforms convert attention into profit not only through advertising but through constant tracking and measurement. In this sense, the resource being exploited is not just our time—it is us: our thoughts, senses, emotions, and consciousness.

The Friends of Attention provocatively call this process “human fracking.” Just as industrial extraction industries burrow into the earth to capture energy resources, digital systems are inserted into human awareness to capture attention.

The authors substantiate their claims about human fracking with a distilled history of clinical science. Attention extraction, they argue, was made possible by the twentieth-century study of attention, which, funded by military, industrial, and advertising interests, focused on how humans function as components within large technological systems. Though the array of methods by which humans attend to things is vast and varied, one kind of attention drew the interest of industry—task-based focus. “Focus” became “attention span” when discussed in the context of temporalized, interrelated tasks. From radar monitoring during the Cold War to magazine readership metrics, focus became something that could be measured, optimized, and monetized.

Focus is a particular, definitive way of attending—one that can be taught. One that can be produced through personal discipline, sometimes to the detriment of other, less utilitarian forms of attention such as contemplative immersion or conviviality. Distraction, the supposed disruption of focus, is perhaps better understood as the exchange of one object of focus for another. Framing it as distraction both individualizes a systemic problem and imparts a sense that our distracted condition is inevitable. Our supposed “short attention spans” are part the power of the broader attention-extraction industrial complex. Forms of attention are learned, and the systems that capture or disrupt our attention are constantly teaching us how to attend.

Which means that attending can be understood differently, can be taught differently.

One possible remedy proposed by the Friends of Attention is attention activism: a collective movement to reclaim attention as a shared human capacity rather than a privately monetized resource.

Drawing parallels with the rise of labor and environmental movements, Attensity! authors suggest that our “psycho-sensory environment” deserves protection just as much as the natural one. If industrialization produced factories and the labor movement, digital capitalism has produced pocket-sized factories of attentional capture. It follows that the struggle for the right to free thought, free consciousness, is on its way, and only wants for willing midwives to guide its passage from the realm of could happen to happening.  

What might resistance look like? Attensity! offers some ideas, if not replicable models. Like most manifestos, it works best as a point of convergence for like minds, and as the basis for a movement’s beginning.

So what kinds of attention exist beyond the narrow forms measured by screens and metrics? And what kinds of worlds might become possible if we learned, together, to attend differently? We—you, I, and the fine folks at the Cactus Club, can start with these questions on April 1. I don’t know where these questions will lead, but I do know that questions are pathways, and a welcome alternative to the treadmill of doomscrolling.

The views, information, and opinions expressed in Slow Digest are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily represent the views, policies, or positions of the Center for 21st Century Studies, the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, or the University of Wisconsin System.

Resources:

Cactus Book Club with C21: Attensity!

C21’s recommended local bookseller is . Mention Cactus Book Club at checkout to receive a 10% discount!

No time to read a whole book before April 1?

Fill in the gaps with the Strother School for Radical Attention’s   and their on Apple Podcasts.

The post Slow Digest: Attensity! appeared first on Center for 21st Century Studies.

• Saturday, March 28, 12:00-2:00pm
• MKE Winter Farmers Market, 5305 W. Capitol Drive Milwaukee, WI 53216
• Free and open to the public

Skyward Ho!

At Milwaukee Winter Farmer’s Market, we’ll meditate on the sky with our mind, body and soul with Story Fellow Adam Carr and yogi Matthew Lewis (), gathering thoughts on sanctuary and refuge, especially for attention.

Then, we’ll talk about it on the record for the Story Cart digital archive. 

About Adam Carr

Adam  Carr  is an independent writer, artist, journalist, community historian and organizer based in Milwaukee. Carr was director of strategic partnerships at Milwaukee Park Foundation from 2022-2025 and producer at 88Nine RadioMilwaukee from 2008-2011. Working in communities throughout Milwaukee, his work ranges from journalism to public art, film/photography to coalition building, dialogue facilitation to community history, writing to in-depth tours.  

About Milwaukee Winter Farmers Market

exists to support local producers and to help our community eat local longer. Agricultural vendors offer high quality fruit, vegetables, meat, eggs, poultry and dairy products. SNAP benefits are accepted at our market. Local food vendors also bring a wide variety of freshly baked goods, jams, cider, honey, maple syrup, sauces and soups, as well as delicious global cuisine. The market also offers health and wellness, and body products, such as soaps, body creams, and more.

About Story Cart

Story Cart is a mobile story collection program that travels to community spaces and engages Milwaukeeans in conversations about their lived experiences. Our Story Fellows craft questions related to the current C21 research theme, record participant responses to those questions, and add them to our Story Cart digital archive (forthcoming). Supported by the , Story Cart’s current run introduces Milwaukeeans to practices of . From September 2025 through May 2026, our community Story Fellows will lead workshop pop-ups throughout the city and will record discussions with participants about the experience of paying attention.

The post Story Cart With Adam Carr – Skyward Ho! appeared first on Center for 21st Century Studies.

• Saturday, February 14, 10:00am-12:00pm
• Thomas A. Greene Geological Museum, Lapham Hall, Room 366
  3209 N. Maryland Ave.
• Part of Darwin Day (10:00am-3:00pm); free and open to the public

Crystal Quest

At the Greene Geological Museum’s Darwin Day celebration, we’ll ask you to find the mineral that moves you the most. Who knows? Maybe you’ll glean some ancient wisdom from a rock of ages.

Then, we’ll ask you to talk about it with Story Fellow Adam Carr while we record your conversation for the Story Cart’s digital archive.

About Adam Carr

Adam  Carr  is an independent writer, artist, journalist, community historian and organizer based in Milwaukee. Carr was director of strategic partnerships at Milwaukee Park Foundation from 2022-2025 and producer at 88Nine RadioMilwaukee from 2008-2011. Working in communities throughout Milwaukee, his work ranges from journalism to public art, film/photography to coalition building, dialogue facilitation to community history, writing to in-depth tours.  

About Darwin Day

Thomas A. Greene Geological Museum invites you to celebrate Darwin Day, a public outreach event celebrating the life and times of one of the most brilliant and influential Victorian naturalists, Charles R. Darwin. Darwin was an avid geologist and biologist who most famously developed the theory of natural selection—one of the driving mechanisms behind biological evolution—published in his seminal work: On the Origin of Species. Today, this theory forms the foundation for many of our natural sciences. Darwin Day is a national celebration of Darwin’s scientific legacy typically held on (or near) his birthday.

This event is free and open to guests of all ages. Many wonderful geological and biological specimens will be available to observe, with volunteers on hand to explain their fascinating histories. Learning tables will focus on the natural history of Wisconsin and the contributions of the Thomas A. Greene to our understanding of local geology, with many rare and beautiful samples on display in the Greene Geological Museum. Other activities will be available throughout the day, including scientific lectures presented by 51���� scientists and guest speakers, coloring and crafts for young kids, and free planetarium shows. See this activities list and schedule of events for more information.

About Story Cart

Story Cart is a mobile story collection program that travels to community spaces and engages Milwaukeeans in conversations about their lived experiences. Our Story Fellows craft questions related to the current C21 research theme, record participant responses to those questions, and add them to our Story Cart digital archive (forthcoming). Supported by the , Story Cart’s current run introduces Milwaukeeans to practices of . From September 2025 through May 2026, our community Story Fellows will lead workshop pop-ups throughout the city and will record discussions with participants about the experience of paying attention.

The post Story Cart With Adam Carr – Crystal Quest appeared first on Center for 21st Century Studies.

• Wednesday, April 1, 5:30-7:30 PM
• Cactus Club, 2496 S. Wentworth Ave., Milwaukee, WI 53207
• Free & open to the public; no registration required

C21’s Story Cart program invites you to join Katie Waddell, C21 Managing Director, for the April 2026 edition of the Cactus Book Club.

Cactus Book Club meets on the first Wednesday of the month from 5:30-7:30 in the back room at Cactus Club. Each month a different community organization, collective, mutual aid group, or business chooses a book and recommended bookseller, then leads the discussion. 

The April selection,  by The Friends of Attention, expands upon the attention activist manifesto championed by C21’s partners at the , and offers an opportunity for the attention activism-curious to explore why our attention matters, how to choose attentional agency over digital enthrallment, and why awareness is even better with friends.

C21’s recommended bookseller is . Mention Cactus Book Club at checkout to receive a 10% discount!

Resources

Check out our Slow Digest post about Attensity! for a teaser.

Don’t have time to finish the book before April 1? Fill in the gaps with the Strother School for Radical Attention’s   and their on Apple Podcasts.

About

About Attensity!: A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement

“We all feel it: something is seriously wrong. Our attention—that essential ability to give our minds and senses to the world—is being trapped, gutted, and sold out from under us by an industry of immense technological and financial power. The heedless exploitation of this vital capacity by a handful of tech companies is harming us all, reducing our very selfhood to that which can be quantified, bought, and sold—and shaking the foundations of our democracy.

To push back against this “human fracking,” we need more than individual willpower or isolated efforts. We need a movement of collective resistance. Such a movement is beginning to bloom, and in this radical, first-of-its-kind guide, The Friends of Attention show us how to join the fight. We meet welders, nurses, poets, and surfers, all of whom are engaged in attentional practices. We learn to seek out sanctuaries—theaters and museums, houses of worship, dance parties—where together we can take refuge from the frackers. Attention Activism takes our apocalyptic present, turns it on its head, and reveals new vistas of human flourishing.

Drawing on a rich legacy of critical intellectuals and the creative wisdom of diverse traditions, Attensity! calls on us to come together to defeat the greedy dehumanizing forces of brute instrumentalization—and re-enchant the world.”

The Friends of Attention is a collective of activists, artists, and thinkers. Three editors and long-standing “Friends” helped Attensity! take shape: D. Graham Burnett is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of history of science at Princeton University. Alyssa Loh, a filmmaker, co-directed the short film “Twelve Theses on Attention.” Peter Schmidt is the Program Director of the Strother School of Radical Attention.

About Cactus Club

(CBC), organized by , meets on the first Wednesday of the month from 5:30-7:30 in the back room at Cactus Club. Each month a different community organization, collective, mutual aid group, or business chooses the book and recommended bookseller, then leads the discussion. CBC covers sociopolitical fiction and non-fiction, with a focus on works by women, LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and/or otherwise under-published groups. Members don’t have to finish reading the book to attend. All book club meetings are free. Registration is not required. 18+.

About Story Cart: Attention

Story Cart is a mobile story collection program that travels to community spaces and engages Milwaukeeans in conversations about their lived experiences. Our Story Fellows craft questions related to the current C21 research theme, record participant responses to those questions, and add them to our Story Cart digital archive (forthcoming). Supported by the , Story Cart’s current run introduces Milwaukeeans to practices of radical attention. From September 2025 through May 2026, our community Story Fellows will lead workshop pop-ups throughout the city and will record discussions with participants about the experience of paying attention.

The post Cactus Book Club with C21: Attensity! appeared first on Center for 21st Century Studies.

• Saturday, November 15, 2:30-4:30pm (retreat runs 12:30-4:30pm)
• Haggerty Museum of Art, 1234 W Tory Hill St
• Part of the Community Art & Wellness Retreat;

The Listening / Soundbath of the Ordinary

At the Haggerty Museum of Art’s Community Art & Wellness Retreat, we’ll attend to silence, noise, and everything in-between.

Then, we’ll talk about it, recording our conversations for the Story Cart’s digital archive.

About the Community Art & Wellness Retreat

 invites you to become inspired, rejuvenated and reminded of the powerful role art plays in our collective well-being. 

Running from 12:30 to 4:30pm, this day of overlapping programming includes a talk by installation artist , a reflective artmaking activity led by art therapists Emily Drenovsky (Marquette University Wellness Center) and Jodi Brown (Mount Mary Graduate Student), contemplative dialogue with spiritual guide Heather Schmidt, printmaking with art therapist Erica Browne, weaving with , a performance by , a sound bath by Melissa Blue Muhammad, and attention activism with C21’s Story Cart.

The retreat celebrates the Haggerty’s , an exhibition of work by four artists (Bryana Bibbs, Raoul Deal, Maria Gaspar, and Swoon) who explore the effects of concealed trauma and the inextricable ties between personal health and collective wellness. By addressing issues like addiction, incarceration, immigration, and a lack of systemic support for caregivers, the artists emphasize the power of personal stories to illuminate problems that are often overlooked or purposefully hidden from view. Moving beyond self-care and individualized treatments, the work directs us to some of the root causes of trauma and highlights systemic issues that undermine societal well-being.

This event is free and open to the public. for the Community Art & Wellness Retreat is requested by the Haggerty Museum of Art.

About Madeleine Doelker Berlin

Madeleine Doelker Berlin (LPC-IT) is an Associate Licensed Professional Counselor, Social Scientist, and a few other things—like an immigrant, a parent, and someone who’s lived through big transitions. Born, raised, and partially professionally trained in Germany, she has a background in social inequality research and a professional path that weaves through mental health, public service, and community advocacy. In both her life and work, Madeleine brings an intersectional, systems-aware lens to understanding how people move through the world. Her current work draws on liberation psychology, existentialist psychology, and feminist psychology to explore how personal healing is connected to social context, meaning-making, and resistance. She’s especially interested in the stories we carry, the cultures that shape us, and the quiet, radical act of paying attention. Madeleine holds graduate degrees in Social Sciences and Clinical Mental Health Counseling. Her approach is grounded, curious, and deeply human.

About Story Cart

Story Cart is a mobile story collection program that travels to community spaces and engages Milwaukeeans in conversations about their lived experiences. Our Story Fellows craft questions related to the current C21 research theme, record participant responses to those questions, and add them to our Story Cart digital archive (forthcoming). Supported by the , Story Cart’s current run introduces Milwaukeeans to practices of radical attention. From September 2025 through May 2026, our community Story Fellows will lead workshop pop-ups throughout the city and will record discussions with participants about the experience of paying attention.

The post Story Cart with Madeleine Doelker Berlin – The Listening / Soundbath of the Ordinary appeared first on Center for 21st Century Studies.

• Saturday, November 8, 12-2 PM
• , Old North Milwaukee

About Memory Activation

Memory Activation, led by artist and founder , focuses on the celebration and reconciliation of family histories through archival photographs, artifacts, and other forms of ephemera.

The work invites participants to tap into memory—unearthing and documenting personal and collective stories—as a way of building archives that reflect the full spectrum of the Black experience, particularly in Milwaukee. This reflective practice is intentionally slow, requiring quiet time with oneself in order to truly re-member.

We ask that participants bring photographs—old or new—from their personal collections as a starting point for their memory activation. Participants may bring original photographs, physical copies of originals, or print-ready digital images. so that C21 staff can print them prior to the event’s start. Any original photographs brought to the workshop can be duplicated onsite to ensure the originals remain unharmed.

Beyond the act of sitting with memory, the impact of revisiting personal artifacts with others lies in sparking connection. By sharing and weaving together their experiences and stories, participants create a sense of belonging that culminates in a collective mini-exhibition for the group. As bell hooks reminds us in Art on My Mind: “the word remember (re-member) evokes the coming together of severed parts, fragments becoming whole.” (In Our Glory: Photography and Black Life, p. 64).

This event is free and open to the public. Space is limited; 7 open spots remain as of November 6. Prior registration is required (below).

Please arrive no later than 12:00 PM and plan to stay for the duration of the workshop.

About Symphony Swan

Symphony Swan Zawadi is an artist, cultural strategist, and founder of , an arts and community institution reimagining space, storytelling, support and memory keeping for Black and Brown creatives. With over a decade of experience spanning arts education, nonprofit leadership, and philanthropy, Symphony brings a deep commitment to equity, imagination, and community care.  

Symphony channels her interdisciplinary expertise into building creative ecosystems that honor legacy, foster healing, and invest in future generations. Her work has earned her recognition as the 2023 Milwaukeean of the Year by Shepherd Express, 2024 Gener8tor Art Fellowship Recipient and most recently the 2025 City of Milwaukee Friends of the Arts. She also serves as a trustee for the Milwaukee Art Museum. She continues to advocate for artist-led systems change that reflect the communities they serve. 

About CR8TV HOUSE & Story Cart

is a community art centered third space, providing a platform for Black and Brown artists to explore, critique, celebrate, and address community issues and triumphs through their artistic practices.

Story Cart is a mobile story collection program that travels to community spaces and engages Milwaukeeans in conversations about their lived experiences. Our Story Fellows craft questions related to the current C21 research theme, record participant responses to those questions, and add them to our Story Cart digital archive (forthcoming). Supported by the , Story Cart’s current run introduces Milwaukeeans to practices of radical attention. From September 2025 through May 2026, our community Story Fellows will lead workshop pop-ups throughout the city and will record discussions with participants about the experience of paying attention.

The post Story Cart: Attention with Symphony Swan – Memory Activation  appeared first on Center for 21st Century Studies.

Palmer Room @ Turner Hall, 1040 N Vel R. Phillips Ave, Milwaukee, WI

Overview:

Join C21 and the Milwaukee Turners for a day-long series of workshops led by the Strother School of Radical Attention (SoRA), an organization that promotes human well-being through attention activism.   

As the 21st century waxes, our attention wanes. Digital platforms drown us in endless noise, diverting our awareness from the real people and spaces around us to a haze of information overload, hot takes, and commodity-over-community. We’re losing the focus required to nurture embodied connections and create the vibrant spaces of care that enliven our city.  

How might our capacity for sustained attention affect how we see each other and our city, and how might these perceptions lead to actions that reshape our respective communities and environments? What happens when we get quiet, stay still, and take it all in? Do we miss the world beyond the screen?  

During this day of attention activism, SoRA facilitators will lead participants through two of their signature attention-cultivation workshops—an Attention Lab and Sidewalk Study.  

are an experiential, participatory workshop curriculum dedicated to the exploration of radical human attention. Through group attention practices and guided discussions, participants create and test tools to build sanctuaries of attention — as well as networks of solidarity to sustain them.  

Sidewalk Study is a form of group inquiry combining theory, practice, and public space. Participants meet at a predetermined location where they read through a selected text. They are then given the address of a second location along with an exercise that activates questions posed by the text, to be performed en route and in relation to the streets and sidewalks around them. Upon arriving at the destination, participants share their experiences in an open-ended discussion. 

Free and open to the public, but space is limited. .

Workshop Schedule:

• 9:00 AM – Doors open
• 9:30 AM – Coffee, tea, and opening remarks
• 9:30 AM to 12:00 PM – Attention Lab
• 12:00 to 1:00 PM – Lunch (provided)
• 1:00 to 3:30 PM – Sidewalk Study
• 3:30 to 4:30 PM – Reconvene for discussion at second location (TBD)
• 4:30 PM – Event end

About:

(SoRA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to Attention Activism: the movement to push back against the fracking of human attention by coercive digital technologies. We advance this mission through the study and practice of radical attention, or those diverse forms of attention which resist commodification. SoRA’s seminar courses, experiential Attention Lab workshops, and other hybrid forms of group teaching and learning seek to deepen our shared understanding of attention’s relation to human flourishing. 

The Center for 21st Century Studies (C21) fosters innovative research and community engagement at the intersection of the humanities, arts, and sciences. C21’s theme for 2024-2025 is Slow Knowing: The Pace of Being Human, with programming and sponsored research that calls attention to embodied processes of building and maintaining collective life that resist the fast-paced efficiency models and short attention spans that increasingly define human responses to 21st century social, political, and ecological challenges. 

Founded in 1853, the are the oldest civic group in the city with a rich history of civic engagement; they offer non-partisan civic educational programs and mental and physical wellness programming for all Milwaukeeans. 

Humanities Under Threat:

The Center for 21st Century Studies was awarded a Major Grant from the to support this event.

On April 2, Wisconsin Humanities, which relies on the National Endowment for the Humanities, received notice from the Acting Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities that effective April 2nd all awarded grants — including their 5-year General Operating Grant and other program-specific awards — were canceled in their entirety. As a result, C21 lost the Major Grant, but we were able to make alternative arrangements to cover the costs of this event just in time to ensure it’s continuance for the May 3 date.

C21 leadership believes that the erosion of attention, or — a term coined by members of the Strother School — is one of the most pressing issues of our time, and is a major contributor to the precarious political, social, economic, and media environment that we must now not only fight, but survive. It is our great pleasure to welcome Peter and Quinn from the Strother School of Radical Attention to Milwaukee to share the attention-building tools SoRA has developed over many years of practice.

We hope you will join us on May 3, as we work together to build sanctuaries of attention.

Wisconsin Humanities, unfortunately, will not be able to sustain the loss of NEH funding, and will close its doors very soon. State agencies across the country share their fate. We urge you to . If your work is being impacted by DOGE’s actions against NEH, please, .

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