You can influence a movement.
September 6, 2018 | Washington D.C.
About
The 2018 Influence Nation Summit explored the influences that build and sustain social movements. At the summit, we discussed the drivers behind social movements today – messaging, pop culture, networks, technology – and examined how these movements lead people from understanding to action to sustained behavior change.
TOPICS COVERED
The Influence Nation Summit was carefully curated to demonstrate, regardless of issue area, what tactics move the public to act on causes they care about. The summit brought together:
Subject matter experts (researchers, program designers and social entrepreneurs),
Marketing and communication professionals (individuals generating public attention and engagement) and
Community members engaging individuals on the ground (activists, organizers and influencers).
program
Doors Open
8:30 AM - 9 AM EST
Registration opens
Doors open. Grab a cup of coffee and get your seat in the theatre. Seating is first come, first served.
Morning Session
9 AM - 10:30 AM EST
Influencing the Public to Get Involved in Complex Issues
Today’s causes must generate public awareness and adoption to reach social change. Hear from issue experts generating public engagement with new approaches in today’s complex world.
Topics Include:
Moving the Public to Care
Sustainability and Public Understanding
Planet or Plastics?
Speakers Include:
Experience & Network
10:30AM EST - 12:30 PM EST
Connect and participate
During the break, connect, catch up on emails and phone calls, and visit with artists and designers who are influencing the public to get involved in social issues through their art form. You can also purchase lunch, a drink and snacks.
Midday Session
12:30 PM - 2 PM EST
Building Community and Understanding
Movements grow when the public understands and adopts the issue as a priority. Hear from social justice pioneers leading the charge to help the public understand the issues affecting Americans today.
Topics Include:
Bias in America
Building the Kindness Movement
Popular Culture that Persuades Beliefs
Pioneering Social Justice Movements in the United States
Preventing Sexual Harassment and Exploitation of Workers
Speakers Include:
Experience & Network
2 PM EST - 4 PM EST
Connect and participate
During the break, attendees will have an opportunity to connect, catch up on emails and phone calls and visit with artists and designers who are influencing the public to get involved in social issues through their artform. Attendees will have an opportunity to a coffee and snack items for purchase.
Afternoon Session
4 PM - 5:30 PM EST
Leadership for Today’s Movements
Movements require agile leadership to deal with new approaches to public engagement. Hear thoughts from leaders who have built successful campaigns and how their leadership generated change on the ground in local communities.
Topics Include:
Building a New Voting Movement
Why are We Losing Donors?
The Gun Safety Movement
Speakers Include:
Party
5:30 PM - 8 PM EST
Time to Unwind
At the conclusion of the day's program, gather in the courtyard on the campus of National Geographic Society to unwind with complimentary drinks. Food trucks will be available on site for purchasing a bite to eat.
Videos
Images
Speakers
Artists
Featured artists in the Influence Nation Summit Lounge
Chris Bishop
Chris created a virtual world that parents don’t mind their kids spending time in.
As senior creative director for PBS and PBS KIDS Digital, he developed the look and feel of Kart Kingdom, the latter’s first-ever online world. Mimicking nature as closely as possible, the site helps kids ages 6-9 learn to determine the best strategies for reaching an outcome through systems thinking. Educational advisor the Center for Games & Impact at Arizona State University contributed to parental and educator guides to deepen the experience and promote adult-child interaction.
An artist since he was a kid himself, Chris wanted to encourage children to express themselves through art. “[Kids] decide how they want to look and what games to play. … Kids get to draw their own karts and post them to the blog, then I draw them into the game,” he said. “Kart Kingdom is all about the natural world, and we want kids to go there feeling like they’re exploring a real place.”
The game helps children build collaboration skills, too, as they work together to create gadgets and unlock rewards for the entire Kart Kingdom community.
Chris focuses on design, user experience and illustration for games, websites and apps for kids ages 2-8. But when he’s not drawing dinosaurs and floating cars, he is exploring beauty, vulnerability, strength and disorder through his bold, vibrant digital art.
He was chief illustrator at Cute Fight, an online game where people have their real-life pets turned into cute illustrations holding, say, a hatchet or a ball-and-chain flail (so they could fight each other, of course). He’s illustrated T-shirts for a Ska band, been a West of Loathing player (a comedy-adventure role-playing video game), and is an art nerd as well as a Star Wars nerd.
Anna U. Davis
Swedish contemporary artist Anna U. Davis gives us glimpses into her fascination with sexuality, gender relations and other social issues through her Frocasians, abstract scaled figures drawn in black edge, then cut from birch plywood to free them from any visual constraints. Her interracial relationship with her husband inspired the concept; the word itself is an amalgam of Afro and Caucasian, and the figures are intentionally done in grey, “a color without color,” allowing them to transcend the racial divide.
They also channel Anna’s reactions to the social issues that fascinate her and her own sexuality-related experiences. She has been documenting her intimate journey with breast cancer – the fear, the machines, the procedures, the insurance battles – through a project called Road to Recovery, sharing a path of inconsistent care and an uncertain future. One of her most politically charged pieces features a square cross with the figures of four men – judge, doctor, pharmacist, insurance claims agent – placed to make the cross resemble a swastika.
Her work is in public and private collections in Sweden, California, Maryland, New York, and Washington, DC., and she’s had exhibitions since 1998.
Jefry Andres Wright
Wherever he photographs, Jefry finds a way to reach out through his camera to coax the essence of his subject onto their face and into their eyes. The results can help open doors between worlds.
Photographs such as “Child in Field Attending Alpacas” in Peru tell stories that inspire a desire to know more. He has produced editorial photos in Nicaragua, Peru, Ecuador and his home country, Costa Rica, for the US government’s Inter-American Foundation; thanks in part to his efforts, 73% of the foundation’s community partners report a higher opinion of the US as a result of working with them.
Jefry focuses on opening doors to the African American community with stunning portraits of artists, models, entertainers and activists, such as Dick Gregory. One of his greatest accomplishments in his short career has been photographing significant civil rights leaders at the NAACP’s gala marking the 50th anniversary of Brown v. the Board of Education.
