Tides of Transition: Restoring Collective Spirit in Troubled Times

Call for Participation

Davis, California | University of California, Davis
Friday, October 23 – Sunday, October 25, 2026

Submission Deadline: June 30, 2026

In partnership with the University of California, Davis and a diverse regional Steering Committee, Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life (IA) invites participants to gather in Davis, California for the 2026 IA National Gathering. Reflecting on the importance of transitions – from political crises to global climate change, and personal identity to organizational transformation – this call for participation invites proposals that share stories, research, creative works, and community practices exploring the complex process of transitioning away from systems of fear and domination and towards restoring collective spirit. 

Tides of Transition: Restoring Collective Spirit in Troubled Times calls us to re-story and honor the places, knowledges, relationships, and ecologies that have been made broken through centuries of violence and abandonment, and the current intensifying fear and repression. We know that our communities are tired, and we know that being together revives our collective spirit, giving us the strength and inspiration we need in troubled times. In this moment of upheaval, the 2026 IA National Gathering draws participants to Davis, CA in the spirit of mending the roots of our connections, and to “awaken,” as Buddhist monk and activist Thích Nhất Hạnh teaches, “from the illusion of our separateness.” 

Transitions mark and name processes of change experienced individually, such as gender, career, or life and death transitions, and collectively during shifts in economic, ecological, political, and global systems. Transitions are experienced dynamically and cyclically; they ebb and flow like the tides, constantly changing and yet always returning. It is hard to see the end of a transition from the beginning or in the middle, and often this requires that we let go of control over perfect outcomes. Transitions invite us to embrace the unknown and accept that we will be changed in the process, while keeping a keen eye on how we organize that emergent change together.

In refusing and retreating from the extractive and violent imaginary that has birthed the dominant US political and social world, what other ways of being, thinking, and doing are we turning towards in our work and communities to restore collective spirit? Here in the region surrounding UC Davis, we feed our critical imaginations with a transition towards restored tule marshes in the Sacramento Delta, with cultural fires in grasslands, with salmon-rich waters no longer dammed, and through agricultural harvests that nourish us. Critically, how might we learn to live, love, and thrive in landscapes that might be beyond full repair? For Wintun/Maidu culture-bearer Diana Almendariz, who has been working to restore the lost wetlands in the Yolo bioregion where UC Davis is located, restoration is an impossibility given the levels of extraction that this epicenter of the gold rush, gravel rush, and industrial agriculture has seen in the last two centuries. She asks: how might we come together as allies to acknowledge past harms, and forge new futures by weaving together knowledges and traditions, old and new, for collective thriving? 

The 2026 IA National Gathering also marks a transition within Imagining America, as this occasion is the last gathering organized by the IA-UC Davis team before IA moves to a new home campus in July 2027 (host announcement in summer 2026). At this moment in a natural cycle of transition for IA, we will celebrate the good work we have done together over the past decade and join the new host in dreaming up the exciting possibilities to come.

Tides of Transition: Restoring Collective Spirit in Troubled Times seeks your stories of transition – the generative beginnings full of possibility, or the mucky middles where it is difficult to know what the future holds, or the places of arrival that are born of great collective change. This call for participation invites examples of critical imagination, collective care, intergenerational knowledges, creative practice and action, or other activities that demonstrate how the enduring spirit of the expansive Imagining America community (students, artists, educators, organizers and leaders, cultural workers, scholars) thrives through transition.

In developing your proposal, you might consider:

• What is the role of imagination during transitions? 
• What are the practices of restoring collective spirit, and providing collective nourishment during times of uncertainty? 
• How might personal transitions connect to and inspire collective action?  And vice versa? 
• How do the methodologies of the arts, humanities, and design create possibilities for connection through transitions? 
• What historical examples provide inspiration for ways of being together in the mucky middle of transitions? 
• Through ecological and political transitions, how might we come together as allies to acknowledge past harms, and forge new collective futures? 
• What stories, research, and creative works demonstrate the tidal qualities of transitions? 
• What other ways of being, thinking, and doing are we turning towards in our work and communities to restore collective spirit?

Preparing Your Proposal 

When preparing your proposal, the 2026 IA National Gathering organizers invite you to propose an interactive session in one of the following formats:

Share a Presentation About Your Research, Practice, or Artistic Work (5-15 minutes)

1. Lightning Talk, 5 minutes. A single speaker will share current or past work, creative outputs, media, artistic practice, or community projects. Six lightning talks are scheduled in each 75-minute session; each speaker has five minutes to present, and the opportunity to integrate shared concepts of their talks into the following group discussion. Speakers may choose to use a visual guide (i.e. poster, powerpoint presentation, video or audio clip), but it is not required. You may submit an individual 5-minute talk proposal, or a group proposal with up to six lightning talk speakers for the entire 75-minute session. 

2. Projects & Practices Presentation, 15 minutes. Groups or individuals will share compelling outcomes, lessons learned, methods, or collective change that emerged from community-based projects centering the arts, performance, design, cultural organizing, and humanities practices. When submitting your proposal, you must pre-select two themes that best apply: 1) creative community arts, 2) public engaged scholarship, 3) cultural organizing, 4) transitions, 5) practices of collective spirit. In each session organized by theme, three different presenting groups will give 15-minute presentations with remaining time for shared discussion. 

Lead an Interactive Discussion, Workshop, or Performance (75 minutes)

3. Participatory Workshop, 75 minutes. Facilitators set an agenda and organize participant activities. The session can focus on specific skill development, artistic or creative practice, participatory performance and movement, guided collective activity, or facilitate interactive dialogue around a pressing issue or action. Workshops must be highly interactive, collaborative, and provide opportunities for group co-creation.

Do Something Different!

4. Creative Works, ongoing. We welcome your creative, alternative proposals for visual and/or material work, or collective art-making activities that are ongoing (not limited to a single session). Creative works may be set up in the IA Gathering hub and can include self-directed instructions for participants or be staffed. If selected for inclusion in the IA National Gathering, IA staff will reach out for specific set up needs. Examples may include a table-top exhibit of original art, or a listening station with headphones, or directions for a game or scavenger hunt, or instructions and materials for participants to make a zine or a quilt! 

How to Submit Your Proposal 

This year, IA will be accepting proposal submissions through Whova. Click the button below to enter the Whova portal, and then click on ‘Start Proposal’. You will be prompted to login using an existing account, or to create a new account, in order to access the submission form. Whova is the official app for the 2026 IA National Gathering, and important information will be shared through this channel.

The deadline for submissions is Tuesday, June 30, 2026 at 11:59 PM PT.

Each proposal requires the following information:

1. 1. Session Organizer(s) Information
2. 2. Session Track (format)
3. 3. Session Title
4. 4. Session Description (350 words)
5. 5. Session Goals (200 words)
6. 6. Session Contribution to IA and the IA National Gathering Theme (200 words)
   
   

You can access a PDF of the complete submission form here.

Questions? 

Email us at gathering@imaginingamerica.org or call (530) 297-4640.

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About the Artist

The artwork featured in the banner image is by Angelica xxxx, who is affiliated with Taller Arte Nuevo del Amanacer (TANA), the official artists for the 2026 IA National Gathering.

Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer (TANA) is a collaborative partnership between the Chicana/o Studies Program at the University of California, Davis and the greater Woodland community. TANA offers a fully functioning silkscreen studio, Chicano/Latino Arts exhibition space, and a teaching center for the arts. Through exhibiting, printing, and teaching, TANA cultivates the cultural and artistic life of the community, viewing the arts as essential to a community’s development and well-being.

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By dreaming and building together in public, Imagining America creates the conditions to shift culture and transform inequitable institutional and societal structures. The IA National Gathering is a convening of more than 500 public scholars, artists, designers, teachers, students, and cultural organizers who are addressing the most pressing issues of our time. Gatherings offer participants a three-day immersive experience in which to connect, dialogue, learn, and strategize on the ways in which the arts, humanities, and design are and may be leveraged locally, regionally, nationally, and across borders towards transformative action.