Get a glimpse into the ILI intensive experience through this day-by-day look.

In a partnership connected to the great cultural diversity of the Twin Cities region, Americans for the Arts (AFTA) joined with ILI Partners, Facilitators and Fellows to create a pre-conference learning experience prior to the 2019 AFTA National Convention in Minneapolis. ​

In January 2019, ILI Partner PAʻI Foundation hosted the second of three place-based intensives for ILI Fellows in Hawaiʻi. The five-day leadership immersion brought together the second cohort of ILI Fellows for shared learning, personal exchange and direct experience with the true history and sacred places in Native Hawaiʻi. ​

Aloha. Mahalo. ‘Āina. Hawai’i. Land of sacred relationships thank you for welcoming us home to sovereign sensibility. Home is….. feelings and places of agreement, acceptance, awareness…. healing… sources of purpose….. kinships built from knowing and working side by side. Home is shared between us. Home is complex and difficult and maybe a myth. Regardless, the idea of kinship calls us lifetime after lifetime, in the people we meet, the conflicts we experience, the foods we savor and the places and spaces where we are held. ​

Get a glimpse into the ILI intensive experience through this day-by-day look.

​Nijeul shared his thoughts about what he calls the “ILI Experience 2.0,” his personal reflections and his role as a model cultural leader.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Arts Leadership. Last year, I realized Kyoung’s Pacific Beat has outgrown its current limits and that I need to re-imagine its future for the long-term. It was easy for me to imagine what we’d strive for creatively, but I was stumped by what it’d look like to paint that picture in numbers and what it’d take to make it happen. I think of my mentor, Lee Breuer, who started as a playwright and director, and did not return to his creative writing until his 70’s, having lived a life in the theater teaching and directing. I think of Abe Rybeck, who reached out during a moment of crisis to tell me that he, too, started as an artist and then spent a lifetime building an institution.

Lynette Two Bulls is the ILI Host Facilitator for the Lakota Territory, the location for the first of three place-based intensives for the ILI Fellows. She shared her thoughts about empowerment, leadership and the sacred Black Hills as a powerful and centering place to start ILI Fellows on their year-long journey together.

Lynette Two Bulls is Oglala Lakota and Cheyenne and her Lakota name Tuŋwéyaŋ kiyapiwiŋ means “Scouts Woman.” She is originally from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and now resides with her family on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Lame Deer, Montana.

Get a glimpse into the ILI intensive experience through this day-by-day look.