by ILI Fellow Alum Theo E.J. Wilson
Get a first-hand perspective on the ILI experience from this Year 2 ILI Fellow alum.

Due to uncertainty during the COVID-19 crisis, we are re-evaluating the dates for ILI Year 3 intensive convenings. We are still eager to hear from artists, culture bearers and other arts professionals while we take these steps: 

• We are actively reviewing the timing for ILI Year 3 intensives based on the most current information.
  
  
• We have extended the deadline to submit a Participation Interest Form to be open & rolling. If you planned to submit that interest, go ahead and do it now. When we know about the timing, it will make it easier to review and notify participants for Year 3.

​We will continue to notify you of new developments as they emerge. 

We are excited to release the interest form guidelines for the third cohort of the Intercultural Leadership Institute (ILI), a collaborative program of Alternate ROOTS, First Peoples Fund, National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC) and PA’I Foundation.
 
As leaders of these organizations, we have grown together, built trust with one another time over time and developed a shared analysis of the need for a leadership program of, by and for the artists and culture bearers in our communities. ILI is the result of our collaborative effort and we invite you to spread the word and encourage great potential participants to submit interest for the 2020-21 cohort. Thank you!

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.