While referencing his own stories and experiences, Peter invited participants to share the challenges facing their local communities. Collectively, they discussed the role the arts can play in addressing community challenges and how these communities can be effectively engaged at local levels.

To keep the conversation in motion, a working group will be formed to include people from a wide variety of local communities around the world, each facing unique challenges. The group will explore commonalities and context-specific issues, and learn from each other to address these challenges.

The project will challenge working group members to identify other Teaching Artists within their local communities and map out ways to effectively engage community members in creative change-making. The group will collaborate to support and provide insights into using the arts to address their identified challenges. Participants will be encouraged to pilot community engagement methods, report back, and identify which approaches have worked best in their contexts.

The intended outcome of this project is to create small, local, community-engaged Teaching Artist cohorts. The process by which these are built will be documented and made available online as a ‘how-to’ guide for other Teaching Artists seeking to build and mobilize local community collectives.