During this panel discussion, together with guests that might include former students and artist colleagues, the moderator will lead a conversation around building community in and out of academia. We will discuss reaching beyond the traditionally accepted hierarchies to create new relationships with each other, how to see colleagues as allies and collaborators instead of competitors, and the possibility of reorganizing our relationships to institutions. Let’s talk about how we can work in and around existing structures in order to create more sustainable, non-hierarchical systems.

We are a Boston-based photography collaborative comprised of Claire Beckett, Dana Mueller, Pamela Pecchio and Betsy Schneider. We are working artists who together have over 50 years of combined teaching experience, in roughly 20 colleges and universities. We have been variously employed as full-time and tenured faculty, and as adjuncts balancing the competing needs of multiple universities.