Drawn Together: (re)Education

How can we think about education and learning through the lens of radical creativity? In looking towards past and current frameworks for learning, what are the lessons from the “old world” and what are the new lessons we need to learn to co-create a world rooted in care, justice, and joy? Tonight, Dr. Amber Johnson, Ericka Huggins, and W. Kamau Bell will come together to discuss their work in education, the tools they use to cultivate education as a tool of belonging, and their vision for the way lifelong learning can contribute to better futures. This program brings together writers, scientists, historians, and artists who reflect on approaches to learning in their work and, in this conversation, as a frame for envisioning societal transformation. The panel’s central questions are “what are the metaphors of the new world” and “how do we move from simply creating metaphors to norming?”

Prior to the 7 p.m. panel, from 6–6:45 p.m., join an intimate workshop exploring the themes of the conversation.

About the Speakers

W. Kamau Bell is a stand-up comedian, director, producer, husband, and dad. For seven seasons, he was the host and executive producer of the five-time Emmy Award–winning CNN docuseries United Shades of America. In 2023, he won an Emmy for his HBO documentary 1000% Me: Growing Up Mixed. He is the co-author of the New York Times bestselling book Do the Work: An Antiracist Activity Book. His newest writing project is the Substack newsletter Who’s With Me? Kamau is on the board of directors for DonorsChoose, a nonprofit that helps teachers raise money for class projects, and Live Free, a nonprofit dedicated to ending gun violence, mass incarceration, and mass criminalization. Kamau is also the ACLU’s Celebrity Ambassador for Racial Justice. In 2023, Kamau and his wife Melissa Hudson Bell co-founded Who Knows Best Productions, a media production company in Oakland, CA.

Ericka Huggins an educator, Black Panther Party member, former political prisoner, human rights advocate, and poet. For more than fifty years, Ericka has used her life experiences in service to community. From 1973–1981, she was director of the Black Panther Party’s Oakland Community School. She supports restorative justice programs for women and youth in schools, jails, and prisons. Ericka was professor of sociology and African American studies from 2008–2015 in the Peralta Community College District. From 2003–2011, she was professor of women and gender studies, and ethnic studies at California State Universities, East Bay and San Francisco. In 2022, Ericka co-authored the book Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party with photographer Stephen Shames.

Dr. Amber Johnson is the assistant vice chancellor and chief of staff in the Division for Equity & Inclusion at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Johnson’s research and activism focus on narratives of identity, protest, healing, and social justice in digital media, popular media, and everyday lived experiences. Their mixed-media artistic practice involves working with metals, recycled and reclaimed goods, photography, poetry, percussion, and paint to interrogate systems of oppression and create capacity for different, critical futures. Dr. Johnson is also the founding director of The Justice Fleet ™, a mobile social justice museum that fosters healing through art, dialogue, pleasure, and play.

Accessibility Information

Accessibility accommodations such as American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and assisted listening devices are available upon request 10 business days in advance.

Please email publicengagement@sfmoma.org, and we will do our best to fulfill your request.

Programming for Ruth Asawa: Retrospective is made possible with support from Google.org.