Director
Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren
Director of the 2013 Innovation Forum: Engaging Design
A performance studies scholar and artist, Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren is an Associate Professor at the University of Washington, Bothell and the Director of the UWB 2013 Innovation Forum: Engaging Design. Her primary research and artistic focus is on trandisciplinary design and artistic research. Other work focuses on disability and deaf theatres; theatre, water and the environment; Afro-Asian theatres; and the transnational avant-garde. Having published Hearing Difference (2006) and The Exquisite Corpse (as lead editor, 2009), her most current book projects include a set of short books designed to go together: Artistic Research: In the Field; Collaboration, Performance Art, and Performance Studies; Transnational Avant-Garde Asian Performance Histories (with Iris Tuan at the National Chiao Tung University); and Performing Blackness: Afro-Asian Theatres and Cultural Alliances. These books consider the role of embodiment and memory in processes of artistic research and creation.
Under the aegis of Folded Paper Dance, her professional company, she is developing several productions of the Waterworks Cycle, a multimedia collaborative performance project on water, urban experience, and sustainability with projects under way for Delhi, Hong Kong and Indonesia. As a result of international exchanges over the last three years, while editor for Theatre Topics (2009-2011), a Cultural Envoy to Pakistan in 2009, a choreographer in Hong Kong 2010 and 2011, an artist in residence in Orissa, India, and participant n the Art School Lab at the Barbican 2012, and upcoming curatorial projects, she is also developing research on the significance of international exchange and our need to build new networks and new forms of theater/art laboratories.
Keynote Speaker
Carol Strohecker directs the Center for Design Innovation (CDI), a multi-campus, advanced-technology research center of the University of North Carolina (UNC) system. In this capacity she serves multiple roles, including Chief Research Officer of the UNC School of the Arts and Professor at Winston-Salem State University. She is also a co-Principal Investigator of the internationally expanding network for Sciences, Engineering, Arts, and Design (SEAD), created in 2011 through funding from the US National Science Foundation.
Previously, Dr. Strohecker led the Everyday Learning research group at Media Lab Europe, the European research partner of the MIT Media Lab. Prior to joining MLE, she worked in the United States at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories and in the Human Interface Group of Sun Microsystems. Dr. Strohecker earned the PhD of Media Arts and Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991 and the Master of Science in Visual Studies from MIT in 1986. She has served MIT's Program in Media Arts and Sciences as a Lecturer and as a Presidential Nominee on the MIT Corporation Visiting Committee.
In addition to four US patents for her collaborative work in interactive media tools and methods, Dr. Strohecker's awards include fellowships with the Artists Foundation of the Massachusetts Council for the Arts and Humanities, the US National Endowment for the Arts, and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. She serves regional economic development interests and the international research community as a speaker and member of relevant boards, program committees, and review panels.
Featured Presenters and Speakers
Anne Basting (Ph.D.) is an educator, scholar, and artist whose work focuses on the potential for the arts and humanities to improve our quality of life as communities and individuals. For over 15 years, Basting has developed and researched methods for embedding the arts into long term care, with a particular focus on people with cognitive disabilities like dementia. Basting is author of numerous articles and two books, Forget Memory: Creating better lives for people with dementia (2009) and The Stages of Age: Performing Age in Contemporary American Culture. Basting is the recipient of a Rockefeller Fellowship, a Brookdale National Fellowship, and numerous major grants. She is author and/or producer of nearly a dozen plays and public performances, including Finding Penelope (2011), a play inspired by a year of intergenerational conversations about the myth of Penelope from Homer’s Odyssey, and professionally staged throughout Luther Manor, a long term care facility in Wisconsin. Basting holds a Ph.D. in Theatre Arts from the University of Minnesota, and a Masters in Theatre from the University of Wisconsin. She continues to direct the award-winning TimeSlips Creative Storytelling Project, which she founded in 1998, and is currently at work launching TimeSlips’ new ( free!) interactive website (timeslips.org), featuring a prompt library of over 100 images and questions, and bringing creative engagement to elders and their families wherever they live. Basting gives keynote addresses on the power and potential of creative engagement across the world. As Director of the CAC (aging.uwm.edu), Basting fosters partnerships between scholars, students, and service providers, and translates applied research into innovative educational tools including manuals, films, and social media. Basting teaches playwriting, storytelling, and creative engagement in long term care; and is curricular coordinator of CAC’s new summer institute CREATE/CHANGE: Transforming care for elders through creative engagement.
George Northcroft
Regional Administrator
U.S. General Services Administration
Northwest/Arctic Region
George Northcroft oversees the U.S. General Services Administration’s operations in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, including management of federal real estate and purchasing. The Northwest/ Arctic Region has an inventory approximately 600 federally owned and leased buildings, more than 450 employees, and an annual budget of more than $460 million.
Mr. Northcroft has a long history as a collaborative leader in both the public and private sectors. Mr. Northcroft previously served as Director of Business Relations & Economic Development for King County in the State of Washington, and worked as the Director of Treasury and Cash Man-agement for Nordstrom. Additionally, Mr. Northcroft served as the Director of the Department of Executive Administration in King County. He was appointed as GSA Regional Administrator in 2010.