FREE: National Arts Workshop for Veterans, July 5-7

The Military Experience and the Arts Symposium will be held July 5-7, 2012, on the campus of Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, Kent. At the event, more than 100 veterans from across the country will share ideas, experiences, and new ways to tell old stories.

Participants in the free event will receive three days of lodging, meals, textbooks, and workshop instruction. Participants need only pay for transportation to and from the symposium.

Eastern Kentucky University is home to The Journal of Military Experience, a literary and scholarly publication, as well as the Veterans Studies Program—a first-of-its-kind multi-disciplinary program dedicated to educating non-veterans about veterans issues. The university's "Operation Veterans Success" soldier-to-student program was recognized by the Student Veterans of America as the 2011 Program of the Year.

The second issue of The Journal of Military Experience will be released during the symposium.

Through workshops, lectures, and demonstrations, practitioners and artists will help veterans to communicate experience through writing, drawing, painting, acting, dancing, and other creative acts.

Charlie Sherpa, the writer of the Red Bull Rising blog, will facilitate one of the workshops, focusing on how veterans can document and share experiences through online tools such as blogs and social media. Here's the workshop description:

Military-themed blogs, also known as “mil-blogs,” are unmediated presentations of experiences and opinions. Often, they are first-person narratives of military service-members, veterans, or family members. A mil-blog can be way to explore emotions and memories, document personal history, and/or establish connections with others who share similar interests. 

A mil-blog can additionally serve as a platform through which to collect, collate, and even market one’s fiction, poetry, photography, and other artistic efforts. After learning mil-blogging terms, tools, and tactics—including how to optimize output by publishing across social media channels—participants will brainstorm how to generate a blog based on their respective backgrounds and interests.

For more information on the symposium, click here.



To register for the free event, click here.