Melissa Kaplan stops by The Convo to talk about "Take a Stand! Sit In!" an annual event aimed at inspiring people to take action towards the betterment of our world. This year's "Take a Stand! Sit In!" theme is climate change and it will foster an exchange of ideas and knowledge among faculty, staff, students, and community leaders. As a part of the Capital City Film Festival, attendees will have the opportunity to participate in both in-person sessions and virtual WebEx discussions taking place April 9th and 10th.

Website: Take A Stand! Sit In!

Website: Capital City Film Festival

Website: LCC Take A Stand! Sit In! Event Page

Welcome to Community Combos, a podcast and radio program from lcc. Connect with conversations about what's happening in Lansing and around mid Michigan. Hey, it's Daedalian back on the convo once again.

Joining me in the studio today is a very familiar voice. It is Melissa Kaplan. Hi, Melissa.

Hi, Daedalian.

Now, here at the college, of course, you're the academic and arts outreach coordinator, but you are coming today to talk to me a little bit about an event where you serve as a part of their steering committee.

Yes, as part of my job, academic and arts outreach coordinator, I create and facilitate and work with interdisciplinary teams to create programming that involves the arts with other disciplines. And Take a Stand Sit in is one of those interdisciplinary programming events that is now an annual event. It happens every spring semester.

And what it is, basically an evening plus a day of sessions in which faculty, staff, guest artists, community leaders take a stand on something they're a subject they're passionate about or that they're teaching or that they're researching. All three of those things kind of tie in together.

And us, the attendees, sit in and learn about it and potentially learn some action that we may take to incorporate what we're learning into our own lives, into our own world. Over the. These sessions have focused on a range of different subjects. And this year, our theme is the environment.

And so we're looking at climate change through the lens of arts and humanities and science and different cultures.

Okay, so this is a part of what you do here at the college?

It is part of what I do here at the college.

There's really a group of five of us, plus our technology experts here on campus, because four of our sessions are via Webex. So this will happen April 9th and 10th this year. The evening of April 9th is in person in partnership with the Capital City Film Festival.

And then on April 10th, we have four different WebEx sessions.

Okay, so when I went to the website, it looked like it only had it as April 9th, but this is the 9th and the 10th.

The 9th and the 10th. Yes. And we're fleshing out the website. So the evening of April 9th will be, as I said, in partnership with the Capital City Film Festival.

This is our second year having Take a Stand in Capital City Film Fest partner. It'll be a free program open to the entire Community.

And that will be at the Central United Methodist Church at 6pm and then on Thursday, April 10, starting at 10 in the morning, we have four 80 minute sessions and we're kicking it off with the first session with international arts and climate educator Chantel Bilodeau.

And she's the co founder of climate change Theater Action, which is an international festival that uses theater to tell climate stories and bring action to communities around climate change. She's a playwright and as I said, she's an educator. We'll have a session in which LCC faculty and staff lead what we call flash talks.

So there might be three or four different faculty and staff who are each doing a short talk, 10 minutes or less, and that will be focused on small acts that you can do to save the world. Again, relating to climate and the environment.

Picking up a piece of garbage.

Well, exactly. Or composting that garbage.

There you go.

Yeah. And then we have a session with students in which they're going to be teaching us and talking to us about things that they do. So sort of how tos.

And then we'll have a session, a panel with different community organizations that are working in the environment or working toward clean environment and climate change. So those are the four sessions that will happen on Thursday and then the films happen on Wednesday.

And yes, right now we're filling in the blanks on our website.

All right, so let's rewind and come back again. You said Wednesday night. Now that's taking place at the United Methodist Church.

It's actually the Central United Methodist Church. It's on Capitol Avenue and that's one of their locations for the entire film festival.

The film festival runs April 2nd through 12th, so we're smack dab in the middle of it that Wednesday evening. And our program will be three short films, two documentary shorts and a narrative film.

And I had the pleasure and the challenge of being one of, I think, many people serving the film festival as a reviewer of film. So it gave me just a real insight into the massive scope of really interesting and quality material that gets sent to the film festival.

So I was like on the lookout what might tie in with our themes. And they sent some for me to consider as well. One of the films is out of Milwaukee.

It's called Something in the Water and it's a 12 minute documentary short about their challenge of dealing with lead in the Milwaukee water system.

Oh, wow. That's very familiar to us here in Michigan too, isn't it?

It is, it is. The narrative is kind of a combo of Genres. It's very powerful, but it's also funny and poignant. It's fiction. It's from Canada.

It's called the Last Rhino. And in that a woman learns about the extinction of the great white rhino. She happens to be a grandmother.

She is appalled and frightened for the future for her grandchildren. And so she takes it upon herself to try and change she and her husband's approach to how they live in their very nice middle class life.

And so, like I said, there's a lot of humor, but it's also very poignant and it's very powerful in under 20 minutes. And I think people are really going to enjoy that. The third film is so exciting because of the local connections.

It's a documentary called the Sustainable Clean Energy for the Brazilian Amazon.

And that applies locally too. How so?

Well, one of the directors happens to be part of the LCC Media Services team, Dave Wassinger.

Oh, there it is.

Absolutely surprised me after I saw the film and I saw.

And you didn't even know.

I didn't know.

And what it focuses on is an interdisciplinary team from MSU called the Convergence Team that brings together scientists and social scientists who work to find energy solutions for off the grid communities.

And this documentary, it's under half an hour and it follows them as they install solar arrays and a turbine in to communities in the Brazilian Amazon. A lot of local ties. We'll have a discussion afterwards.

Filmmakers from Milwaukee are coming in and we'll have Dave Wasinger participating and hopefully some members of that Convergence team right here at msu. So awesome. It's just really exciting to have the local connection and to have that be at the film festival for the entire community to see.

So we're excited about that partnership. It really gives the Take a Stand forum a chance to connect into the community.

Our programming is certainly focused on student learning, but it's focused on community connections.

Right, right. And going back to that, of course, this is open to the community. Let's walk Back to the WebEx portion.

Yes.

Not everybody's familiar with WebEx. It's the same as Zoom for the most part. Does somebody need WebEx to view all this?

Depending on the device that you're using, I think you can download it onto your phone.

There's a link that will be on the website and you go to that link and you can access the programming that way, just as you would through your web browser. Right.

So it's not like you necessarily have to download the app.

You don't, you don't have to. And One of the things about our WebEx sessions is, yes, there are people talking, but we work with presenters to design them to be interactive, too.

Like Chantel Bilidel's session, the first session will be somewhat of a workshop, and she's focusing on solarpunk and positive possibilities in regards to climate, because news that is available to us isn't all negative, but, boy, news tends to weigh negative of all kinds.

And so it's real easy to miss some very exciting, innovative and hopeful work that's happening around the world in regards to the environment and to climate.

Which isn't to say that there aren't huge challenges, huge things that need to be dealt with, but we're hoping with this take a stand in all the sessions is that people will find ways that they can participate and make a difference.

And not even necessarily the same thing that one of our presenters is doing, but it might spark some interest and pursuing something else that occurs to them.

Right, right. Okay, so let's say you were talking. I mean, the event's free, so the price is right.

The price is right.

But let's say somebody's thinking, well, it kind of sounds interesting. What would be your push to say, you know what, you really wanted to be a part of this?

Because for a couple reasons with the films, I'd say, come and show up. You're going to be sitting in a theater getting to see some really quality films. You don't have to say a thing.

You can sit there and watch, you can eat some popcorn. But you'll also have a chance, if you want to ask some questions and to learn about how the films were made and the content a little bit more.

The Capital City Film Festival is like one of the super cool things that happen here in the Lansing area. I don't know, has it been around 12 years? I'm not positive, but it has just landed and it's considered.

They put this in their tagline, so I'm gonna look it up. Moviemaker magazine rated it one of the top 25 coolest film festivals in the world.

Really?

So that's right here in Lansing.

That's awesome.

That's awesome. And as far as the WebEx sessions, you can be as with zoom, you can sit there with your camera off, you can listen, you can participate in the chat.

You can also participate, however, a session might be designed for you to participate. That could be, in some cases, we might have some breakouts, so there might be a chance to chat. You get to meet other people.

One of the things I love that I think is the power of interdisciplinary work is everybody brings what they know to the room, their way of knowing. You might come as somebody who's really interested in studying art or who's studying robotics or nursing.

And each of those disciplines approaches their knowledge in certain ways, and it's certain kinds of knowledge and it has certain kinds of applications. But you put all of this together and who knows what kind of new ideas might come from that.

And it's a powerful way to approach challenging problems as well as to get people together from different disciplines to approach it. Transdisciplinary or multi or interdisciplinary, Take a Stand is at its heart, very much about that. So I think it's exciting from that regard.

And the sessions, the WebEx sessions, they're 80 minutes, so it's not a huge time investment. But if you come to one, you might be like, oh, I'm really interested in this one too.

So if I was to distill down what you said there, I'm going to say community and connection is your reason for people to come to this or to encourage somebody.

It is.

And connecting with your community, really?

Yes. And learning a little bit more about what's going on in the environment in our area and around the world.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You unpacked a lot here today, so let's go ahead and give a summary real quick. What's the name of the event?

It's called Take a Stand, Sit In.

When's it happen?

April 9 at 6pm as part of Capital City Film Festival at Central United Methodist Church, downtown Lansing. And then Thursday, April 10, beginning at 10am till 5:30 on WebEx. And you can get that information. Gosh, I wish I had a lot.

Of information I was going to give you. Where do people go to find out more about this?

So there's Takeastand. OpenLCC.net is the website.

I'll have that in the show notes. But at the same time, I think if you probably typed in Take a.

Stand, Take a Stand, Sit in LCC.

In your favorite web browser, then you'd probably be able to locate it that way.

Yep. You'd either get to our website, you get to the LCC website, where there's a calendar of events that it'll take you to and the link is there too.

So that just is like a much longer URL that I'm not going to say on air.

Right, right. And that's exactly it. You want to make it easy for people to know again. I'll have it in the show notes for this episode. Though.

Just go to lccconnect.com and you'll be able to get there from the Community Convos webpage. Melissa Kaplan I think we got everything right.

I think we did. Thank you so much as always.

Thanks for coming in and talking with us here on the convo. You've been listening to Community Convos, a program from lcc. Connect with conversations about what's happening in our community.

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