ASCEND: Artful Intelligence is well-being for a digital age. It’s Good Medicine!
Creating is the updraft, to improve well-being for life, work and learning.
ASCEND grew from our initial digital equity work in Taos, supporting La Tormenta de Taos, an intergenerational community play made possible by the Taos visiting artist program supported by the Fine Arts Education Act and the New Mexico Public Education Department, filmed by TrueKids1 youth digital media project.
ASCEND provides shared experiences through storytelling and the arts, to equip families, students and community members with skills to navigate their emotions, make sense of their experiences and integrate these into their identities and futures.
Our challenge is to ensure that all families have the information, skills and support they need to take full advantage of existing broadband (high-speed Internet) options. The arts are how we connect people with digital opportunities, providing them with personal experiences of the empowered learning technology can bring to families’ homes.
In this way, we develop SELS – Social Emotional Life Skills.
All families must have the ability to improve their lives by taking full advantage of opportunities to learn that are promised to come with broadband.
Digital Outreach by Community Navigators
“Right now, our families and communities are facing more challenges than ever. It is time for those of us who have good Internet access, digital skills, tools and devices to use our privilege to help our neighbors who desperately need it.”
– Ferdi Serim (ASCEND Founder)
No matter our differences, each of us has only 24 hours in a day. But our choices about how to use this time defines privilege. “Free time” is not truly free, it’s paid for in other ways.
We ask you to invest one hour of your time, as you are able. In many cases, your investment makes it possible for us to support others.
We begin by supporting the Community Navigators who facilitate the exchange of skills and experience within our communities, valuing and rewarding the work done in the “core economy” of family, neighborhood, and community. This is Good Medicine.
Literacies beyond words
- Life Skills literacies mean understanding what’s going on inside us (social/emotional literacy) and between us (interpersonal and intrapersonal literacies) and are foundational for all other literacies
- Cultural literacies include all the arts in all their forms, including and beyond words (written and spoken). This allows us to use the arts to build bridges of shared experience between cultures and generations.
- Digital literacies are two way – both creating and using digital content, including AI, privacy/cybersecurity, financial literacy and entrepreneurship
Combined, these literacies support Social and Emotional Learning and Life Skills for Artful Intelligence.
We provide a framework for connection and action
