2024 Facing Race: A National Conference

Facing Race 2024 Breakout Session Application

Facing Race is a multiracial, multi-issue, intergenerational conference that underscores campaigns, projects, research, and art, promoting systemic solutions to racial justice challenges. At Facing Race, attendees receive the tools and knowledge to dismantle systemic racism in their communities.

For 2024, we are welcoming in-person proposals for engaging 90-minute breakout sessions. These sessions can manifest in various formats, such as film screenings, panel discussions, hands-on art projects, or skill-building.

Each breakout session can accommodate up to two presenters and is designed for an audience ranging from 45 to 75 attendees.

* Please read all sections in their entirety*

2024 Facing Race "Our Power, Our Solutions"

Our 2024 theme underscores the strength of unity. By harnessing our collective power, we can find and enact solutions to dismantle systemic racism. As we convene in St. Louis, we honor its rich legacy of activism, particularly the Movement for Black Lives. Let St. Louis' story of transformation guide your sessions, spotlighting the immense power communities have when they come together for change.

Tracks to Consider for Your Session:

1. Power to Organize: Focus on the strategies and successes in building the collective power of communities of color to advance racial justice.
2. Power to Transform Institutions: Delve into the steps and strategies to embed racial equity within institutional decision-making processes and policies, reshaping public sectors for the better.
3. Power to Shape Narrative: Engage with tools and strategies that craft stories that challenge racial stereotypes and promote unity.

As you design your breakout session, we encourage you to integrate these core elements into your presentations, ensuring they resonate with our overarching theme and tracks.

Presenter Scholarship: For Facing Race 2024, Race Forward will cover two nights of lodging on November 20th & 21st, 2024. Each pair of presenters will be accommodated in a double occupancy room. Please be advised that presenters will be responsible for their own travel- ground transportation and flight costs. We encourage all potential presenters to consider this when submitting their applications and making arrangements to participate.

Breakout Session Design Elements:
 When crafting your proposal, consider the following checklist to ensure your session aligns with the goals and values of Facing Race:

• Participatory: Ensure your workshop is interactive, promoting two-way communication between participants and presenters and incorporating engaging hands-on activities.
• Practical: Equip participants with tangible tools, skills, and concepts they can implement.
• Systemic Analysis: Engage facilitators and participants in examining systems of power and racism's structural dimensions, bringing to light root causes and contributing factors.
• Solutions-Oriented: Provide actionable, equitable solutions to modify systems, reallocate power, and promote racial equity.
• Action-Oriented: Link the workshop to active campaigns, grassroots community organizing, and contemporary movement-building endeavors.
• Multiracial and Intersectional: Ensure facilitators possess a multiracial and intersectional perspective, even if focusing on a specific racial group. We also recommend a multiracial team of facilitators.
• Intergenerational: Ensure the content resonates with youth and adults, emphasizing multi-generational strategies.
• Narrative Change: Contribute to crafting and amplifying stories that challenge conventional narratives about race; emphasize the dignity, vision, and leadership of POC, especially Black and Indigenous individuals; spotlight the ramifications of systemic racism in conjunction with other oppressions; and underscore the universal advantages of racial justice.

Breakout Sessions We DON'T Encourage:

• Lectures or academic paper presentations.
• Sessions centered mainly on the personal and interpersonal dynamics of racism.
• Workshops that prioritize “diversity” training, cultural competency, cross-racial dialogues, and multi-cultural awareness, or that stress training models over actionable strategies.
• Sessions by national entities without a tangible connection to grassroots communities.
• Sessions are devoid of solution-oriented content.
• Proposals by individuals who aren't affiliated with or accountable to social justice organizations or communities.