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American Arts Incubator (AAI) is a creative exchange program that utilizes community-driven digital and new media art projects to instigate dialogue, build communities, bolster local economies, and further social innovation. Each incubator addresses a relevant social or environmental challenge such as economic equity, youth empowerment, gender equality, and environmental health.
AAI sends a U.S. artist abroad to collaborate with local communities in each exchange country during a month-long incubator. These creative collaborations transfer skills in art, technology, and entrepreneurship. Through digital and new media art workshops, they facilitate dialogue and explorations of the social challenge. AAI provides small grants to participants who break into teams to prototype creative projects applying workshop skills to the challenge. Each exchange culminates in an open house that showcases the prototypes and solicits public feedback. After the international incubators are complete, ZERO1 hosts one visiting international participant from each exchange country for a 10-day professional development workshop in the San Francisco Bay Area during the summer to further build participant skills.
American Arts Incubator is an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs developed in partnership with ZERO1.
In 2019, Britt Ransom traveled to Pachuca, Mexico to bring her knowledge of digital fabrication and physical computing to explore ways to empower participants in aiding the preservation of local indigenous cultural identity. Together with participants, she worked to build technical and creative skills while guiding conversation around personal and regional histories. Her workshops explored how new technologies can create a bridge from traditional to contemporary methods of fabrication that honor cultural identity.