Navigate / search

Pomegranate Center teaches the art and practice of collaboration. Through our unique engagement model, we help communities discover their ability to spur change and develop their capacity for effective and inclusive collaboration. Our team of professional facilitators, designers, and community engagement specialists brings a unique set of skills that allow a wide variety of clients to develop their vision of community. This self-expression results in a sense of pride and connection with those involved, often aligning divided or disparate ideologies, to create a commonality that did not exist before.

Goodbye Fahad: An Exit Interview With Our Outgoing Communications Intern

This month, we say goodbye to our communications intern Fahad Aldaajani. Fahad joined us from the University of Washington’s CommLead program, where he earned a Master of Communications in Digital Media. Hailing from Saudi Arabia, Fahad had never experienced firsthand a community process. He attended his first community meeting while at Pomegranate Center. Fahad’s eye for detail and knack for visual storytelling has resulted in numerous collaborations over the last six months, including our Woods at Golden Given project video, Pomegranate Method training promo, and our newly launched Image of the Future podcast. We say goodbye with sadness over the departure of such a talented filmmaker and dedicated community member, but with excitement over all the amazing work we know we’ll see from him in the future.

Read more

Ground Rules Deep Dive #12: Explore Unconventional Approaches; New Conditions Require New Solutions

By Milenko Matanovic

Together we are capable of extraordinary achievements. Over the years, Pomegranate Center has proven this by encouraging people to uphold a code of conduct that leads to creativity and collaboration. This code of conduct, what we call “ground rules,” is essential to creating a positive atmosphere that focuses on how things can be improved, free from complaints. In this series of short essays, I will look at different ground rules, evaluate why they are important, and share stories from the field.

Read more

Image of the Future Episode 8: I Teach You, You Teach Me

Milenko welcomes longtime Pomegranate collaborator Bill Cleveland to the podcast. As Director of the Center for the Study of Art and Community, Bill focuses on the development of cultural partnerships. To that end, Bill believes that future citizens must practice empathy and humility with each other. Having seen so much of the world and interacted with many cultures, he found that every encounter with other people is an opportunity for an exchange of wisdom.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Making Waves

Forty-eight years after leaving his home country of Slovenia, Milenko Matanovic went home. This time he was not rebelling against the state, nor shaking up the status quo; instead, he made waves.

Waves is Milenko’s art retrospective that opened last month in Ljubljana. Milenko’s show includes some of his earliest art pieces from his time as a founding member of the renowned OHO Collective, examples of Pomegranate Center’s collaborative artwork created with local communities, as well as brand new pieces created for the exhibit. He chose the exhibit’s name to introduce his idea of the waves of inspiration that have come to him over the years as an artist, community activist, and founder of Pomegranate Center.

Read more

Image of the Future Episode Five: Where Art Meets Democracy

On February 15th, Pomegranate Center hosted our first ever live-taped episode of the Image of the Future podcast. We took our experiment in democratic dialogue out of the studio and onto the stage in front of a live audience. To mark the special occasion, we invited two guests to join host Milenko Matanovic: Valerie Curtis-Newton is a professor in Acting and Directing and Head of Performance at the University of Washington and oversees the Hansberry Project, a professional African American theatre lab. Ben Phillips is a senior program manager for Citizen University. 

Milenko interviewed Valerie and Ben about what lies at the intersection of art and democracy, the tension that exists in public art projects, and what makes them hopeful about the future.

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Pomegranate Center News

Keep up with new projects, upcoming training, and all the news from Pomegranate Center!