In this workshop, participants will learn how to use asset mapping, both in the form of literal maps and as an organizing tool, to collaboratively organize information, understand community needs, and kickstart community projects.
What is asset mapping? Asset mapping is a tool that allows you to incorporate community input into a map of resources, strengths, and challenges in your community. Asset maps help you and your community partners recognize patterns and gaps in community resources and determine the foundations upon which you can build a community project. While asset maps are often used in the organizing stage of a project, they can also be an end product. For example, see the Racine LGBTQ+ Asset Map, completed as part of Wisconsin Humanities’ Community Powered initiative. Join Wisconsin Humanities’, Chrissy Widmayer, Director of Community Powered, to learn about this method and others to ground your next community-centered project.
RSVPs are required and seats are limited. To join, please send an email with your name and affiliation to: weindling@wisc.edu. Light refreshments will be available.
Chrissy Widmayer is the Director of Community Powered at Wisconsin Humanities. Community Powered is an initiative that puts the humanities tools of history, culture, and storytelling in the hands of Wisconsinites through training and educational programming. Chrissy has a PhD in Folklore Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. She spent over ten years teaching folklore, writing, oral history, and other humanities courses at the college level in both Wisconsin and Virginia. Her folklore research explores how communities create connections and relationships using foodways and storytelling, and has appeared in Narrative Culture, Digest: A Journal of Foodways and Culture, New Directions in Folklore, and Cultural Analysis. Chrissy is also a co-founder of WiseFolk Productions and content creator for Folkwise.