Latest / PCMA Convene Podcast / Talk: How Art Transforms Events: Designing Meaningful, Human-Centered Meeting Experiences

Transcript

Talk: How Art Transforms Events: Designing Meaningful, Human-Centered Meeting Experiences · PCMA Convene Podcast

• Convene Talk, ep. 98/June 12, 2026 *Note: the transcript is AI generated, excuse typos and inaccuracies Magdalina Atanassova: This is the Convene Podcast. Welcome to another Convene Talk. Jen, what have you planned for today's discussion? It's your turn. Jennifer N. Dienst: Thanks Maggie. It is my turn. So I wanted to chat about our June issue, specifically our cover story, which we kind of just took a look at the intersection of art and events. And I love this story because this is a story I think most of us collaborated on. And I feel like this is such a great example of our cover stories. You know, the. When we all work together, I think it brings together our different perspectives, different ways of looking at things. And that's exactly what this story did. So I will start with what I focused on, which I took a look at an event for educators and how they incorporate art into their educational sessions. So this is a really interesting organization. It's called ISTE, which stands for the International Society for Technology and Education. They recently merged with another association called the association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. They merge in 2023. So now they have an annual conference that brings together about 17,000 people. And these are attendees from the pretty much the entire educational spectrum. So you've got teachers, you've got counselors. I actually have a friend who knew about it, chatted with her a little bit about it, all types of people who work in education. And one of the cool things about this organization is it's kind of taking a look at technology's role in educating young people. But one of the ways they do that is by incorporating art, which I love. So one of the things that I talk about in this story is it's not STEM anymore necessarily, it's STEAM. So that's adding art to the standard STEM acronym. Science, technology, Engineering, and Math. So these educators are coming to this conference to, you know, learn how to teach their students. And so obviously these educational sessions need to be pretty top tier. It's education for educators. Right. And I thought it was really interesting how so many sessions which they had, I think about 1700 plus learning opportunities and 2000 plus presenters. Art was really a consistent theme through all of them. I found several examples of sessions that incorporate art as a mechanism for educators themselves learning how to do something in the session. But then also there were some really interesting kind of side experiences for educators to engage in where art played a big role. And that was that included an art exhibit for attendees so they could actually exhibit their art. You know, people could come and browse through it and interact with it. You also had some really interesting interactive excursions that took educators out into the destination. I'LL give an example. So this upcoming event, it's happening at June 28th through July 1st, it's in Orlando at the Orange County Convention Center. They have an Art and Self Knowledge Reflections on Myself through Art and AI session. It's a session that kind of helps educators walk through how they can use art to help students reflect on their identity. And it. And it incorporates, you know, using AI. And then there was another one where they took participants on a photo walk of the host venue and taking pictures of architecture and the aeroponic gardens. And it was an exercise designed to share ideas and perspectives. So I really loved talking to the Chief Experience Officer, Jennifer Reagan Foer, for this story. She just had some really interesting insights. She thinks that incorporating art and a multitude of spectrums is really important. She said that joy in learning really does open the learner up to our art invokes joy. And joy in learning really does open the learner up to consider new ideas and to build their imagination. So I thought it was a really great example of how art can be meaningful in a space like this. So I want to take it to Barbara, who kind of steered this story. She did some great pieces, some great interviews. And I want to know what were your big takeaways from doing this story and what excited you about doing the story? Barbara Palmer: Oh, thanks, Jen. You know, this subject to me is like, it was endlessly fascinating, but I also found this really challenging. Like, I really wrestled with this. And I think it's because it's so big. Like, art is so basically human and communal. And it is just goes back in our history. Like really just the very first cave paintings is really like, you know, that people look at that and that's like, that's kind of what makes us human, is our ability to express things to one another through drawing, movement. And it was so interesting to me about just the art and the science. I think almost every event planner knows the power of music. There's very few large events in business or otherwise, that music is not a part of it. And it's because music really brings us together. It puts us on the same page. And there was a study that I read about in a wonderful book called you'd Brain on Art. That art invokes the same neural impulses in your brain as social connection. It kind of bypasses your kind of very analytical thinking brain. I had great interviews, but I was particularly just fascinated with the work of Adam Rosendahl. He's got a business called Late Nite Art. He's an artist, and he said he got a degree in fine art, and then he said he couldn't really even get an internship. It was just very difficult. And he started teaching at a high school in Seattle, and he taught art, but he developed this interactive process. The students had challenges, and he found that, like, by using art, it was a way to kind of bypass kind of the more rational ways. I don't know if that's exactly the right word, but he developed this process and now he does it at large corporations. He's worked with Apple and Google and Pixar, and he calls it art as like, a secret side door to connection. And these workshops are not like, it's not like you're going and you're like, you know, painting ceramics together and, like, it loosens up the conversation. It really just kind of helps you unmask, like, you kind of drop your. You know, we all come into meetings and we are sharing part of ourselves, and the other part is kind of behind the curtain. And he just, you know, just by drawing and telling stories and listening to music together, he's just had incredible results. Michelle, I know you worked on some really interesting parts of the story, and I'd love to hear what you have to say. Michelle Russell: Thanks, Barbara. I really want to talk about the cover of our. Of our story in the magazine. I think one of the calling cards of Convene is that we have art on the cover in every issue specially commissioned for that particular issue. And this time, Point Five Design, which is our design studio, works with the artists. Picked an artist who's very young and new, and it was an opportunity for them to create art in a new way. It was a fresh opportunity. And I absolutely love the way the illustration turned out. It's Ellyx Martinez. And they had this way of showing to me how art really affects us as people. As Barbara talked about it going way back to ancient history, how we respond to art, it's not just intellectual, it's emotional. And the way that the illustration shows it, it's like your soul. And it resonates within you, in your soul. And that to me was just like, just perfectly captured what we're trying to get across. My piece for the cover story were two mathematic conferences. And math is my least favorite subject. But I wish that I had been told as a child that math is the universal language, because maybe then I would have. Would have cared about it more. But that is the way, like, we all as a society agree about numbers and amounts. And these people who attend these conferences are mathematicians who I probably couldn't have two minute conversation with it would go completely over my head. But the, the thing that they have at their, at these two events, the BRIDGES is a conference just for people who combine mathematics with art. And the other is the American Mathematical Society and they have an art exhibit. And when I asked him like, what's the purpose? He said it just gives people a chance to think differently and not such heavy math because their sessions are really mentally taxing. And to go into a room with other people and to see how math principles are put into artistic form just is a whole different break from the event. So I thought that was really interesting and just the way that they do it. And when I spoke to someone from the association itself, the American Mathematical Society, she talked specifically about how you do that within any kind of event, have an art exhibit and the benefits. And one of the things she said, which I thought was a very practical take on it, is if you have an art exhibit near your exhibit hall, you're going to probably please your exhibitors because there'll be more foot traffic and that would be a good thing for your event as a whole. So that's really what my contribution was. But I'm really excited about this issue. It's fun. I think it's different. We've talked about art before and its importance in facilities and how that's become like convention centers are now becoming more thoughtful about their art collections and hotels. And so we've talked about venues before, but this is the first time that we really talked about how to incorporate art in events themselves and what impact that has. Barbara Palmer: Barbara Please, please, please look at the issue, listeners, because the illustrations are beautiful from the math exhibit, but there were photographs from Adam Rosendahl's workshops and we have a lot of pictures of meetings in the magazine and the expressions on the faces and the engagement and the is so apparent in that. One of the things I was thinking and that I talked to this great guy named Nir Hindi and he founded a business called the Artian. And he also talks about business, artistry and the need for art in business and how thinking like an artist aids business business. And what I think the one thing that he said that really stuck with me is that artists start out sometimes when we when I do something, I start at the beginning. What do I need to do right now? Like, what have I done in the past? What did I like, let's get started, start the same way. And he said artists are opposite. They're looking at what is the opposite end result. How do we want what do we want people to feel? How do we want them to think differently and feel differently when they leave? And I thought that was really great advice. And I think one of the things we also talked about, he didn't use these words, but in my mind it was like art has kind of become like art with a big A. Like art is in museums. People are quiet about art. They want to that, you know, it's like it's a very elevated, exclusive luxury experience. And he kind of flipped, you know, when he brought art exhibits to other places, like, you know, into incubators where computer scientists were working on things, put a pop up art exhibit just to help people, just to put it back into where people are working. And so it made it very accessible for event organizers that it's not, oh, redesign everything about your meeting with art at the center, but understand the power of art and begin to experiment. Like, add an art exhibit, add music, add storytelling. Like, I just feel like if event organizers think about their events, they see all these places that they're already doing it, an opportunity like with music. And we did write about an exercise. It was a conference here in Oakland, and it was the conference about conferences. And one of the exercises that the organizer did was have people sit and draw each other. Like two people just draw quick portraits of each other. And how that just kind of interrupts. It makes a connection and it interrupts what you think you're doing and it kind of just changes the feeling in the room to add those things. So it was a lot of fun to work on and wonderful to see the art come together. And you talked about the soul. That was. That's one thing that Adam Rosendahl said. It's very serious work for these corporations because they're looking for improving their business. They're looking to solve problems, they're looking for innovative breakthroughs, which art does help you with those kind of creative breakthroughs. But he said it's also like just soulful work. Magdalina Atanassova: And I was thinking in this issue, we didn't have just a cover story on art. We did have more art intertwined into other stories. And one of the stories that kind of touched on it in a different sense was Kate's story. I don't know if Kate, if you want to share a bit more about it, about ECR. Kate Mulcrone: So what I loved about working on this story was that it was about digital art and creating immersive digital art without using AI at all. And I feel like every story I read nowadays about digital art is implicitly about AI. Because they're using AI, whereas the people at ESR, they used something called Unreal Engine, which is like a 3D rendering program. And then everything else they did actually just was human ingenuity. They worked really closely with the venue, and I think it helped. And my source even said this, that they meet at this place every year. It's the Vienna Center, Austria. And so they're so familiar with it that it gave them the freedom to experiment. And it was that quote in particular, too, that I thought really tied in with the themes of the cover story, where you have a canvas to work with, and it's up to the humans to actually make it mean something. And in this case, it was just the meeting is for a bunch of radiologists. So they take what these people do for their bread and butter, medical imaging, and then they turn it into something really playful and fun and outside of the box. And then this transforms the experience itself, which it's the whole point. But I think it's exciting to think about how we can do this with technology rather than traditional art, which is more of the focus of the cover story. So I thought it was, like, a great way to tie it in, but also not step on the feet. What did you think, Barbara? Barbara Palmer: Well, you know, I just. I loved that story, Kate. It made me think about one of the very important ideas that I think every person I talk to said, it's like, art is not decoration. It's not, We've got this now. Let's decorate it. And your story was such a great illustration of that because they had, like, a story that put these things together. Like, it was just holistic, I think. You know, and I just feel like that is such a key, key thing to think about, is that art is not decoration. Like, it can be decorative. It's not the icing on the cake, it's part of the cake. Magdalina Atanassova: And I don't know, Jen, if you want to add here anything, I know you spoke with ECR as well. Jennifer N. Dienst: I did. And just for a little nugget of a story, it was a little sidebar in this cover story, but it focused their most recent meeting, and the theme was all around Greek mythology. And they used what Kate just spoke about, this kind of cool, poly stage installation, to create this environment that felt like stepping back into Athens in its heyday. And I thought it was really cool how they kind of blended it into the atmosphere, as well as some of the entertainment they brought up. I think it was for the plenary session, the keynote. They brought in some incredible entertainers so they made it a really cohesive part of their theme. And the intersection with that and radiology is really interesting. I also wanted to highlight that. I also kind of touched on this a little bit for our. There is a meeting for that column. We took a look at an association for people who work in African American museums and institutions. They met in Charleston, which is where I live, and I thought it was really interesting how they incorporated some local art and cultural institutions into the experience. So obviously this is people who work in this field, so it's pretty obvious they're going to kind of work that into the itinerary. But they worked with two really highly respected and regarded institutions here in Charleston, the International African American Museum, which is incredibly unique and recently opened, as well as the Gibbs Museum Museum of Art. So I highly recommend flipping all the way to the very last page and giving that a read as well, for. For some interesting insight into how they made their Charleston event very special. Magdalina Atanassova: And just flipping through the magazine in general, just because there's so many custom illustrations that we have. It's part of who we are and what we do. So I think that was just a beautiful way to kind of iterate the message of convene, especially at our. You know, this year we're celebrating our 40th anniversary, which we started convening leaders, and we're talking about it in each issue. So it was a nice kind of. It's all intertwined, all dots connect, which I love. Any additions or should we wrap it up or we can speak about art for days and days? Barbara Palmer: Yeah, you know, it's like, I feel like I hope this is not like, oh, this is the one story we're doing on art. Like, I feel like this is something that, you know, more and more, like convention centers now have just beautiful, you know, regional art, art that's local, just gorgeous. So it'll be exciting to see how other examples of this throughout the. Throughout business events. Magdalina Atanassova: And I think it's a good code to, if I'm professional, just to look around when you're doing site inspections, when you're organizing event, just take a moment, take a breath, just look at the art that's around, because there is plenty and it's beautiful and sometimes it tells a beautiful story. So with that, we'll link to the digital issue and hopefully you can find the print as well, which is, as we know, a whole different experience. And thank you for the great additions and opening that back door to what we couldn't fit into the pages. So thank you! Remember to subscribe to the Convene Podcast on your favorite listening platform to stay updated with our latest episodes. For further industry insights from the Convene team, head over to PCMA.org/convene. My name is Maggie. Stay inspired. Keep inspiring. And until next time.