Creativity as a catalyst for personal, institutional, and societal health.
This mission has driven my work in domains as diverse as public schools, research centers, health care facilities, theatre companies, national service organizations, regional planning commissions, juvenile correctional facilities, and Research I universities. These experiences have afforded me the privilege of collaborating with MacArthur fellows, Obie, Tony, and Grammy winners in the development of educational programs and new works. As an educator, I couple openness—rooted in years of music and theatre improvisation—with backward design. As an ethos and practice, I view community engagement as a dialogue: a trust-based, shared endeavor that—when authentic, reciprocal, and courageous—can redress inequality and yield richer results than individual efforts.
I presently serve as an assistant professor of applied theatre in the School of Performing Arts and co-director of research at the Center for Communicating Science at Virginia Tech. Prior to these roles, I was the associate director of programming at the Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech for a decade. From 2015-17, I was an inaugural member of the Association of Performing Arts Professionals’ (APAP) Leadership Fellows program. As an artist, reviewer, and consultant, I have worked with APAP, Aquila Theatre, Extant Arts Company, Hamilton-Gibson Productions, Intercultural Leadership Institute, International Market for Contemporary Circus, Lost Nation Theatre, New Interfaces for Musical Expression, Pennsylvania Humanities Council, Rutgers University-Camden Center for Integrative and Computational Biology, Sojourn Theatre, and the TEAM. Projects I have led in arts-based community engagement, collaborative programming, and facilitation have been featured at conferences by the Engagement Scholarship Consortium, Network of Ensemble Theaters, Imagining America, APAP, Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities, International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, Association of American Colleges & Universities; and Social Theory, Politics, and the Arts. My writings have been published in Arts and Community Change: Exploring Cultural Development Policies, Practices and Dilemmas (Routledge Press, 2015) and Animating Democracy’s “A Working Guide to the Landscape of Arts for Change” series. I served as executive editor of the peer-reviewed academic journal Community Change from 2021-2024. Regarding my education, I received a B.A. with Honors from Bucknell University and M.F.A. from Virginia Tech, where I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Planning, Governance, & Globalization. My interdisciplinary research has focused on representation among community stakeholders in private foundations’ decision-making.
Jon Catherwood-Ginn 