Community Impact Lab

Creativity. Equity. Impact.

Powered by the arts.

Submit your interest to be contacted about the next event!

Turn your theater practice into a

force for community change

You already know art can change the world.
You’ve seen what happens:

  • when a story cracks open a heart

  • when a room breathes in the same rhythm

  • when a moment on stage becomes a moment of awakening

What if your art could do even more?

What if we could support our arts organizations and improve our communities at the same time?

What if we could attract new audiences and funding while increasing understanding, empathy, and action on the most pressing issues?

At Out of Hand, we’re doing it.

Since 2018, we’ve quadrupled our revenue—while moving our neighbors to action and elevating the role of the arts in our community.

It’s a win for art, a win for business, and a win for our community.

And now, we’re sharing the model with you!

Grounded in research

The Community Impact Lab is built on more than two decades nationally recognized practice in arts-based community engagement.

The Arts-Based Community Engagement (ABCE) Model "connects an arts organization’s community engagement efforts through partnerships around social issues with revenue generation and community support." It shows how art, participation, and community change interconnect.

Welcome to the Community Impact Lab

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What you will receive

The Community Impact Lab provides a foundation for equity through arts-based practice. With the Licensed Program, organizations can take the next step and launch their own Equitable Dinner ® using a nationally recognized program.

Embodied equity practices that go beyond checklists

You’ll engage in embodied, creative processes that invite communities into co-creation, making equity a lived experience.

A Network of fellow creative leaders walking the same road

By connecting with peers across communities, you’ll join a sustained practice of collaboration.

A team within your organization that shares this language and path

The Lab builds relational trust and shared power by developing a common vocabulary and practice of equity rooted in the arts.

Available only through our licensed progamming package

  • The complete Equitable Dinners ®  program, ready to launch in your community

Rooted in the ABCE model, this isn’t just a toolkit—it’s a proven arts-based civic practice where performance and dialogue act as catalysts for connection and change.

  • Get up to 5 hours of personalized consulting with Out of Hand Theater’s team to support the launch and success of your program.

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You’ll fit right in if you’re a…

  • Director or producer who wants your work to create more than applause

  • Teaching artist or facilitator craving more depth, connection, and impact

  • Equity lead or changemaker tired of surface-level DEI and ready to embody the work

  • Theater org looking to grow your community partnerships and creative mission

If you’re ready to stop checking boxes and start cultivating something lasting—this is for you.

How the community impact lab works

Program Snapshot

Two-Day Launch Immersion
Kick off with embodied leadership practices + creative frameworks for civic change

7 Monthly Core Modules
One weekday (12–4pm) + one evening (6–8pm) per month
Each one builds real skills: from cultural fluency and systems-thinking to container-building and creative alignment

Capstone Arts-Based Community Project
You lead your own Equitable Dinner—a story + dialogue experience grounded in local issues

Ongoing Support
Get up to 5 hours of personalized consulting from Out of Hand + a national cohort of peers.

What you’ll learn

  • Each module includes tools, templates, and live practice sessions.

    This work is not about perfection—it’s about practice, presence, and showing up differently.

    Schedule | All modules are 12pm-4pm ET
    October 21, 2025 | November 4, 2025 | November 18, 2025 | December 16, 2025 | January 13, 2026 | February 17, 2026 | March 17, 2026

    Individual module registration links provided below.

  • Before we intervene, we must first see differently.

    Appreciative Inquiry and strengths-based leadership become artistic practices of reframing: turning resistance into creative tension.

    You’ll leave with tools to:

    You’ll leave with tools to:

    • Facilitate co-creative, strengths-based conversations

    • Reframe resistance as creative tension that opens possibility

    • Engage communities through trust and shared vision

  • Theater isn’t just storytelling—it’s system disruption through embodiment.

    • The Equitable Dinners model shows how performance + dialogue co-create civic engagement

    You’ll leave with tools to:

    • Craft participatory theater experiences that invite co-creation

    • Facilitate meaningful dialogue across differences

    • Use performance as a catalyst for local change

  • Cultural competency is not a checklist—it’s a lifelong mirror.

    • Arts-based reflection reveals our own cultural filters, enabling us to connect authentically across differences.

    You’ll leave with tools to:

  • To disrupt a system, you must first see it clearly.

    • Arts help communities surface history and story, making structural inequities visible in lived, local contexts.

    You’ll leave with tools to:

    • Map how inequity operates in systems and stories

    • Facilitate equity conversations rooted in context

    • Connect historic injustice to present-day creative practice

    CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THIS MODULE | January 13, 2026 2-4PM EST

  • Equity is not just a principle—it’s architecture for practice.

    • Participants learn to apply equity through shared power frameworks and collaborative design.

    You’ll leave with tools to:

    • Integrate equity goals into your projects collaboratively

    • Co-create accountability frameworks with partners

    • Sustain cultural shifts beyond one-time events

    CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THIS MODULE | February 17, 2026 2-4PM EST

  • True transformation doesn’t need to be forced. It needs to be held.

    • Facilitators design arts-based containers that allow vulnerability, trust, and emergence.

    You’ll leave with tools to:

    • Design emotionally intelligent, art-infused spaces

    • Hold space for discomfort, silence, and revelation

    • Facilitate experiences that move from insight to integration

    CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THIS MODULE | March 17, 2026 2-4PM EST

  • Leadership that lacks soul becomes strategy.

    • Participants use creative practice to reconnect to purpose, aligning artistry with equity vision.

    You’ll leave with tools to:

    • Articulate your leadership vision as a creative narrative

    • Align your artistic practice with equity purpose

    • Sustain your work through integrated, embodied creativity

  • Evening explorations for those ready to meet the deeper currents—where equity becomes embodied through art, dialogue, and co-creation.

    Schedule | All sessions are 6pm-8pm ET
    November 20, 2025 | January 8, 2026 | February 5, 2026

    Individual Deep Dive registration links provided below.

  • From dominance to shared authorship.

    Through performance, reflection, and collaborative story-making, participants unpack how white-dominant norms shape arts institutions and community life. By practicing co-creation and amplifying marginalized voices, this session models what it means to redistribute authorship and power.

    You’ll leave with tools to:

    • Identify dominant narratives in arts and culture

    • Practice rebalancing voice and authorship through creative processes

    • Design spaces that shift authority toward community ownership

    CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THIS SALON | November 20, 2025 6-8PM EST

  • Beyond anti-bias—toward liberation.

    Using theater and embodied practice, participants explore how racism functions across structures and psyches. The session emphasizes daily, relational, and institutional practices that move from harm to healing.

    You’ll leave with tools to:

    • Recognize embodied and systemic expressions of racism

    • Apply creative practices that disrupt harm and foster healing

    • Embed liberation-oriented practices into community and organizational life

    CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THIS SALON | January 8, 2026 6-8PM EST

  • Words as art, stories as systems.

    Participants explore the creative and systemic power of language. This session makes visible how culture is shaped by words and invites participants to practice conscious, transformative speech that generates equity.

    You’ll leave with tools to:

    • Analyze how language reproduces or resists inequity

    • Use story and performance as methods of truth-telling

    • Cultivate ongoing practices of conscious, equity-centered communication

    CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THIS SALON | February 5, 2026 6-8PM EST

  • Capstone Project

    The group will design and lead their own Equitable Dinner, a performance and dialogue event grounded in local story and collective action.

    This is more than a culminating event. It is a living demonstration of the Arts-Based Community Engagement (ABCE) model, where creative practice, shared power, and story converge to transform community life. Guided by research from RAND on what makes arts-based engagement successful, trust, co-creation, and skilled facilitation, you’ll design an event that is both artful and effective, sparking lasting dialogue and change.

    That’s why your Lab experience is more than training, it’s a research-based pathway to impact.

Why it matters

You don’t need to do more.
You need to do differently.

Community Impact Lab gives you the structure, support, and creative spark to:

  • Build trust with your community through shared stories

  • Use theater as a living civic tool, not just a mirror

  • Center equity not as an add-on—but as a way of being

  • Lead projects that create room for people to feel, shift, and act

This is the kind of work that changes people.
This is the kind of work that changes you.

Ready to join?

We’re gathering a cohort of bold, curious, justice-driven creatives who believe art can do more than reflect the world—it can reimagine it.

Let’s stop producing change and start cultivating it. Let’s host spaces where transformation can take root.

One story. One conversation. One community at a time.

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