Online Catalog and Interactive Site
Art Immersion Experience at UCEA Annual Convention
November 18-23, 2025, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Website and Artworks by irene h. yoon, with collaboration from Mónica Byrne-Jiménez and research assistance by Josh Samson.
Introduction
Leadership Love Letters in Dangerous Times is a research-creation project. It seeks to affirm and engender knowledge of love and imagination (Byrne-Jiménez & yoon, 2019) among faculty of color in the field of educational leadership, organizations, and policy (ELOP). It expresses all the feelings of love for ourselves, for our field, our work, our institutions, and for our futures: wonder, comfort, harmony, courage, rage, intellect, humor, pain, disappointment, indignation, grief, and peace. That is, this research-creation shares how Black, Indigenous, and Faculty of Color (BIFOC) practice creativity in their lives and/or work as assertions of wholeness and renewal. To learn more, visit “about the project.”
This Art Immersion Experience aims to engage you with images that are drawn from the data, an alternative mode of presenting research findings that urges you to move, participate, comment, wonder, feel, and connect with other people around you. Please leave comments, attend a UCEA Art Salon, chat with people near you, and take care of your bodymindspirits (yoon, 2022).
This online catalog and interactive site has images and discussion of works in the Art Immersion Experience. Each work has its own page with commentary, behind-the-scenes studies/sketches, quotations from interviews and love letters, and space for you to leave comments. This site provides access to our colleagues who cannot attend the UCEA Convention in person and creates ways for all to interact with the art and research findings, and to leave traces on the project.
If you post about this on Instagram, please use #UCEA25LoveLetters and #UCEA25ArtSalon!
Works in the Immersion Experience (by Theme)
Click on an image below to see the artworks in each thematic area.
UCEA Art Salons
Are you at the Convention in San Juan, PR? Join us in making art and writing leadership love letters (which you can send from the hotel to anywhere in the mainland United States)! Visit our wall of UCEA artists and imaginers. #UCEA25ArtSalon
What Now?
If this has inspired you to take some action or look for more on the topic, this page has a question and discussion guide to follow with colleagues; additional links, references, and resources; and some creative-ish ideas for getting started, whether you are trying things in your own teaching and leadership or considering an art-ish outlet for yourself.
References
Byrne-Jiménez, M. C., & Yoon, I. H. (2019). Leadership as an Act of Love: Leading in Dangerous Times. Frontiers in Education, 3, Article 117. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2018.00117
yoon, i. h. (2022). Justice-in-the-doing: An epilogue on whiteness-at-work in higher education. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 35(4), 438–452. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2022.2025498