Urban Bush Women’s annual Summer Leadership Institute (SLI) is an intensive 10-day convening that serves as the foundation for all of UBW’s community engagement activities. SLI helps build a global network of community arts practitioners - what UBW founder Jawole Willa Jo Zollar calls “frontline social justice workers” - within a learning experience that leverages the arts as a vehicle for social change. UBW launched began in 1997 and formalized it as an annual program in 2004.