ART IS CHANGE: Strategies & Skills for Activist Artists & Cultural Organizers

Who decides

There are lots of ways to censor an artist. You can ban the book, close the exhibition, cancel the performance. We know what those look like. But there's another way: you can make the artist wonder. Wonder whether a character will cost the theater a grant. Whether a festival celebrating queer artists is still fundable. Whether a nonbinary actor can play Faust.

In this Freedom of Expression Weather Report, we follow a few sentences inserted into the federal arts funding system. We start with the three theaters and the national service organization that took the National Endowment for the Arts to court, and Judge William E. Smith's ruling that the NEA's "gender ideology" policy put an unconstitutional thumb on the scale. Then we listen in on the October 2026 arguments before the First Circuit. And we track how anti-DEI certifications and canceled grants have traveled downstream, from Providence to Boston, from New York to Gallup, New Mexico, where some arts groups signed, some refused, and neighbors passed the hat.

If you've ever filled out a grant application and caught yourself editing the art to fit the form, this one's for you.

Key ideas:

• The censor has moved upstream. Censorship doesn't need to storm the theater. It can show up as a checkbox, a vague criterion, or a question that makes artists cut the work before it's written.
• Negative weight is still a weight. The government doesn't have to ban an idea to suppress it. It only has to make that viewpoint count against you when the money is handed out.
• Follow the pipes. NEA dollars flow through state, regional, and local agencies, and the conditions attached to them flow along too, reaching organizations that never applied to Washington at all.

Listen, then share it with someone who funds, makes, or cares about the art in your community.

Notable Mentions

• Marta V. Martínez: Executive director of Rhode Island Latino Arts, oral historian, and lead plaintiff's voice in the NEA case.
• Lynette Labinger: Providence civil rights attorney and ACLU of Rhode Island cooperating counsel in Rhode Island Latino Arts v. NEA.
• Luis Hernández: Morning host at The Public's Radio in Rhode Island, who interviewed Martínez and Labinger.
• Judge William E. Smith: Senior U.S. District Judge in Rhode Island who ruled the NEA's "gender ideology" policy unconstitutional in September 2025.
• Donald J. Trump: President of the United States, whose January 2025 executive orders set the policies at the center of this story.
• Mary Anne Carter: Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, who also led the agency during Trump's first term.
• Andres Serrano: Photographer whose 1987 Piss Christ became a flashpoint in the culture-war fights over NEA funding.
• Robert Mapplethorpe: Photographer whose NEA-supported retrospective The Perfect Moment sparked national controversy in 1989.
• The NEA Four: Performance artists Karen Finley, John Fleck, Holly Hughes, and Tim Miller, whose vetoed grants in 1990 led to a landmark lawsuit.
• Rose Eason: Executive director of gallupARTS in Gallup, New Mexico, which declined NEA-derived funding rather than sign the anti-DEI assurance.
• April Chalay: Deputy director of 516 ARTS in Albuquerque, who signed the assurance and kept doing the work.
• Matthew Chase-Daniel: Artist and co-founder of Axle Contemporary, Santa Fe's mobile art gallery.
• Erin Harkey: President and CEO of Americans for the Arts.
• Nina Ozlu Tunceli: Recently departed Executive director of the Americans for the Arts Action Fund and the field's longtime voice on Capitol Hill.

• Center for the Study of Art and Community: Producer of Art is Change, building art-and-community partnerships since 1992.
• Charles F. Kettering Foundation: Democracy and the Arts: Foundation program exploring how the arts strengthen democratic life, and partner on the Art in Action series.
• National Endowment for the Arts: The independent federal agency created by Congress in 1965 to support artistic activity and broaden access to the arts.
• Rhode Island Latino Arts: Providence nonprofit supporting Latino visual art, music, and theater, and lead plaintiff in the NEA case.
• The Theater Offensive: Boston company creating theater by and for queer and trans people of color.
• National Queer Theater: New York company celebrating LGBTQ+ theater artists, and home of the Criminal Queerness Festival.
• Theatre Communications Group: The national service organization for the nonprofit theater field, and a plaintiff in the case.
• ACLU of Rhode Island: Brought the suit with the national ACLU and cooperating counsel. The case page has filings and updates.
• The Public's Radio: Rhode Island's public radio newsroom.
• U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit: Federal appeals court that heard the NEA's appeal on October 7, 2026.
• New Mexico Arts: New Mexico's state arts agency, which passes NEA partnership funds on to local organizations.
• KUNM: Public radio in Albuquerque, whose April 2026 report documented New Mexico groups forgoing NEA funds.
• gallupARTS: Arts council serving Gallup and McKinley County, New Mexico.
• 516 ARTS: Albuquerque nonprofit contemporary art space.
• Axle Contemporary: Santa Fe mobile gallery and public art project housed in a converted step van.
• South Arts: Regional arts organization that administered ArtsHERE with the other U.S. regional arts organizations.
• Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts: Foundation that co-funded emergency support for organizations that lost NEA Challenge America grants.
• Helen Frankenthaler Foundation: Warhol's partner in that $800,000 relief effort.
• Americans for the Arts: National nonprofit advancing the arts and arts education.
• Americans for the Arts Action Fund: The affiliated advocacy arm organizing citizens to protect public arts funding.
• National Coalition Against Censorship: Alliance defending freedom of expression, including for artists.
• FIRE: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression: Nonpartisan organization defending free speech.

• Executive Order 14168: "Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government," signed January 20, 2025.
• Executive Order 14173: "Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity," the administration's anti-DEI order.
• DOJ Memo on Unlawful Discrimination (July 29, 2025): Attorney General's guidance for federal funding recipients, which flags criteria like "lived experience" and "cultural competence."
• Judge Smith's Ruling (September 19, 2025): The district court decision finding that the NEA policy "assigns negative weight" to certain ideas.
• Smoke: The Theater Offensive's original play about trans life in 1960s Washington, D.C.
• Criminal Queerness Festival: National Queer Theater's annual festival of work by playwrights from countries where queerness is criminalized.
• NEA v. Finley (1998): The Supreme Court decision that upheld the NEA's "decency and respect" language.
• KUNM: "DEI restrictions force arts groups to choose between funding and values": Mia Casas's April 2026 report from New Mexico.
• ArtsHERE: The NEA initiative that funded 112 organizations to expand arts participation before its termination.
• National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act: The 1965 law that created the NEA, amended in 1990 to add the "decency" standard.

• First Circuit Oral Argument (October 7, 2026): The appeals hearing on whether the NEA may count a viewpoint against applicants.
• NEA Grant Terminations (May 2025): Hundreds of previously awarded grants were canceled as the agency shifted to new priorities.
• Loss of Challenge America Grants: The NEA's small-grant program for underserved communities was halted in 2025, and private foundations stepped in.
• The NEA Culture Wars: The late-1980s and 1990s fights that led the NEA to end most individual artist fellowships.
• America's 250th Anniversary: The 2026 semiquincentennial, one of the NEA's new funding priorities.
• Chilling Effect: The legal term for speech discouraged by vague rules or fear of consequences, rather than banned outright.

This episode's guest is Mark Kendall — comedian, filmmaker, and co-founder, alongside Bill Worley, of the Atlanta production company Cool Cool Cool Productions. Mark's path into comedy started almost by accident: a college kid at Northwestern who just wanted to hold a camera, until a summer program built by Chris Rock dropped him into the writers' rooms of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report — and he pitched a joke that Stephen Colbert said on air that night.

What he brought home from that summer wasn't just a love of the craft. It was an understanding of how comedy actually works: that behind every laugh is a choice about how much tension to raise, and how much to let go. Mark has spent the years since putting that awareness to civic use — using comedy to talk Atlanta audiences into caring about affordable housing, gerrymandering, and public transit, one absurd, hyper-specific bit at a time.

Listen in as we explore:

• Why Comedy isn't decoration on top of a serious message
• The simple but fragile secret behind every effective joke
• How a comedian's own values are what separates "jokes for jokes' sake" from comedy that moves people.

People

Mark Kendall — Atlanta-based comedian, filmmaker, and educator; co-founder of Cool Cool Cool Productions and this episode's guest.

Bill Worley — Co-founder, COO, and producer/director at Cool Cool Cool Productions alongside Mark Kendall.

Chris Rock — Comedian who helped create the Comedy Central summer program that brought young writers of color, including Mark, into the network's development pipeline.

Jon Stewart — Longtime host of The Daily Show, where Mark spent a week shadowing the writers' room as a college student.

Stephen Colbert — Host of The Colbert Report; aired a joke Mark pitched as a young writer during his Comedy Central summer program.

Dr. Lonnie Johnson — Atlanta-based inventor and former NASA engineer best known for creating the Super Soaker; featured in Mark's comedic "Black Sustainability History" video series for PBS's Independent Lens, where he discussed a new heat-to-electricity engine he's developing.

Organizations & Institutions

Cool Cool Cool Productions — Atlanta production company co-founded by Mark Kendall and Bill Worley, making comedic and non-fiction content on civic engagement, public health, and community issues.

Northwestern University — Where Mark studied film and first got involved in sketch comedy, located near Chicago's improv scene.

Atlanta Regional Commission — Regional planning agency covering metro Atlanta housing, transportation, and land use; current partner on a comedy-based community engagement fellowship with Mark focused on affordable housing.

Fair Count — Atlanta-based civic engagement nonprofit (founded by Stacey Abrams) focused on census participation and fair redistricting; collaborated with Mark on a comedic Bob Ross-style video about Georgia's redistricting process.

MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) — Atlanta's public transit system, the subject of a comedic sketch by Mark exploring NIMBY fears around transit expansion into Cobb County.

Open Buffalo — Buffalo, New York-based organization focused on economic, racial, and ecological justice; collaborated with Cool Cool Cool Productions on video content.

PBS's Independent Lens — PBS documentary strand for which Mark created short-form comedic content, including the "Black Sustainability History" series featuring Dr. Lonnie Johnson.

Shows, Series & Productions

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart — Comedy Central news-satire program where Mark shadowed the writers' room during his college summer program.

The Colbert Report — Comedy Central satirical news program hosted by Stephen Colbert, where Mark pitched material as a young writer, including a joke that made it to air.

The Magic Negro and Other Blackness — Mark's nationally touring solo sketch comedy show examining the depiction of Black men in media and the comedic tools used to unpack harmful stereotypes.

Historical & Cultural Context

Muscogee (Creek) Nation — Indigenous nation whose ancestral lands include present-day Atlanta, acknowledged by Mark at the top of the conversation.

Art Is CHANGE is a podcast that chronicles the power of art and community transformation, providing a platform for activist artists to share their experiences and gain the skills and strategies they need to thrive as agents of social change.

Through compelling conversations with artist activists, artivists, and cultural organizers, the podcast explores how art and activism intersect to fuel cultural transformation and drive meaningful change. Guests discuss the challenges and triumphs of community arts, socially engaged art, and creative placemaking, offering insights into artist mentorship, building credibility, and communicating impact.

Episodes delve into the realities of artist isolation, burnout, and funding for artists, while celebrating the role of artists in residence and creative leadership in shaping a more just and inclusive world. Whether you’re an emerging or established artist for social justice, this podcast offers inspiration, practical advice, and a sense of solidarity in the journey toward art and social change.

In part two of our conversation with Dayton poet laureate, educator, activist, culture keeper, and Kettering Foundation Democracy and the Arts resident artist Sierra Leone, we follow the threads of memory and imagination from a gallery of story quilts in Hamilton, Ohio, to the Legacy Sites of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama.

Along the way, Sierra reads American Libation III: Weaving an Amendment for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, her response to Carolyn Crump's quilt Lovely One. She takes us inside The Belonging Project, where the stories of more than 100 Dayton residents are being harvested and turned into theater. And she shares a new poem born of a week with fellow Democracy Defenders led by Kimberlé Crenshaw in partnership with, a poem about how ideas persist and how thorns of memory grow from the womb of subjugation.

If you've ever wondered what poetry has to do with the work of self-government, or how a life of civic leadership actually begins, this one's for you.

In this episode we explore:

• Poetry asks. Democracy asks too. A poem doesn't go looking for answers. It leaves something behind for others to grapple with, and each generation has to decide what democracy will be.
• The petals that fall to the ground. Every society chooses which stories rise to the surface. Poets pick up the parts that fall and put some wind under them.
• Belonging becomes theater. Verbatim stories from returning citizens, bankers, fathers, teachers, and teens become a stage for the hard conversations communities need to have.

People

• Sierra Leone: Dayton's first Poet Laureate, playwright, educator, and Kettering Foundation artist-in-residence.
• Willis "Bing" Davis: Dayton artist and educator, founder of EbonNia Gallery, honored in Sierra's American Libation: Homage to an Elder (part one).
• Ketanji Brown Jackson: Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court since 2022, the first Black woman to serve on the Court.
• Carolyn Crump: Houston-based quilt and multimedia artist whose quilt Ketanji Brown Jackson: Lovely One inspired Sierra's poem.
• Dr. Carolyn L. Mazloomi: Quilt artist, historian, curator, NEA National Heritage Fellow, and founder of the Women of Color Quilters Network.
• John Coltrane: Jazz saxophonist and composer. Sierra's poem closes on "a love supreme."
• Angela Siner: University of Toledo faculty member in Africana Studies and Sierra's mentor, who told her, "Choose your approach."
• Joni Doherty: Senior Program Officer for Democracy and the Arts at the Kettering Foundation. She invited Sierra to accompany her to Montgomery as a guest of the Foundation.
• Bryan Stevenson: Public-interest lawyer, author of Just Mercy, and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative.
• Kimberlé Crenshaw: Legal scholar who was instrumental in developing the concepts of critical race theory and "intersectionality" and co-founder and executive director of the African American Policy Forum.
• Augusto Boal: Brazilian theater artist and activist, creator of the Theatre of the Oppressed.
• Paul Laurence Dunbar: Dayton-born poet and novelist, one of the first Black American writers to gain national renown.
• Lucille Clifton: National Book Award–winning poet known for spare, luminous poems of family and resilience.
• Terrance Hayes: National Book Award–winning poet and MacArthur Fellow, author of Watch Your Language.
• Jericho Brown: Pulitzer Prize–winning poet (The Tradition) and co-editor of How We Do It.
• Nikki Giovanni: Poet, essayist, and leading voice of the Black Arts Movement (1943–2024).
• Sonia Sanchez: Poet, activist, Black Arts Movement pioneer, and Philadelphia's first poet laureate.
• Maya Angelou: Poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist, author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
• Robert Hayden: Poet and the first African American Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.
• Gwendolyn Brooks: The first Black poet to win the Pulitzer Prize and a lifelong chronicler of Chicago's Bronzeville.

Organizations & Institutions

• Center for the Study of Art and Community: Producer of Art is Change, building art-and-community partnerships since 1992.
• Charles F. Kettering Foundation: Democracy and the Arts: Foundation program exploring how the arts strengthen democratic life, and partner on the Art in Action series.
• Fitton Center for Creative Arts: Community arts center in Hamilton, Ohio, which organized the Soul of Black Folks: 250 Years of Creativity, Innovation and Leadership exhibition. The Fitton partnered with the Kettering Foundation to develop the Voices of Black Folks program.
• Women of Color Quilters Network: International network of Black quilt artists founded by Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi.
• The Human Race Theatre Company: Dayton professional theater and one of the partners on The Belonging Project.
• AmeriCorps Seniors: National service program for volunteers 55 and older, among the groups heard in The Belonging Project listening sessions.
• University of Dayton: Imagining Community Symposium: October 2026 symposium on civic hope and belonging, where The Belonging Project will be presented.
• Equal Justice Initiative: Montgomery-based human rights organization founded by Bryan Stevenson.
• African American Policy Forum: Think tank co-founded and led by Kimberlé Crenshaw. They host the annual Democracy Defenders Summit, which in 2026 involved a partnership with the Equal Justice Initiative.
• U.S. Sentencing Commission: Federal agency that sets sentencing guidelines. Justice Jackson served as its vice chair.
• University of Toledo: Where Sierra studied and met her mentor, Angela Siner.

Books, Films & Recordings

• Lovely One by Ketanji Brown Jackson: Justice Jackson's 2024 memoir, part of Sierra's research for her poem.
• Ketanji Brown Jackson: Lovely One by Carolyn Crump: Portrait quilt in The Soul of Black Folks exhibition at the Fitton Center.
• A Love Supreme by John Coltrane: Coltrane's 1965 spiritual jazz suite, echoed in the last line of Sierra's poem.
• The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois: Du Bois's 1903 classic, echoed in Sierra's line "stitch threads of light into the souls of Black folk."
• The Belonging Project: Sierra's verbatim-theater play built from Dayton listening sessions, commissioned by the Kettering Foundation.
• Watch Your Language by Terrance Hayes: Hayes's visual and literary map of his poetic genealogy.
• How We Do It edited by Jericho Brown & Darlene Taylor: Anthology of Black writers on craft, practice, and skill.
• Theatre of the Oppressed by Augusto Boal: Boal's foundational book on participatory theater for social change.
• Proverbs 4:7: "With all thy getting get understanding." This is the proverb Sierra adds at the close.

Historical Events & Movements

• Voices of the Soul of Black Folks: August 2026 Fitton Center program pairing seven poets with quilts from The Soul of Black Folks: 250 Years of Creativity, Innovation and Leadership.
• Democracy Defenders Summit: Legacy, Literacy & Liberation: The third annual AAPF/EJI residency in Montgomery, July 27–31, 2026.
• The Legacy Sites: EJI's Legacy Museum, National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and Freedom Monument Sculpture Park.
• The Atlantic Slave Trade: The centuries-long trade in enslaved Africans, which Portugal pioneered in the 1400s.
• The Middle Passage: The forced Atlantic crossing of enslaved Africans, evoked in Sierra's "middle passage prayer."
• Ubuntu: African philosophy of shared humanity ("I am because we are"), and Sierra's "ubuntu armor."
• Theatre of the Oppressed: Boal's participatory theater movement, the grounding for The Belonging Project's audience dialogue.
• Verbatim / Documentary Theatre: Theater built from real people's own words, the method behind The Belonging Project.
• Bronzeville, Chicago: Historic Black Metropolis on Chicago's South Side and Gwendolyn Brooks's home ground.

Art Is CHANGE is a podcast that chronicles the power of art and community transformation, providing a platform for activist artists to share their experiences and gain the skills and strategies they need to thrive as agents of social change.

Through compelling conversations with artist activists, artivists, and cultural organizers, the podcast explores how art and activism intersect to fuel cultural transformation and drive meaningful change. Guests discuss the challenges and triumphs of community arts, socially engaged art, and creative placemaking, offering insights into artist mentorship, building credibility, and communicating impact.

Episodes delve into the realities of artist isolation, burnout, and funding for artists, while celebrating the role of artists in residence and creative leadership in shaping a more just and inclusive world. Whether you’re an emerging or established artist for social justice, this podcast offers inspiration, practical advice, and a sense of solidarity in the journey toward art and social change.

In this episode we meet Sierra Leone—a poet, educator, activist, and cultural organizer who reminds us that a poem is far more than words on a page. It can become a gathering place, a healing practice, and a way for a community to remember who it is.

In this conversation, we explore three central ideas:

1. Presence is a creative discipline. Art begins with showing up, listening deeply, and making space for what has not yet found words.
2. Poetry can become civic infrastructure. A poem can live in a school, gallery, theatre, public square, or gathering of neighbors—not only on the printed page.
3. Belonging is something we make together. Through performance, mentorship, and shared cultural memory, unfamiliar people and art forms can become part of the same nourishing gumbo.

Listen for Sierra’s journey from “healing producer” to “creative catalyst” to “culture keeper”—and for her conviction that the artist’s responsibility is not simply to speak, but to build spaces in which a community can hear and learn from itself.

People

• Sierra Leone — Dayton poet, producer, educator, activist, and interdisciplinary artist; the Kettering Foundation’s inaugural artist-in-residence and Dayton’s first living poet laureate.[JD1]
• Sonia Sanchez — Poet, educator, and Black Arts Movement figure whose advice about making time to write opens the conversation.
• Gwendolyn Brooks — Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago poet, mentor, and civic literary leader.
• Amiri Baraka — Poet, playwright, activist, and central theorist of the Black Arts Movement.
• Haki R. Madhubuti — Poet, educator, Black Arts Movement architect, and founder of Third World Press.
• Robert Frost — Canonical American poet invoked while discussing narrow public ideas about poetry.
• Terrance Hayes — Poet cited by Sierra in explaining that a writer makes space for a poem instead of deciding it beforehand.
• Paul Laurence Dunbar — Dayton-born poet whose life and work remain central to the city’s cultural identity. He was posthumously recognized as Dayton’s first poet laureate.
• Willis “Bing” Davis — Dayton artist, educator, activist, and curator honored in Sierra’s poem.
• Kweku Larry Crowe — Dayton oral historian, visual artist, and community activist.
• Mama Nozipo Glenn — South African-born human-rights advocate and longtime Dayton community elder.
• Edwin C. Moses — Dayton-born Olympic hurdler and namesake of a prominent city boulevard.
• James H. McGee — Civil-rights attorney who became Dayton’s first Black mayor, and namesake of a prominent city boulevard.
• Faheem Curtis-Khidr — Historian and professor whose public scholarship addresses equity and Black history in Dayton.
• Martin Luther King Jr. — Civil-rights leader whose 1964 Dayton address inspired the Visual Voices project.
• Colin Kaepernick — Athlete and activist invoked in Sierra’s poem as a contemporary image of kneeling in protest.
• Joni Doherty — Charles F. Kettering Foundation senior program officer for Democracy and the Arts.

Organizations and venues

• Center for the Study of Art and Community — Producer of ART IS CHANGE and a research and storytelling organization focused on arts-based community development.
• The Charles F. Kettering Foundation — The Charles F. Kettering Foundation, headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, operating foundation with a mission to advance inclusive democracies worldwide by fostering citizen engagement, promoting
• government accountability, and countering authoritarianism.
• Democracy and the Arts — The Kettering Foundation’s focus area for integrating the
• power of the arts into democratic life locally, nationally, and globally.
• Home of Urban Creative Arts — Dayton organization co-founded by Sierra to advance education, performance, healing, and community change.
• Third World Press Foundation — Chicago-based African-centered publisher founded by Haki R. Madhubuti.
• Dayton Early College Academy High — The school known as DECA High, where Sierra leads student-designed arts and Black History Month work.
• University of Dayton Theatre, Dance and Performance Technology — University program that helps DECA students prepare original work for the stage.
• Roger Glass Center for the Arts — University of Dayton arts center where a DECA production was presented.
• Levitt Pavilion Dayton — An outdoor nonprofit music venue described as Dayton’s “downtown living room.” The Levitt seeks to build community and social interaction among people of all ages and backgrounds through offering free concerts.
• Benjamin and Marian Schuster Performing Arts Center — Performing-arts complex that housed Signature performances in its Mathile Theatre.
• The Loft Theatre — Downtown Dayton theatre and longtime home of Sierra’s Signature series.
• EbonNia Gallery and Black Palette Art Gallery — West Dayton galleries that hosted Visual Voices and its poetry programming.

Projects, events, and movements

• Black Arts Movement — The artistic and political movement Sierra identifies as a foundation of her practice.
• Black Writers Retreat — Third World Press gathering devoted to craft, audience, and cultural responsibility.
• DECA High Black History Month Production — Annual student-led program combining Black history with original poetry, theatre, movement, and visual art.
• Signature Levitt Music and Arts Camp — Free intensive camp in which Dayton teenagers create and mount a public performance in one week.
• Visual Voices — Exhibition, ekphrastic-poetry project, and dance performance created by Kettering’s Democracy and the Arts program in partnership with local visual artists, poets, and dancers. It was inspired by King’s 1964 Dayton speech.
• Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1964 Dayton Address — King’s address about race relations, nonviolence, love, and unfinished equality was given at a city-wide freedom rally at the University of Dayton fieldhouse.

Works and publications

• “Sympathy” — Paul Laurance Dunbar’s poem containing the image of the caged bird beating its wing.
• “Music Heals on Fifth and Main” — Sierra’s commissioned poem about Levitt Pavilion and its shared civic space.
• “American Libation: Homage to an Elder” — Sierra’s ekphrastic tribute to Willis “Bing” Davis and a work that he created, performed during the interview.
• “There Is a Balm in Gilead, West Dayton” — Davis’s artwork that became the visual source for Sierra’s poem. For a free pdf of the exhibition catalog, email [email protected]
• Visual Voices: Storytelling Through Poetry — An anthology published by the Kettering Foundation’s Democracy and the Arts program that features seven Ohio poets responding to the exhibition’s artworks. For a free pdf of the publication, email [email protected]
• “There Is a Balm in Gilead” — Traditional African American spiritual echoed in the title of Davis’s artwork.

Peoples, places, and cultural references

• Osage Nation — Indigenous nation named in Sierra’s Dayton land acknowledgment.
• Miami Tribe of Oklahoma — Federally recognized Myaamia nation whose ancestral homelands include western Ohio.
• Shawnee people — Indigenous people with deep historical ties to Ohio.
• Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone — Ohlone language community acknowledged by the host in locating Alameda.
• Confederated Villages of Lisjan — Ohlone community whose ancestral territory includes the East Bay.
• Sankofa— An Akan principle often translated as “go back and fetch it”: learning from or retrieving what is valuable from the past in order to move forward.
• Griot — A West African oral historian, storyteller and musician whose traditional role includes preserving and transmitting history, genealogy, and community memory.
• Shango and Ase (Àṣẹ) — Shango is the Yoruba orisha associated with thunder and lightning and a deified legendary king of Oyo. Ase (Àṣẹ) is a broader Yoruba concept of creative or generative power — the force or capacity through which words, actions, people and sacred objects can bring things into being or make things happen.
• Dayton and West Dayton — The city and historically Black west-side communities that become living characters in Sierra’s work.

That idea has followed us from our Building Blocks episode on outside artists, through Eric Gottesman’s journey from photographer to collaborator, and into the first part of our conversation with Liz Lerman. Liz calls us toward a more horizontal practice—one in which expertise matters, but does not automatically confer authority.

In Part Two, that principle becomes even more urgent. Through her work Wicked Bodies, Liz asks why some knowledge is honored, some erased, and some declared dangerous. She explores witches, cultural humility, aesthetic equity, and the hidden systems that decide whose stories and bodies belong.

In this episode, we will learn about:

• Wicked Bodies — and what witches reveal about power, fear, and whose knowledge counts.
• Cultural humility and aesthetic equity — practices for entering communities without assuming authority.
• No singular stories — why meaningful work is built through shared inquiry, relationship, and consent.

Listen for what these ideas reveal about entering another community—not as its interpreter or savior, but as a curious, accountable partner.

That was the question we explored in an earlier episode of our Building Blocks of Effective Community Arts Practice series. And in our recent conversation with Eric Gottesman, we heard one compelling answer. His experiences in Ethiopia—and later with For Freedoms—taught him to stop acting as the sole author and begin making work with communities through questions, shared authority, and collective storytelling.

Our next guest, choreographer and community artist Liz Lerman, takes that conversation further. Through what she calls “the horizontal,” she shows us how artists can bring their knowledge into a community without placing it above everyone else’s.

In this episode, we explore:

• The Horizontal — how leadership and expertise can be shared without disappearing.
• Critical Response — a feedback practice built around curiosity, consent, and respect.
• The Heretic’s Path — how artists can challenge established systems while staying in relationship with them.

So, as you listen, consider what becomes possible when expertise is joined by humility, curiosity, and a willingness to share power.

Dance Exchange: (Previously, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange) Fueled by generosity and curiosity, Dance Exchange expands who gets to dance, where dance happens, what dance is about, and why dance matters. Dance Exchange harnesses the power of creativity and inquiry through dance to connect communities, to deepen our understanding of ourselves and to foster a more embodied, resilient and just world.

Critical Response Process: Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process is a method for giving and getting feedback on work in progress, designed to leave the maker eager and motivated to get back to work. is Creative

Pee-Posh (Maricopa): The Maricopa people were small bands living along the lower Gila and Colorado rivers. Each of these bands migrated eastward at different times. The Xalychidom (Maricopa of Lehi), left around 1825-1830. The last of these bands is said to have left the Colorado River in the late 1830’s. Eventually these bands came together and became collectively known as the Maricopa. As they migrated eastward, they came upon the Pima tribe and established a relationship. Both tribes provided protection against the Yuman and Apache tribes.

Tohono O’odham: The Tohono O’odham Nation is comparable in size to the state of Connecticut. Its four non-contiguous segments total more than 2.8 million acres at an elevation of 2,674 feet. Within its land the Nation has established an Industrial Park that is located near Tucson. Tenants of the Industrial Park include Caterpillar, the maker of heavy equipment; the Desert Diamond Casino, an enterprise of the Nation; and, an 23 acre foreign trade zone. of Wisconsin with a sociologist named Pearlman.

Freedom Schools: The Freedom Schools of the 1960s were part of a long line of efforts to liberate people from oppression using the tool of popular education, including secret schools in the 18th and 19th centuries for enslaved Africans; labor schools during the early 20th century; and the Citizenship Schools formed by Septima Clark and others in the 1950s.

Anna Halprin: was an American choreographer and dancer. She helped redefine dance in postwar America and pioneer the experimental art form known as postmodern dance and referred to herself as a breaker of the rules of modern dance.[4] In the 1950s, she established the San Francisco Dancers' Workshop to give artists like her a place to practice their art. Exploring the capabilities of her own body, she created a systematic way of moving using kinesthetic awareness.[5

Florence West, dance Milwaukee: Modern dance in Milwaukee begins with Florence West (1912-1994). West left Milwaukee at seventeen to dance in a Broadway road show, quit when she discovered ballet during a tour stop in Detroit, and found her way into the corps of the Chicago Civic Opera ballet. A Milwaukee opera producer asked her to come home to add choreography to a local production of Carmen. She soon became the go-to dance person for Milwaukee dance, theater, and opera companies.

Amira de la Garza: After spending a year in Mexico as a Fulbright Scholar, her experiences with the everyday talk and life around her led her to develop methods to integrate the arts, spirituality, and personal reflection into the study of culture. She works with many border-related projects, and has had students from around the world travel with her to many places to learn the methods she teaches.Professor de la Garza reports her research using creative writing, poetry, fiction, and has often shared her research through staged performances.

The California State Summer School for the Arts is a rigorous, preprofessional, month-long training program in the visual and performing arts, creative writing, animation and film for talented artists of high school age. CSSSA provides a supportive environment in which students hone acquired skills and explore new techniques and ideas for an intense and exciting learning experience.

Ethel Butler, one of Liz’s teachers: From 1933 through 1945, Ethel Butler was a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company. She went on to become a well-known teacher of the Graham Technique, counting among her students Paul Taylor and Dan Wagoner.

Sandy Spring Friends School: Sandy Spring Friends School is a progressive, coeducational, college preparatory Quaker school serving students from preschool through 12th grade. SSFS offers an optional 5- and 7- day boarding program in the Middle School and Upper School.

Art in Other Places, William Cleveland, Artists have established a remarkable record of innovation and success in institutional settings. Their work with hospital patients, prisoners, the elderly, the disabled, the mentally ill, and others has shown that the arts can have a significant positive impact on the lives of these people. This book recounts the histories of 22 institutional and community arts programs across the country pioneering this approach through activities such as creative writing and the performing and visual arts.Rabbi, Danny Zemel.

Wicked Bodies: Inspired by powerful and grotesque images of women’s bodies over multiple historic periods, Liz Lerman’s Wicked Bodies, is an intimate spectacle, brings together several consistent themes of my choreographic output:

– the invisible ways and means of feminine thinking and action which have been celebrated, erased, or criminalized;

– legal systems that attempt but often fail to bend our actions towards a fairer and more just world; and

– how we as a group of intergenerational artists bring our personal lives to the stage within characters that are imagining futures

Anand Giridharadas, The Persuaders is a stunning insider account of activists, politicians, educators, and everyday citizens who are on the ground working to change minds, bridge divisions, and fight for democracy.

Anat Shanker Osorio: Host of the Words to Win By podcast and Principal of ASO Communications, Anat Shenker-Osorio examines why certain messages falter where others deliver. She has led research for new messaging on issues ranging from freedom to join together in union to clean energy and from immigrant rights to reforming criminal justice. Anat's original approach through priming experiments, task-based testing and online dial surveys has led to progressive electoral and policy victories across the globe.

Malonga Casquelourd: Even as a child in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, Casquelourd could hardly keep from moving, becoming a principal dancer with the National Congolese Dance Company in his teens and performing internationally before joining Le Ballet Diaboua in Paris. In 1972, he moved to New York and co-founded the United States' first Central African dance company, Tanawa. But his greatest impact was in the Bay Area. He arrived in Oakland in the mid-'70s, teaching Congolese dance and drumming at CitiCentre Dance Theater, where he was a founding instructor, and African studies at San Francisco State University. Even dancers who didn't take his classes looked forward to hearing his booming voice in the Alice Arts Center halls every Saturday. When the center faced closure in 2002, Casquelourd led the campaign to keep it open to the public.

Cristobal Martinez: Cristóbal Martínez, PhD is from Alcalde, New Mexico and is of the Genizaro, Pueblo, Manito and Chicano people in Northern New Mexico including Española, Abiquiu, Velarde, Pó t'síí pangeh, Embudo and Dixon. He is an artist, digital designer, publishing scholar, and Professor of Expanded Arts at Arizona State University. Martínez co-founded the artist-hacker ensemble Radio Healer in 2003; joined the internationally acclaimed artist collective Postcommodity in 2009; and co-created, with post-Mexican artist-composer Guillermo Galindo, the experimental electronic music ensemble Red Culebra in 2018. Martínez has dedicated his life and career to interdisciplinary collaboration in contemporary art, and continues his work within these groups.

Change the Story / Change the World is a podcast that chronicles the power of art and community transformation, providing a platform for activist artists to share their experiences and gain the skills and strategies they need to thrive as agents of social change.

Through compelling conversations with artist activists, artivists, and cultural organizers, the podcast explores how art and activism intersect to fuel cultural transformation and drive meaningful change. Guests discuss the challenges and triumphs of community arts, socially engaged art, and creative placemaking, offering insights into artist mentorship, building credibility, and communicating impact.

Episodes delve into the realities of artist isolation, burnout, and funding for artists, while celebrating the role of artists in residence and creative leadership in shaping a more just and inclusive world. Whether you’re an emerging or established artist for social justice, this podcast offers inspiration, practical advice, and a sense of solidarity in the journey toward art and social change.

From that reckoning, artist Eric Gottesman spent the next twenty-five years rethinking what an artist with a camera, or a big idea is actually for. In this conversation with Bill Cleveland, Gottesman traces his path from documentary photographer to collaborative image-maker in Addis Ababa's AIDS-affected communities, and eventually to co-founding For Freedoms, the artist-led initiative that has turned billboards, town halls, and even a Super PAC into tools for civic discourse.

This is a conversation about authorship, collectivity, and the culture of inquiry at the heart of both artmaking and a thriving democracy.

In this episode we explore:

• How asking the right question often matters more than delivering the right answer.
• Why Eric Gottesman says he has never made art alone. And why he thinks that's true for everyone.
• A “composite nation:” Drawing on Frederick Douglass, Gottesman is now developing projects that imagine an American identity built from multiplicity and complexity rather than a single official story.

People

Eric Gottesman — Artist, educator, writer, and organizer whose collaborative work addresses nationalism, migration, structural violence, history, and civic life. He is a co-founder of For Freedoms.

Wendy Ewald — Photographer and one of Gottesman’s mentors. Her decades of co-authored photography projects challenge conventional divisions between photographer, subject, observer, and author.

Hank Willis Thomas — Conceptual artist and For Freedoms co-founder whose work examines identity, history, media, popular culture, and representation.

Claudia L. Peña — Executive director of For Freedoms, UCLA law lecturer, and practitioner of transformative and restorative justice. She appears with Gottesman and Thomas in the episode’s Skoll World Forum excerpt.

Baalu Girma — Influential Ethiopian journalist and novelist who disappeared after publishing Oromay, his critique of the Derg regime and its military campaign in Eritrea.

Emily Shur — Photographer who worked with Hank Willis Thomas, Eric Gottesman, and Wyatt Gallery to create contemporary photographic versions of Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms.

Wyatt Gallery — Photographer, For Freedoms co-founder, and producer of the contemporary Four Freedoms project.

Marc Bamuthi Joseph — Spoken-word artist, writer, librettist, and cultural strategist who developed the six questions at the heart of America, the Beautiful.

aja monet — Poet, recording artist, storyteller, and organizer appearing in the October 3, 2026, America(!) the Beautiful(?) performance, which is part of For Freedom’s America, the Beautiful project.

Derek Goldman — Director, playwright, educator, and co-founder of Georgetown University’s Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics. Gottesman and Cleveland cite his emphasis on care in cultural work.

Ariel Fristoe — Founder and artistic director of Out of Hand Theater, whose work brings theater, social justice, and civic engagement together.

Organizations, Institutions, and Places

For Freedoms — Artist-led civic organization founded in 2016. It uses public art, billboards, exhibitions, town halls, and artist commissions to encourage listening, inquiry, belonging, and civic participation.

Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University — The center at Duke University where Gottesman began his work in Ethiopia in partnership with Save the Children.

Save the Children — International humanitarian organization that sent Gottesman to photograph the effects of drought in Ethiopia shortly after his graduation from Duke.

The Charles F. Kettering Foundation — The Charles F. Kettering Foundation, headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, operating foundation with a mission to advance inclusive democracies worldwide by fostering citizen engagement, promoting government accountability, and countering authoritarianism.

Democracy and the Arts — The Kettering Foundation’s focus area for integrating the power of the arts into democratic life locally, nationally, and globally.

Corcoran School of the Arts & Design — George Washington University school where Gottesman serves as the W.W. Corcoran Visiting Professor in Community Engagement and where For Freedoms has been in residence.

Future Currents — Organization that helps movement leaders prepare for uncertain conditions and collaboratively imagine more inclusive, just, and democratic futures.

U.S. Agency for International Development — Federal agency to which evidence of the Ethiopian drought was submitted to help prompt an international aid response. The episode conversation takes note of the agency’s dismantling and changed status.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — The city in which Gottesman began collaborating with people living with HIV and with children whose parents had died of AIDS.

Somali Region, Ethiopia — The drought-affected eastern region where Gottesman first confronted the power imbalances and ethical contradictions of humanitarian photography.

Sheshatshiu, Labrador, Canada — Innu community where Gottesman later collaborated with Wendy Ewald and young residents on a cross-generational photographic and community-curated project.

Projects, Artworks, and Events

For Freedoms at the 2024 Skoll World Forum — The episode includes an excerpt from this presentation by Eric Gottesman, Hank Willis Thomas, and Claudia Peña about art, interdependence, democracy, and social change. The forum took place in Oxford (not London as stated in the podcast).

Contemporary Four Freedoms — For Freedoms’ expansive reimagining of Rockwell’s four paintings. More than 100 participants created 82 images representing a broader range of American identities; its Freedom of Worship appeared on the cover of TIME.

Question Bridge: Black Males — Collaborative project initiated by Chris Johnson and later developed with Hank Willis Thomas, Bayeté Ross Smith, and Kamal Sinclair. Recorded questions and answers facilitate dialogue among Black men across geographic, political, class, and generational differences.

America, the Beautiful — Nationwide civic-art initiative created by For Freedoms for the United States’ 250th anniversary. Its six questions invite communities to examine freedom, national identity, the American promise, and who is included in the country’s future.

They Used to Walk Here, not Anymore — For Freedoms presentation of the collaborative, cross-generational Innu photography work involving Zak Hajjaoui, Wendy Ewald, and Eric Gottesman.

Gottesman’s forthcoming Corcoran exhibition — A solo exhibition concerning Baalu Girma and the legacy of Oromay is mentioned as forthcoming in October.

Publications, Speeches, and Foundational References

Oromay by Baalu Girma — Banned 1983 novel about repression, propaganda, and war under Ethiopia’s Derg regime. Girma disappeared in 1984 and is widely believed to have been abducted because of the book.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech — Roosevelt’s 1941 address identified freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear as fundamental freedoms for people everywhere.

Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms — Four paintings inspired by Roosevelt’s speech and published by The Saturday Evening Post in 1943. Their narrow representation of American life inspired the For Freedoms reinterpretations.

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission — The 2010 Supreme Court case that expanded protections for independent political expenditures. For Freedoms initially adopted the form of a super PAC partly to question the resulting relationship between money and political speech.

Frederick Douglass’s “Our Composite Nationality” — Douglass’s vision of a pluralistic nation informs Gottesman’s use of the phrase “composite nation” to describe an American identity capable of incorporating multiplicity and complexity.

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell — The Skoll presentation invokes Orwell’s warning about controlling the past, present, and future. Retained without a link because no sufficiently direct, universally accessible edition was confirmed.

“The Creative Process” by James Baldwin — Source of the presentation’s observation that the artist’s struggle for integrity reflects the universal human struggle to become fully human.

Art Is CHANGE is a podcast that chronicles the power of art and community transformation, providing a platform for activist artists to share their experiences and gain the skills and strategies they need to thrive as agents of social change.

Through compelling conversations with artist activists, artivists, and cultural organizers, the podcast explores how art and activism intersect to fuel cultural transformation and drive meaningful change. Guests discuss the challenges and triumphs of community arts, socially engaged art, and creative placemaking, offering insights into artist mentorship, building credibility, and communicating impact.

Episodes delve into the realities of artist isolation, burnout, and funding for artists, while celebrating the role of artists in residence and creative leadership in shaping a more just and inclusive world. Whether you’re an emerging or established artist for social justice, this podcast offers inspiration, practical advice, and a sense of solidarity in the journey toward art and social change.

in 2019, a remarkable theater project brought together two very different communities: rural largely white Brussels, Illinois, and the predominantly Black St. Louis-area communities of Normandy and Pagedale, Missouri. Separated by the Mississippi River—and by race, geography, and very different assumptions about one another—they became collaborators in a new version of Shakespeare’s As You Like It.

Under the direction of artist/activist/educator Kathi Bentley students, teachers, residents, artists, and audiences traveled by bus and ferry between the two communities. Along the way, strangers became castmates, hosts, guests, and friends.

This reprise show is the first in a four-episode journey exploring what can happen when artists enter communities, cross into unfamiliar territory, and create the conditions for people to hear and change one another’s stories.

Can collective creation change settled world views?

Can we build lasting bridges between communities separated by race and culture?

What kind of leadership grows community ownership and accountability?

Blackberry Productions

St. Louis Shakespeare Festival:

Shakespeare, in the Streets

Art and Upheaval,

Wedding Community Play.

CHIPS Health: Community Health-In-Partnership Services (d/b/a CHIPS Health and Wellness Center) is the place where uninsured and underserved people in the St. Louis metropolitan area can receive free primary and preventive health care services.

Bread and Roses Missouri An organization with the mission of organizing arts and humanities projects about workers and their families.

Tricia Rose Burt spent nearly fifteen years doing everything right — director of corporate communications, a career built inside Fidelity Investments and Harvard Business School, the whole stable, predictable life she was raised to want. Then a career counselor told her she needed freedom and art, and within a year she'd quit the job, sold the car, ended the marriage, and moved to an artist's studio in Ireland for what was supposed to be six months. She stayed four. Now she's a Moth storyteller, a TEDx speaker, and the host of No Time to Be Timid — a podcast built entirely around one idea: the riskiest thing you can do is play it safe.

In this conversation, Tricia and Bill dig into what it actually costs to become someone else on purpose — and why fear, boredom, and failure aren't obstacles to the creative life, they're the price of admission.

Three reasons to listen:

• The week she blew up her old life. Job, car, marriage — gone in seven days, on the strength of one priest's line: "Everyone will tell you the cost of going. No one will tell you the cost of staying."
• Even the pros get scared. Why a 22-time Grammy winner joining the Eagles and a Nashville hitmaker turned wheelchair-tech founder both told Tricia, on record, that fear never actually goes away — you just get better at using it.
• A 10-point manifesto for getting unstuck. From "practicality is overrated" to "constraints are opportunities" — the field-tested rules Tricia now hands to everyone from artists to executives.

No Time to Be Timid — Tricia Rose Burt

People

Tricia Rose Burt — Speaker, storyteller, and podcast host who left a corporate career at Fidelity Investments and Harvard Business School to become an artist; host of No Time to Be Timid and a longtime storyteller and instructor for The Moth.

Vince Gill — Grammy-winning country musician who joined the Eagles in 2017 following Glenn Frey's death; discussed on No Time to Be Timid the fear he still feels performing, including tackling the Beach Boys' notoriously difficult "Surf's Up."

Barry Dean — Nashville hit songwriter ("Heartache Medication," "Pontoon") who co-founded the smart wheelchair technology company LUCI with his brother Jered after his daughter Katherine was born with cerebral palsy.

Devin Finigan — Self-taught chef-owner of Aragosta at Goose Cove in Deer Isle, Maine, trained through stints at Per Se, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, and The French Laundry; her restaurant was named among Food & Wine's top U.S. dining destinations in 2024 and 2025.

Laura Wilson — American documentary photographer inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in 2019, known for her decade-plus access to photograph Montana's Hutterite communities; mother of actors Owen, Luke, and Andrew Wilson.

Nell Painter — Princeton historian who, in her mid-60s, left academia to earn a BFA and MFA in painting, chronicled in her memoir Old in Art School; she is a past guest on Tricia's own podcast.

The War and Treaty (Michael & Tanya Trotter) — Husband-and-wife Americana duo; Michael, an Army veteran who served in Iraq, found his voice singing at the funerals of fellow soldiers before he and Tanya began performing together.

Amy Grant — Six-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter and friend of Tricia's; discussed anticipating the excitement rather than the anxiety of returning to the stage after a decade away from releasing new music.

Organizations & Institutions

The Moth — Global nonprofit dedicated to live, unscripted personal storytelling; Tricia is a longtime storyteller and instructor for the organization.

Fidelity Investments — Boston-based financial services firm where Tricia worked in corporate communications before her career pivot into the arts.

Harvard Business School — Part of Tricia's original corporate career track before she left the business world for art school in Ireland.

Aragosta at Goose Cove — Devin Finigan's destination restaurant and inn on Deer Isle, Maine, ranked among Food & Wine's top U.S. culinary destinations.

LUCI Mobility — Smart technology company founded by songwriter Barry Dean and his brother Jered, building collision- and tip-prevention sensors for power wheelchairs.

Books, Talks & Media

No Time to Be Timid — Tricia's award-winning podcast (a Signal Award winner in Arts & Culture) featuring artists, entrepreneurs, and everyday people who made a bold creative leap.

The No Time to Be Timid Manifesto — Tricia's 10-point guide to living more creatively, including principles like "the riskiest thing you can do is play it safe" and "constraints are opportunities."

Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over — Nell Painter's memoir of leaving a celebrated academic career to earn a BFA and MFA in her 60s; a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist.

"How I Redeemed 35 Years of Regret" — Tricia's TEDxPortsmouth talk built around the idea that the biggest risk in life is playing it safe.

(FreeSound.org)

Sounds from the forest by GirlWithSoundRecorder -- https://freesound.org/s/636921/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0

Horses Whinnying.wav by LeandiViljoen -- https://freesound.org/s/502084/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 3.0

Pulse Breath with Bells_version 1.wav by phylobates -- https://freesound.org/s/493559/ -- License: Creative Commons

Art Is CHANGE is a podcast that chronicles the power of art and community transformation, providing a platform for activist artists to share their experiences and gain the skills and strategies they need to thrive as agents of social change.

Through compelling conversations with artist activists, artivists, and cultural organizers, the podcast explores how art and activism intersect to fuel cultural transformation and drive meaningful change. Guests discuss the challenges and triumphs of community arts, socially engaged art, and creative placemaking, offering insights into artist mentorship, building credibility, and communicating impact.

Episodes delve into the realities of artist isolation, burnout, and funding for artists, while celebrating the role of artists in residence and creative leadership in shaping a more just and inclusive world. Whether you’re an emerging or established artist for social justice, this podcast offers inspiration, practical advice, and a sense of solidarity in the journey toward art and social change.

On July 4th, America's 250th birthday, the White House Domestic Policy Council released a 162-page report accusing the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History of "ideological capture."

Twenty days later, the President signed a second executive order directing federal agencies to force the museum to change how it tells the country's story. Host Bill Cleveland lays out the specifics: the named exhibits, the named staff, the quiet stall in confirming new members of the Smithsonian's governing board — and asks what it means when a nation stops trusting itself to hold a complicated history.

Drawing on decades of work with artists in Serbia, Cambodia, Northern Ireland, and Watts, California, and revisiting labor leader Ken Grossinger's conversation about Bryan Stevenson's Legacy Sites in Montgomery Alabama, Cleveland makes the case that culture is never a side issue. Authoritarian movements go after artists first, not for their political power, but because artists shape imagination itself. This episode is about why museums, memorials, and community art aren't warehouses of old objects, but living civic spaces where democracy is practiced, one story at a time.

In this episode we explore:

1. How an government report, an executive order, and a quiet stall in board appointments aren't three separate stories, they're one strategy for defining and controlling America's history moving through official channels.
2. Why authoritarian movements attack culture first because stories shape what people believe is possible, before governments can control people, they go for the imagination.
3. Democracy isn't only a system to defend; it's a creative practice — rehearsed in murals, story circles, museums, and neighborhood theater as much as in legislatures.

If this show sparks your curiosity we invite you to visit this ART IS CHANGE Collection: Art In Action: Stories of Artists Making a Difference in These Tumultuous Times

People

• Lonnie G. Bunch III — 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; responded to the White House report by defending the museum's commitment to "scholarship, accuracy" and telling the fullness of America's story.

• Bryan Stevenson — Founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative; led the creation of the Legacy Museum, National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, and Montgomery Square in Montgomery, Alabama.

• Ken Grossinger — Labor and social-justice strategist, author of Art Works: How Organizers and Artists Are Creating a Better World Together, and guest on a prior Art Is Change episode discussing the EJI Legacy Sites.

• Alice Lovelace — Atlanta-based poet, performer, and cultural organizer; a recurring voice on the podcast, quoted here on how every generation believes it's living through unprecedented times.

Organizations & Institutions

• The Charles F. Kettering Foundation — The Charles F. Kettering Foundation, headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, operating foundation with a mission to advance inclusive democracies worldwide by fostering citizen engagement, promoting government accountability, and countering authoritarianism.

• Democracy and the Arts — The Kettering Foundation’s focus area for integrating the power of the arts into democratic life locally, nationally, and globally.

• Center for the Study of Art and Community — The producing organization behind Art Is Change, founded by Bill Cleveland in 1991 to build partnerships between artists and communities.

• Smithsonian Institution / National Museum of American History — The federal museum complex, and specifically the history museum, at the center of the report and executive orders discussed in this episode.

• Smithsonian Board of Regents — The 17-member body that governs the Smithsonian, including the Vice President and the Chief Justice; currently has unfilled seats amid an unusually slow confirmation process.

• White House Domestic Policy Council — The office that produced the "Saving America's Story" report and is directed, under the July 24 order, to help enforce its recommendations.

• Charles F. Kettering Foundation — Nonpartisan foundation whose Democracy and the Arts program partnered with Art Is Change to produce this Art in Action series.

• Equal Justice Initiative — Montgomery, Alabama-based human rights organization founded by Bryan Stevenson; operates the Legacy Sites referenced in Part Two.

Publications, Exhibits & Curricula

• "Saving America's Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage" — The 162-page White House Domestic Policy Council report released July 4, 2026, that touched off the events discussed in this episode.

• Executive Order 14253, "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History" — Signed March 27, 2025; ordered the review of the Smithsonian that produced the July 2026 report.

• "Restoring Trust in the Smithsonian Institution" — The second executive order, signed July 24, 2026, directing federal agencies to act on the report's findings.

• "Many Voices, One Nation" — Permanent NMAH exhibition exploring how many communities have shaped the nation; named in the White House report as an example of the museum's approach.

• "Upending 1620: Where Do We Begin?" — NMAH exhibit examining early encounters between Wampanoag peoples and English colonists, also cited in the report.

• "American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith" — NMAH exhibition on the evolving American experiment in self-government.

• "Becoming US" — NMAH's national education curriculum teaching U.S. history through the lens of migration; criticized in the White House report.

• "Block Bridge Build: Stories of Activist Artists and Cultural Organizers Making a Difference in These Tumultuous Times" — A collection of ART IS CHANGE episodes that explore how arts activism and cultural organizing function as pro-democracy infrastructure.

Historical Events & Movements

• The Milošević era in Serbia (1989–2000) — The period of authoritarian rule in Serbia during which Cleveland worked with Belgrade theater artists engaged in public, improvisational protest.

• The Khmer Rouge and its aftermath in Cambodia — Referenced for the post-genocide work of recovering traditional dance, music, and storytelling as part of rebuilding the social fabric.

• The Troubles in Northern Ireland — The decades-long conflict Cleveland draws on for the idea that shared curiosity about other communities' stories, not just agreement, is where peace begins.

• The Equal Justice Initiative's Legacy Sites — The Legacy Museum, National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, and Montgomery Square, tracing the line from the transatlantic slave trade to mass incarceration.