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

Bookmakers at San Quentin. Not surprising, given "Q's" clientele. But no, we're talking about real books with real pages that are awe-inspiring works of art.

Needless to say, this year has been both odd and extraordinary. Odd? --- Well, Pick your poison. Extraordinary? --- Because we spent the year having amazing conversations with dozens of creative change agents who are kicking ass making a real difference in the upside-down world we live in. These conversations have helped us at the Center for the Study of Art & Community manage the lurking shadows and have sparked some new ideas and even optimism.

We're excited to be starting our second season on February 2, but in the meantime we thought it might be nice to revisit some of our most popular past episodes.

First up is Beth Thielen, a book maker who works across the by here from us at San Quentin. Actually she's not taking bets, but she and her students at "Q" are making a lot of awesome books. Have a listen.

Bill Cleveland: At the time, what came to be known as the classic or a version 1.0 was considered a modern marvel. After a short wait for what was called booting up, and a few clicks, the text seemed to appear magically on a ten by twelve screens set into a plastic computer case. Eventually, the white on black text gave way to a gloriously glowing black on white. Moving through the text was accomplished using a small, palm-sized oblong disk that was endearingly called a mouse. Unfortunately, the computer was quite heavy and wired, so reading was typically a one person, one stationary screen affair.

Then, the "two point oh" model with names like Kindle and Nook changed everything. It still had a screen and needed juice, but the wires were gone, and it was small and thin and light enough to take anywhere without a hassle. Going through text with the push of a button or flick of a finger on the screen made reading almost fun. There were a few downsides, though. After you paid for the machine, you still had to fork over for whatever it was you wanted to read. The thing also needed charging, and eventually, they would quit working from being dropped or just wearing out, which meant you lost whatever you were reading, which wasn't that big a deal because you actually never really owned it.  

But today, with the advent of the extraordinary Codex 3.0, also known as, "a book," all that came before seems quaint. This new text delivery system has so taken the world by storm, seven in ten humans now consider reading their number one favorite personal activity. While retaining the handiness and readability of its predecessors, this new model is both less expensive and far more versatile. This is due, in part, to the fact that after you purchase it, you actually own it, which means these books can be gifted or shared or even sold. There is speculation that eventually books will be collected in repositories that some are already calling libraries and could actually increase in value over time.

But the most delightful features of these clever little packages of text are embodied in their design. Now, depending on their size, which is varied, they can fit neatly in your hands or lap for easy reading. They're ingenious cover, and page feature allows you to open, feel, and manipulate the enclosed paper sheets in sequence from front to back, the reverse, or even randomly. This is called browsing. If you want to remember where you left off, you can use what is called a bookmark or even bend the corner of those little pages. It's your choice. Another improvement is its sturdiness. You can drop it, sit on it, even step on it. And it will still function like it was new. And best of all, there are no batteries, no wires, and no moving parts. Finally, each book comes with a multigenerational lifetime guarantee that stipulates that with reasonable care and handling, each book will be fully functional for hundreds, if not thousands of years. 

Bill Cleveland:  Excerpted from the "Modern Marvels of the Post Pandemian Epoch" by William T. William, 2047 A.D., also referred to as 26 P. P. E. 

Bill Cleveland: From the Center for the Study of Art and Community, this is Change the Story Change the World. I'm Bill Cleveland.

Bill Cleveland:  Long before the advent of Books, Inc., Amazon, and the Kindle, the making of books was considered a vital and essential art form. Over many millennia, the connections forged between humans and their books were seen as both fundamental to human progress, and as sacred and dynamic relationships. Given this, if I were to add yet one more evolved stage to the oddly imagined Future Books saga I just shared, it would be embodied in both this venerable history and in artists like Beth Thielen. Beth is a contemporary book artist who stands with one foot in the monasteries and studios of her revered bookmaking predecessors and another in the altered universe that is only now being shaped in the spectral shadow of our global pandemic. 

Beth describes her life pursuit as asking questions and making connections. Her work combines the narrative and tactile and sculptural with a passion for the transforming affirmation intrinsic to the act of creation. This passion has fueled the making of hundreds of extraordinarily beautiful, inspiring, and provocative works of art. These books of every imaginable shape, size, and material have been crafted by Beth and hundreds of bookmakers, who she has mentored over her long career. This community of artists and their stories have been nurtured and fed and celebrated in prisons, group homes, hospitals, senior centers, and schools all across America. 

I first met Beth in one of those other places during my time running the California Arts in Corrections program. She said she wasn't sure what to expect, but after her first visit to the California Institution for Women in 1985, she knew she had come to the right place. She's been showing up at those right places ever since.

Part One: Love and Freedom

Bill Cleveland So let me begin by saying, first of all, thank you. Thank you for agreeing to do this. I'm looking forward to learning more about your path and your journey. Let's begin by saying if someone were to ask you, "what is it you do, Beth," what was your answer to that question? What is your work in the world? 

Beth Thielen: I would say that I am an artist who works with incarcerated and troubled communities, and that's where my work comes from. That's the kind of work that comes out of me. It's the kind of questions that form in my work, such as the question I shared with you the other day that I had when I first started with Arts and corrections in California was one day I was at my drawing table after teaching a week in California Institution for Women, and a question formed in my head, which was what relationship does love have to freedom? And I had just seen a mug shot of a woman in prison from back when San Quentin was a private prison at the turn of the century, and she was in for bigamy. It said that her age was 27, but she looked easily 57. She looked so hurt, and haggard and that form the question, what happened here? What's the relationship between love and freedom? Because boy, something happened here.

Bill Cleveland: So you have a practice that is social in nature, in that you go into institutions and you engage with a wide variety of people, some of whom have some experience making things, others who don't. You also have a studio practice that you talk about the relationship between the two.

Beth Thielen: Yeah, well, you know, landscape painters need to be in a landscape. I'm of an interior landscape. I'm looking at the story of our country in a way through my own vision of the landscape. I had a drawing teacher when I was very young at the Young Artist Studios in the Chicago Art Institute, and she would have you go into a room to draw where the mom was. But you were there only to look, and then she would make you go into another room to actually do the drawing, so you would have to capture it in your head and then move into the other room to do the drawing. So, in a way, I do that I walk into prisons, and of course, you're not allowed to bring a camera, but I know how to catch it in my head. 

Bill Cleveland: So, one of the things that happens when you enter into institutions and you engage the people who live and work there, is that you inevitably come into contact with the stories they represent. Could you talk about the relationship between the story field you encounter in these extraordinarily complex places and what happens when you make work?

Beth Thielen: Well, I'm often moved by what my students say to me. I did a Pop-Up book where each page was a sentence spoken in prison to me, and I just would write down the sentence and then have there's pop-up book image of that particular sentence, and one of them was simply this place change issue was what a woman said to me. It was such a loaded sentence. Her sentence, you know, that it conveyed and made the power of the image happen. So, when I'm there as a visual artist, I'm using seeing and all the ways that one sees pulling what's happening before me and to a translatable image that I can then share in a piece of artwork.

Bill Cleveland: Do you think of yourself as a witness?

Beth Thielen: Yes., and as a kind of a distiller because I'm not just there to witness, but to make connections.

Bill Cleveland: How does the act of teaching make connections? 

Beth Thielen: Well, it's very hard to just go in and draw somebody's portrait if what you're drawing is what I'm doing, which is telling a whole story. So the teaching is a way for me to be there and share and learn from my participants in the process of making together without it having to be "Tell me your life story. I'm going to do a book, or I'm gonna do a painting". And, you know, it takes a lot of time, so right now, I'm working with girls at a group home there. They're locked down. I can't see them right now. But this is volunteer work on my part. I go twice a week, and I just do whatever we want to do, whatever they are up to doing, but they informed me about the dilemma of a group home by my just being present and watching what's happening and how so much of the seeds of what has happened in corrections happens so young with these girls. So that's the process. 

Bill Cleveland: So, in essence, you're there bringing a practice.

Beth Thielen: I'm bringing a practice, Yes.

BC: And what do you think is happening for them?

Beth Thielen: I don't always know. I know that the men at San Quentin when I get there, they're waiting in line to get in. They don't stop. They don't take a break. I don't even sometimes pee until four o'clock when they're called out because they are showing me their portfolios. They're asking me questions. We're doing or making an artist book, or we're making individual sketchbooks for them or where printing. But there's all this other stuff going on to where they're really honed into my presence in a way that doesn't happen anywhere else in the world, and I'm just meeting at as best I can. There's that hunger that is so fantastic.

Bill Cleveland: So Beth, somewhere along the line, you took a sharp and very focused turn into this practice of yours being an artist and engaging the world, and what I would describe as a healing practice. How did you come to that?

Beth Thielen: I come from a very large, dysfunctional German Catholic family. When Susan Hill at ArtsReach at UCLA started doing classes in the prison system in California, she asked if I wanted to try it. I went in, and it was a California institution for women. I got in there, and within the first hour, I said, jeez, this feels just like home. I can do that somewhere weird. You know, t's the problems that we face there. You have to work them out individually, even if they are something that looks like you're doing out in the world. You're trying to find a solution to something innate, so I suppose with my upbringing, I was already asking the questions that would make me good for that environment.

Bill Cleveland: So before you got on the train, so to speak, to California Institution for Women, was art a big part of your family life? What took you down the path of studying art in the first place? 

Beth Thielen:  I was very lucky. I can remember in kindergarten being introduced to fingerpainting and having all these big jars of tempera paint and sloshing it around a big piece of paper, and suddenly I saw and what I was doing, this dense forest where me and my twin brother were trying to get through this tangle of logs. It was just an aha moment. It was like, oh, that's what's going on…And, you know, I was very lucky that at a very early moment, the teacher had to shut me up. I was like talking to her about the painting; you know that I did. And all that's going on and that I could see it so clearly. But an artist was born. I was hooked. 

Bill Cleveland: And your family supported this? 

Beth Thielen: No, not so much. No. I remember when my father was, you know, he got his education through the military. My parents had eight children, and when I said, gee, I think I'm an artist, I want to go to the Art Institute of Chicago. My father just yells at me, and he said, Excuse me, who the ____do you think you are? And I said, Gee, Dad, I think I'm an artist. Cause he in our family, if you wanted college, you had to do military. That was just how it was. So, I broke the rules and went off on my own to art school without support, but I did it. 

Bill Cleveland: So, is there a part of your early biography that travels with you when you walk into these places, maybe with these young women that you're working with?

Beth Thielen: Oh, absolutely. I see my early childhood in these girls. My childhood had some abusive parts to it. And I think in the American psyche, if you want to look at damage, look at young girls, in particular, there's something that happens where a young boy can devil may care. There are all these different words that say it's OK to make mistakes, whereas girls, you're breaking up the family. It's like on visiting day for holidays at the prison. The line is around the block for men's prisons. And there's very few for women's prisons that come in. There's a shame in the feminine mystique that's so deep. So, looking from the California prison system to working with girls in group homes, I can really catch how they are fodder for all that ails you. 

Bill Cleveland: You described yourself as sort of breaking the rules of your family, and when you were just talking, I had this image of how much harder it is for some women to be a rule-breaker where for men in some cases, that's seen as romantic and adventurous and experimental…And for women, because you are in some cases, the rock. 

Beth Thielen: Right, right…Disturbing the peace of the status quo. Get in the kitchen—all that. 

Bill Cleveland: So, you talk about California institution for women. That was a long time ago that you first went into the institution. 

Beth Thielen: I think I started nineteen eighty-five.

Bill Cleveland: So you've been doing this ever since? ….mhmm…And you're no longer in California. You're on the East Coast now. So obviously there's something about this that has moved from an opportunity to a significant part of your practice. How is that? How did that come about? 

Beth Thielen: It goes back to that first question. What relationship does love have to freedom? It's the heart of our failure as a country, really. And so, to me, if I have some mature person now can say I'm trying to tell the story of my country through this experience, then I have to deal with are incarcerated. I have to deal with the fact that we have the largest percentage of people in prison in the world because it's the heart of what our trouble is, how we have not become who we should be as a nation. It's at the very heart. So, yes, that's why I'm there.

Part two, Wisdom meets beauty  

Bill Cleveland: At the end of part one, Beth returned to her initial question, what does love have to do with beauty? She also touched on how dealing with both the ugliness and the beauty she finds in her present experience helped her address another of her burning questions. What is the story of my country, and how can I help change it for the better? In part two, we delve a little deeper into these questions. So, Beth, the irony, of course, is that for most folks, the carceral state, these two and a quarter million souls hardly exist in their consciousness. These institutions are out of sight, out of mind. And I would maybe point out that right now, these places are particularly dangerous with regard to the pandemic. So, given this urgency as a context, could you talk about what you've been doing recently that personifies the intention and hope for impact of your work? 

Beth Thielen: Well, I was just in San Quentin in March, two days before they locked everything down. And I'm working on a limited-edition artist book of about 30 copies where each of the guys will get to keep their own copy. We're all making one together as a group, and I shared with them my artist's statement about them, and how I view them and what I was telling you about how they're there waiting for me at 8:00 a.m. and they're showing their portfolios, they're sharing their paintings that we work until they're called out for count at 4:00. No one takes a break.

Art matters here. I don't get that at the university, but these people that I meet in my classes, they often have sons in prison or grandparents in prison. They have a whole generational span of experiences in prisons, and they meet it with a courage and a generosity and a strength. I'm in debt to their courage, and I feel a responsibility to get people to understand that it's these people who are living in this horrible situation and have for such a long time, that are adapting to where we need to go faster than the rest of us. They are like a species living at the edge of sustainability, where there's adaptation occurring, where there's mutations occurring that allow them to adapt and change, and these people bring so much imagination to lack. For me, that's our way that we have to go. If we're going to solve our problems with the environment, we're going to solve our problems with prisons. If we're going to solve our problems with how we do our communities post-pandemic. So, for me, the hardships they have endured give us a way to our future if we can accept and not be afraid of the hard knowledge, save one. 

Bill Cleveland: So do me a favor. I would...

Beverly Naidus's art life has straddled the socially engaged margins of the art world, artful activism collaborations, and community-based art projects. Her audience participatory installations, artists books, photo-text and multimedia projects have dealt with the anxieties of being unemployed, nightmares about nuclear war, ways to transform body hate, using consumerism to numb ourselves from the extractive insanity of our capitalist economy, how grief and gratitude weave together in the climate emergency, the epigenetic trauma of living under white oppression and the joyful resilience of the marginalized. She often collaborates to develop creative strategies that might heal trauma, to plant seeds of activism, and imagine different outcomes. Early on, she discovered that her vulnerable story telling could generate stories from others, sometimes catalyzing positive actions. She has shared her work in city streets, alternative spaces, public parks, university galleries, community centers, and major museums. Her work has been written about in many books and journals and has developed an international following. After vibrant chapters in the New York and Los Angeles art worlds, including fruitful periods in other parts of North America, she has made a home in the Pacific Northwest since 2003. 

Naidus received her BA from Carleton College, and an MFA with a full teaching fellowship from the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design. She taught art as a subversive activity at NYC museums, the Institute for Social Ecology, California State University, Long Beach where she had tenure, Goddard College, Hampshire College and Carleton College. From 2003 until 2020, she was the only tenured artist on the UW Tacoma faculty where she shaped an innovative, interdisciplinary studio arts curriculum in art for social change and healing. She is the author of Arts for Change: Teaching Outside the Frame (a book that helped to shift studio arts curriculum in many places). She has written & published many essays on eco-art and social practice as well as a few works of speculative fiction, and she is currently writing, Rewilding Our Muses: Creative Strategies for Navigating the “End of the World” and is looking for a publisher. While co-directing the non-profit, SEEDS (Social Ecology Education and Demonstration School) with her husband, Dr. Bob Spivey, they are leading workshops online with a focus on art that deals with climate and racial justice and have formed an international collective. They are currently facilitating an in-person “story hive project” with neighbors and are planning more “pandemic processing and dreaming into the future we want” art workshops to happen in coming months. Her solo show, “The Dead Ocean Scrolls and other Possible Futures” will be on exhibit at the Tacoma Community College Gallery in November 2021.

For more information visit her website: www.beverlynaidus.net, Instagram: #utopias4all Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/92685388277 or Beverly Naidus https://www.facebook.com/utopias4all

COCA: Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle: CoCA serves the Pacific Northwest as a catalyst and forum for the advancement, development, and understanding of Contemporary Art. 

ONCA gallery in Brighton, England: O N C A is a Brighton based arts charity that bridges social and environmental justice issues with creativity.

EXTREME MAKEOVER: Reimagining the Port of Tacoma Free of Fossil Fuels 2018 to the present.: This community-based art project reimagines the Port of Tacoma, an industrial port built on tribal land in violation of the Medicine Creek Treaty of 1854. The soil and water been contaminated by years of dumping and now hosts several designated superfund sites. In recent years, the community has been fighting the installation of new and dangerous fossil fuel projects in the Port and Extreme Makeover arose out of that resistance.

Joanna Macy, author & teacher, is a scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking and deep ecology. A respected voice in movements for peace, justice, and ecology, she interweaves her scholarship with learnings from six decades of activism. Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and postmodern science. The many dimensions of this work are explored in her thirteen books, which include three volumes of poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke with translation and commentary.Thich Nhat Hanh: Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh is a global spiritual leader, poet, and peace activist, renowned for his powerful teachings and bestselling writings on mindfulness and peace. A gentle, humble monk, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called him “an Apostle of peace and nonviolence” when nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Exiled from his native Vietnam for almost four decades, Thich Nhat Hanh has been a pioneer bringing Buddhism and mindfulness to the West, and establishing an engaged Buddhist community for the 21st Century.

adrienne maree brown is the writer-in-residence at the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, and author of Grievers (the first novella in a trilogy on the Black Dawn imprint), Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation, We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and the co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements and How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office. She is the cohost of the How to Survive the End of the World, Octavia’s Parables and Emergent Strategy podcasts. adrienne is rooted in Detroit.

Cuban missile crisis: The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis of 1962 (Spanish: Crisis de Octubre), the Caribbean Crisis (Russian: Карибский кризис, tr. Karibsky krizis, IPA: [kɐˈrʲipskʲɪj ˈkrʲizʲɪs]), or the Missile Scare, was a 1-month, 4 day (16 October – 20 November 1962) confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union which escalated into an international crisis when American deployments of missiles in Italy and Turkey were matched by Soviet deployments of similar ballistic missiles in Cuba. Despite the short time frame, the Cuban Missile Crisis remains a defining moment in U.S. national security and nuclear war preparation. The confrontation is often considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war.[3]

Blue Mountain Center “ offers a unique refuge to artists, activists, organizers and cultural workers who produce transformative work for their times. We trust residents and conference attendees to choose the rhythm they need to counter the pressures of the world, whether through collaboration or solitude, work or rest, in a nurturing environment where they can connect to themselves, local and global movements, the land and story of the Adirondacks, and the growing BMC community?”

Grace Lee Boggs (June 27, 1915 – October 5, 2015) was an American author, social activist, philosopher, and feminist.[4] She is known for her years of political collaboration with C. L. R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya in the 1940s and 1950s.[5] In the 1960s she and James Boggs, her husband of some forty years, took their own political direction.[6] By 1998, she had written four books, including an autobiography. In 2011, still active at the age of 95, she wrote a fifth book, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century, with Scott Kurashige and published by the University of California Press. She is regarded as a key figure in the Asian American Movement. See Also: The James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership.

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER was a renowned African American author who received a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work. Born in Pasadena in 1947, she was raised by her mother and her grandmother. She was the author of several award-winning novels including PARABLE OF THE SOWER (1993), which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and PARABLE OF THE TALENTS (1995) winner of the Nebula Award for the best science fiction novel published that year. She was acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations in stories that range from the distant past to the far future.

Octavia's Parables: Beginning with The Parable of the Sower, our hosts Toshi Reagon and adrienne maree brown are examining each of Octavia E Butler’s published works, chapter by chapter. Our podcast summarizes the storyline, places it in a strategic context for those intending to change the world, and provides questions to help bring Butler's ideas to life.

ZAD de Notre-Dame-des-Landes (also known as ZAD NDDL) is the most well-known 'Zone to Defend' in France. Located in the Loire-Atlantique department near to Nantes, it is a very large, mostly agricultural terrain of 1,650 hectares (4,080 acres) which became nationally famous in the early 2010s and has resisted several concerted attempts by the French state to evict it.[1]

For decades there was local resistance to plans to build a new airport in the rural commune of Notre-Dame-des-Landes. In the 2000s much of the land was squatted as farmers were evicted. The new occupants set up autonomous self-sufficient structures such as a communal bakery and animal husbandry. Attempts to evict the squatters saw largescale counter-mobilisations in 2012 and 2018. French president Emmanuel Macron announced in January 2018 that the plans for the airport would be shelved and the already existing airport at Nantes would be redeveloped instead. Many of the remaining projects at the ZAD then engaged in a process of legalisation.

Jay Jordan and Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination: Infamous for fermenting mass disobedience on bicycles during Copenhagen's UN climate Summit, touring the UK recruiting a rebel clown army, building an illegal lighthouse on the site of an airport control tower, launching a rebel raft regatta to shut down a coal fired power station and refusing to be censored by London's Tate Modern museum, the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination has been walking on the tightrope between art and activism since 2004.

“We bring together cultural workers and activists to co-design and carry out creative forms of direct-action which attempt to be as joyful as they are politically effective. We train people in entangling resistance and creativity and building resilient horizontal forms of organising. We call our work experiments, because we believe courage and creativity are fed when one claims the right to fail and we believe the role of art in this era of the Capitalocene is not to show the world to people but to transform it together.”

Democracy Now! produces a daily, global, independent news hour hosted by award-winning journalists Amy Goodman and Juan González. Our reporting includes breaking daily news headlines and in-depth interviews with people on the front lines of the world’s most pressing issues. On Democracy Now!, you’ll hear a diversity of voices speaking for themselves, providing a unique and sometimes provocative perspective on global events.

Emergent Strategy Podcast: Is the official podcast of the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute - each episode we dive deeply into the life, practice and experimentation of a person or group who we see as living embodiments of emergent strategy. Emergent Strategy is about how we get in right relationship with change - what are the simple interactions that can shift and shape complex systems and patterns? Hosts are Sage Crump, Mia Herndon and adrienne maree brown.

Deep Adaptation: This Facebook page is part of the larger Deep Adaptation Forum (https://www.deepadaptation.info/), an international virtual community which includes multiple other platforms and offerings. This is where we share information on our inner and outer deep adaptation to unfoldinsocietal breakdown due to climate change. We share on:

- The emotional, psychological and spiritual aspects of facing societal collapse;

- Practical ways to support wellbeing ahead of/during collapse, at household, community, national, or international scale. We welcome collective action in a spirit of compassion.

- We don’t share news on the state of the environment or climate here, nor on examples of social breakdown; in time, our feeds will be full of such news. We’re here to support deep adaptation to the situation, not to chronicle it.

The Following are mentioned in our description of Change the Story / Change the World's second season starting on February 2, 2022.

Jan Cohen-Cruz has given a lot to the field of arts-based community development. By that, I mean that there's a significant body of academic and community-based artwork, scholarship, teaching, and organizing that are absolutely covered with her fingerprints.

Jan Cohen-Cruz was the founding editor of Public: A Journal of Imagining America. She directed Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life (2007-12), and for 28 years before that, was a professor at NYU, directing a minor in applied theatre and initiating socially-engaged projects and courses. She wrote Engaging Performance: Theatre as Call and Response and Local Acts: Community‑Based Performance in the US. She edited Radical Street Performance and co‑edited Playing Boal: Theatre, Therapy, Activism and A Boal Companion. Jan was also a University Professor at Syracuse University. In 2012, she received the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s Award for Leadership in Community-Based Theatre and Civic Engagement. Here latest book, Meeting the Moment: Socially Engaged Theater, 1965 To 2020 written with Rad Pereira will published by New Village Press in May 2022.

Augusto Boal, was a Brazilian theatre practitioner, drama theorist, and political activist. He was the founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, a theatrical form originally used in radical left popular education movements. Boal served one term as a Vereador (the Brazilian equivalent of a city councillor) in Rio de Janeiro from 1993 to 1997, where he developed legislative theatre.[1]

Imagining America: “The Imagining America consortium (IA) brings together scholars, artists, designers, humanists, and organizers to imagine, study, and enact a more just and liberatory ‘America’ and world. Working across institutional, disciplinary, and community divides, IA strengthens and promotes public scholarship, cultural organizing, and campus change that inspires collective imagination, knowledge-making, and civic action on pressing public issues.”

Public: “Public is a peer-reviewed, multimedia e-journal focused on humanities, arts, and design in public life. It aspires to connect what we can imagine with what we can do. We are interested in projects, pedagogies, resources, and ideas that reflect rich engagements among diverse participants, organizations, disciplines, and sectors.”

Meeting the Moment Socially Engaged Theater, 1965 To 2020: Jan Cohen-Cruz and Rad Pereira: Curated stories from over 75 interviews and informal exchanges offer insight into the field and point out limitations due to discrimination and unequal opportunity for performance artists in the United States over the past 55 years. In this work, performers, often unknown beyond their immediate audience, articulate diverse influences.

Open Theater: The Open Theater was an experimental theatre group active from 1963 to 1973.

Franz Kafka's The Trial: The Trial is a novel written by Franz Kafka between 1914 and 1915 and published posthumously on 26 April 1925. One of his best known works, it tells the story of Josef K., a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader.

Paris, May 1968 Strikes and Demonstrations: Beginning in May 1968, a period of civil unrest occurred throughout France, lasting some seven weeks and punctuated by demonstrations, general strikes, as well as the occupation of universities and factories. At the height of events, which have since become known as May 68, the economy of France came to a halt.[1]

The Devil and Daniel Webster:The Devil and Daniel Webster" (1936) is a short story by American writer Stephen Vincent Benét. He tells of a New Hampshire farmer who sells his soul to the devil and is later defended by Daniel Webster, a fictional version of the noted 19th-century American statesman, lawyer and orator.

Harvey Grossman: In this edited transcription of his remarks at the 2013 Pomona College (California) conference “Action, Scene and Voice,” Harvey Grossman elucidates the theory and practice of his two most important teachers: Edward Gordon Craig and Étienne Decroux. Grossman elucidates Craig’s much-debated comments on the “Art of the Theatre,” as well as Craig’s influence upon the French corporeal mime Étienne Decroux

Richard Levy, New York Street Theater: The New York Street Theatre Caravan (NYSTC), formerly the City Street Theater, was a New York City-based socialist theater collective. First conceived by Marketa Kimbrell and Richard Levy in 1967, the company was founded on the principle of bringing theater to underprivileged and geographically isolated communities. NYSTC performed plays, puppet shows, skits, and concerts with themes meaningful to their audiences, such as racial inequality, workers' rights, homelessness, and other sociopolitical issues.

Richard Schechner: Schechner was one of the founders of the Performance Studies department of the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. He founded The Performance Group of New York in 1967 and was its artistic director until 1980, when TPG changed its name to The Wooster Group.

Liz Lerman:  Liz Lerman is a choreographer, performer, writer, teacher, and speaker. She has spent the past four decades making her artistic research personal, funny, intellectually vivid, and up to the minute. A key aspect of her artistry is opening her process to everyone from shipbuilders to physicists, construction workers to ballerinas, resulting in both research and experiences that are participatory, relevant, urgent, and usable by others

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar: Urban Bush Women: Urban Bush Women (UBW) galvanizes artists, activists, audiences and communities through performances, artist development, education and community engagement. With the ground-breaking performance ensemble at its core, and ongoing programs including the Summer Leadership Institute (SLI), BOLD (Builders, Organizers & Leaders through Dance) and the Choreographic Center Initiative, UBW affects the overall ecology of the arts by promoting artistic legacies; projecting the voices of the under-heard and people of color; bringing attention to and addressing issues of equity in the dance field and throughout the United States; and by providing platforms and serving as a conduit for culturally and socially relevant experimental art makers.

Kathi Bentley: Kathryn Bentley is an associate professor of theater performance, and artistic director of Southern Illinois University’s Black Theatre Workshop. A theater professional with extensive experience as an actor, director and teaching artist, she holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Theater Directing and professional training in community arts and social justice. She is a 2002 St. Louis Regional Arts Commission Community Arts Institute Fellow, and she now serves as a faculty member for the institute. She is a National Conference for Community and Justice St. Louis Certified Diversity Facilitrainer and a Certified Lessac Kinesensic Voice and Movement Practitioner. 

Love at the River’s Edge: A Shakespeare Festival St. Louis production that took place in both the streets of Pagedale, Missouri, and the farmland of Calhoun County, Illinois. Its remix of the classic play, titled “Love at the River’s Edge,” transports audience members across the Mississippi River to examine the urban and rural divide. 

Pam Korza: co-directs Animating Democracy, a program of Americans for the Arts, that inspires, informs, promotes, and connects arts and culture as potent contributors to community, civic, and social change. Animating Democracy’s current work centers on building evaluation capacity of practitioners, funders, and other stakeholders to understand the impact of arts-based civic engagement and social change. Her writing and editing includes: the framework, Aesthetic Perspectives: Attributes of Excellence in Arts for Change; the Continuum of Impact guide; a chapter in the book, Arts and Community Change (Routledge, 2015), and Critical Perspectives: Writings on Art & Civic Dialogue. 

A Blade of Grass: provides resources to artists who demonstrate artistic excellence and serve as innovative conduits for social change. We evaluate the quality of work in this evolving field by fostering an inclusive, practical discourse about the aesthetics, function, ethics and meaning of socially engaged art that resonates within and outside the contemporary art dialogue.

Animating Democracy: Animating Democracy’s current work centers on building evaluation capacity of practitioners, funders, and other stakeholders to understand the impact of arts-based civic engagement and social change.

Tom Finklepearl: is an American arts promoter, former museum director, and former Commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.[5] He was appointed in 2014 by the New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio,[5] and served through the end of 2019.[6]

New York Department of Cultural Affairs, Public Artists in Residence (PAIR) is a municipal residency program that embeds artists in city government to propose and implement creative solutions to pressing civic challenges. Launched in the fall of 2015, PAIR takes its inspiration and its name from the pioneering work of artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, the first official (unsalaried) artist-in-residence with the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY), 1977 – present.

Tania Bruguera: “Tania Bruguera was born in 1968 in Havana, Cuba.[1] she is and artist and activist who focused on installation and performance artist. She lives and works between New York and Havana, and has participated in numerous international exhibitions.[2] Her work is in the permanent collections of many institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art and Bronx Museum of the Arts and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana.[2]  Bruguera's work pivots around issues of power and control, and several of her works interrogate and re-present events in Cuban history.[3][4] As a result of her art actions and activism, Bruguera has been arrested and jailed several times”.

Queens Museum: “The Queens Museum is dedicated to presenting the highest quality visual arts and educational programming for people in the New York metropolitan area, and particularly for the residents of Queens, a uniquely diverse, ethnic, cultural, and international community.”

NYC Community Gardens Program: The thirty-year saga of New York City’s community gardens shows how an EcoTipping Point can be an effective tool for urban renewal, at a fraction of the typical cost. A garden can be more than just a place to stop and smell the roses. Its spin-off effects can help to tip a neighborhood and an entire city out of a cycle of squalor.

Haja Worley: Harlem, gardens: Collaborating with Dr. Jan Cohen Cruz of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Haja was instrumental in getting NYU students from the Tisch COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS Program to develop workshops in the gardens; Haj also performed with the URBAN ENSEMBLE at Tisch, and, along with other community gardeners and drama students developed and performed “Common Green/Common Ground,” musical theatre on the community gardening situation in NYC which was under attack by then Mayor Rudy Giuliani. During those years, Haja also worked closely with documentary filmmaker Laura Beer in developing her film, “More Than Flowers,” a documentary of community gardens in NYC.

The Point Community Development Corporation is a non-profit organization dedicated to youth development...

Henry Frank was rotting in prison alone with no escape. Then, everything changed. In our conversation we talk about the heavy lift of imagining a different future, becoming an artist, discovering true friendship, and embracing his Yurok and Pomo cultures.

Red Tail Art: This is Henry Frank's artist website. Here is how he describes his practice: I enjoy bringing art into existence, I love the entire process, creating the backgrounds, finding the perfect image that fits the background, choosing the right colors to bring it to life, picking up the paintbrushes and mixing the colors and finally putting brush to canvas. It is very calming and relaxing, I go into a meditative state when I am the zone.

The Museum of the American Indian: “Located in Marin County and situated on a site of an actual Miwok Village, the Museum is dedicated to providing the people of Northern California with programs and exhibits that deepen understanding and appreciation of Native American cultures.”

Yurok People: “The mission of the Yurok Tribe is to exercise the aboriginal and sovereign rights of the Yurok People to continue forever our Tribal traditions of self-governance, cultural and spiritual preservation, stewardship of Yurok lands, waters and other natural endowments, balanced social and economic development, peace and reciprocity, and respect for the dignity and individual rights of all persons living within the jurisdiction of the Yurok Tribe, while honoring our Creator, our ancestors and our descendants.”

 Pomo People: “The Pomo are an indigenous people of California. The historical Pomo territory in Northern California was large, bordered by the Pacific Coast to the west, extending inland to Clear Lake, and mainly between Cleone and Duncans Point. One small group, the Northeastern Pomo of the Stonyford vicinity of Colusa County, was separated from the core Pomo area by lands inhabited by Yuki and Wintuan speakers. “ Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomo

William James Association: “The William James Association promotes work service in the arts, environment, education, and community development. Our work has been primarily centered around transformative arts experiences in nontraditional settings, serving men and women in and after prison and high-risk youth. Acting on the conviction that the fine arts enrich, heal and unite communities, the William James Association has brought exceptional artists into prisons throughout California and other states since 1977.”

Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude, “Napoleon Hill: Oliver Napoleon Hill (October 26, 1883 – November 8, 1970) was an American self-help author. He is best known for his book Think and Grow Rich (1937), which is among the 10 best-selling self-help books of all time.[1][2] Hill's works insisted that fervid expectations are essential to improving one's life.[3][4] Most of his books were promoted as expounding principles to achieve "success". Wilkipedia

AKTA Lakota Museum and Cultural Center, Pine Ridge: "The land that makes up Pine Ridge Reservation is an integral part of the Lakota culture and the economic base of the reservation. The reservation is situated in southwestern South Dakota on the Nebraska state line, about 50 miles east of the Wyoming border. The area includes over 11,000 square miles contained in seven counties; Bennett, Custer, Fall River, Jackson and Oglala counties in South Dakota." 

First Peoples Fund: “We believe art and culture are essential to life. Art embodies Native peoples’ culture, our understanding of who we are and where we come from. Artists and culture bearers give us the power to connect with our past and chart our future. We center the inherent rights and freedom of native peoples. We recognize that Native communities know what they need best to flourish. Native peoples are not defined by colonization or genocide, but by the strength and beauty of our own identities, cultures, and leadership.”Yurok Language Revitalization: “When the language revitalization effort began the use of old records helped new language learners. However, it was through hearing fluent speakers that many young learners fluency level increased. When the Yurok Tribe began to operate as a formal tribal government a language program was created.”

 Graton Rancheria: “The Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria,[1] formerly known as the Federated Coast Miwok, is a federally recognized American Indian tribe of Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo Indians.[2] The tribe was officially restored to federal recognition in 2000 by the U.S. government pursuant to the Graton Rancheria Restoration Act[3][4] “

*******

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.

Jill Sonke is a creative healer in service to a community of doctors, nurses, artists, educators, and most of all, patients on a journey that reunites the arts and medicine in their age-old roles as healing partners.

Jill is director of the Center for Arts in Medicine at the University of Florida (UF), and is currently serving as Senior Advisor to the CDC Vaccine Confidence and Demand Team on the COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence Task Force. She is also an affiliated faculty member in the UF School of Theatre & Dance, Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases, the Center for African Studies, the STEM Translational Communication Center, and the One Health Center. Jill serves on the editorial board for Arts & Health journal and as a consulting editor for Health Promotion Practice journal. She is also director of the EpiArts Lab, a National Endowment for the Arts Research Lab at UF, and the national initiative, Creating Health Communities: Arts + Public Health in America. 

Dr. Sonke studied dance at Interlochen Arts Academy, the Florida State University, in London, Paris, and Athens with teachers of the Horton and Duncan techniques including Bella Lewitsky, Lynda Davis, Milton Meyers, Joy Kellman, Lori Belilove, Julia Levine, and Hortense Koluris. She has been a principle dancer and soloist with Lori Belilove & the Isadora Duncan Dance Company in New York and a guest performer and choreographer with Dance Alive! and Stuart Pimsler Dance and Theatre.

With 27+ years of experience and leadership in arts in health, Dr. Sonke is active in research, teaching, and international cultural exchange. Her current research focuses on the arts and health communication, the arts in public health, and the effects of music on cost and quality of care in emergency medicine. She is the recipient of a New Forms Florida Fellowship Award, a State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship Award, an Excellence in Teaching Award from the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development, a UF Internationalizing the Curriculum Award, a UF Most Outstanding Service Learning Faculty Award, a UF Public Health Champions award, a UF Cross-Campus Faculty Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and over 300 grants for her programs and research at the University of Florida.

I remember going into rooms and introducing myself, you know, " dancer in residence," and people would furrow their brow and say, “I'm in the hospital, that doesn't belong here.” … Then the view of our program kind of evolved into “It's really nice. … it's really lovely.” And then after a bit more time, the overarching recognition was that this is really important …because our, our care providers we're recognizing that artists are really crucial members of the interprofessional care team.

University of Florida Center for Arts and Medicine:  “Transform health and wellness through the arts. Use your creativity to advance health, wellness, and equity as a trained arts in health professional. Promote health one creative moment at a time.”

A National Endowment for the Arts Research Lab exploring the impact of the arts and cultural engagement on population health outcomes in the US through epidemiological analyses of US cohort studies.

Shands Hospital’s artists in residence: Starting with two volunteer visual artists working on the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit, Arts in Medicine now has 16 paid artists in all art disciplines working in six separate buildings throughout the UF Health system, covering the Gainesville and Jacksonville communities.

University of Florida Health Shands Arts in Medicine Program: Artists in Residence work annually with over 100 volunteers from the Gainesville community and the University of Florida. These artists and volunteers engage patients, families, and staff in the creative disciplines of dance, writing, music, visual arts, and contemplative arts.

Centers for Disease Control, Vaccine Competence, and Demand Team: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention appointed Jill Sonke, director of the UF Center for Arts in Medicine, as senior adviser to the Vaccine Confidence and Demand Team on the COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force this summer. 

Interlochen Arts Academy: “Our umbrella organization, Interlochen Center for the Arts, encompasses six distinct program areas, each founded to propel arts education and engagement: Interlochen Arts Camp, Interlochen Arts Academy, Interlochen Online, Interlochen Public Radio, Interlochen Presents, and Interlochen College of Creative Arts.” 

Dr. John Grand Pole: Dr. Pole co-founded Arts in Medicine (AIM) at the University of Florida, arguably the nation’s leading university hospital arts program. As well as over 120 scientific publications, he has published more than 60 poems and essays on the healing arts, and performs as an improvisational actor and clown.

Dr. Mary Rockwood Lane: is a professor, nurse, healing artist, painter and works as a professional Caritas coach with individuals and healthcare settings, both nationally and internationally.

Dance in Medicine Program, University of Florida: The University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine, in conjunction with the School of Theatre and Dance, offers an Undergraduate Certificate in Dance in Medicine to UF students.  This certificate can serve as a credential for developing post-baccalaureate educational pathways and career options. 

Duke University Arts in Health Program: “Arts & Health at Duke was founded in 1978 by James H. Semans, MD, in collaboration with Wayne\ Rundles, MD, professor of hematology and then-president of the American Cancer Society. First known as Cultural Services, the program originally offered monthly musical performances in the hospital cafeteria with the support of the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation.”

University of Michigan Medical Arts Program: “The Medical Arts Program aims to enhance medical students’ and house officers’ ability to provide high-quality, humanistic clinical care through experiences and analysis of the musical, theatrical, literary, and visual arts that focus on essential but often overlooked skills such as empathy, awareness of social context, and comfort with the ambiguity and uncertainty that are a pervasive element of clinical care.”

Dr. Daisy Fancourt, University College, London: Fancourt worked with the World Health Organization to develop an agenda that connected the arts, health and well-being. In one of her WHO reports, Fancourt concluded that arts interventions, including singing in a choir to improve the outcomes of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, present low-cost treatment options for healthcare workers.[18]

 What is the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being?  A scoping review: World Health Organization, 2019: Results from over 3000 studies identified a major role for the arts in the prevention of ill health, promotion of health, and management and treatment of illness across the lifespan.

Ellen Dissanayake is a bio-anthropologist who studies, whether there is selective value to the arts, whether we need the arts and creativity in order to survive.

Creating Healthy Communities Through Cross-Sector Collaboration: This paper presents a case for how collaboration among the public health, arts and culture, and community development sectors is critical to addressing the issues and conditions that limit health in America.

Creating Healthy Communities, Arts and Public Health in America Initiative: Creating Healthy Communities: Arts + Public Health in America is a two-year national initiative led by the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine in partnership with ArtPlace America. The initiative will expand the intersections of arts, community development, and public health through strategic cross-sector collaboration, discovery, translation, and dissemination.

The Arts and Health Communication in Uganda: A light Under the Table - This qualitative interview study brings the voices of 27 public health leaders, health communication experts, and artists who work in public health in Uganda together to articulate the principles and practices that make the country a shining example of effective, evidence-based use of the arts for health communication.

Centers for Disease Control - How to Engage the Arts to build COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence: “Local artists can communicate vaccine information in a way that often makes it more understandable, memorable, culturally relevant, and actionable.”

*******

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.

The Story of My Story

A Digital Story by K

MUSIC PLAYING

K: In a funny way, books raised me. I didn't have the things a child needs to be a child; security, safety, comfort, love. But I always found happiness in learning new things. When I turned eight, my mother passed away from her battle with AIDS.I remember how even at her funeral, I was thinking about how I could get my homework done. .

Right after that I was brought to this country. And the only thing I could bring with me where my love of books, learning and knowledge

in high school, I used to dream up. I would explore outer space when I was suddenly drowned by their words, criminal illegal. And I thought, how could a human be prohibited by law? I was so confused. My first reaction was laughter. The laughter turned to tears and rage. I made up my mind, I was going to fight to go to college and continue my education.

I shared my story and quickly found that there were many like me. I began to speak out. At first, it felt good. I felt like I could bring about change. But one day I heard a voice on the radio, and I realized it was me, but it wasn't me. It wasn't my story. It was a story of a perfect poster child. They twisted my devotion to education into a sick plea to my oppressors.

It was slowly killing me, having a face of the people that were denying me, the basic things, a human needs to be a human. To beg them for scraps from their fruitful plate. The very same plate they had filled by raping, enslaving, and killing my ancestors and my brothers and sisters around the world. I came to see that this was not just about me, not just about going to college, but about fighting the injustice experienced by all immigrants and all people suffering

Even today, as I am denied the things a human needs to be a human. I lie in bed with a new book. I glance over at the shelf and see the books I read as a child and think of what I will write in my own.

Bill Cleveland: This short story (The Story of My Story) is the audio from a video created by a young woman who identifies herself using the letter “K”. She made this piece at a digital storytelling workshop at the Story Center in the fall of 2012. Although it has an office and a classroom in Berkeley, California, the Story Center is not merely a place. It's actually a conviction that we all have stories to share that can inspire teach, bring joy, bear, witness, and heal. It's also a process that introduces people to the stories at their center that they've carried with them all their lives. The center's impact over nearly three decades has been both intensely personal and global.

This conversation with Center director, Joe Lambert, explores the story of the Story Center, its history, its practice and its influence. Joe describes himself as a “small businessman, that has kept a little business going for a long time.” He's also unabashed and adding, “and we want to be revolutionaries” with the impetus once again, in Joe's words, “making good stories that help us.”

JOE LAMBERT

Joe and colleagues founded the StoryCenter/Center for Digital Storytelling in 1994, where they developed a unique computer training and arts program known as The Digital Storytelling Workshop. Joe has traveled the world to spread the practice of digital storytelling and has authored and produced curricula in many contexts, including the Digital Storytelling Cookbook, the principle manual for the workshop process, and Digital Storytelling: Story Work for Urgent Times (6th Edition). Born and raised in Texas, Joe has been active in the Bay Area arts community for the last 40 years as an arts activist, producer, administrator, teacher, writer, and director, and recently relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

DELICIOUS QUOTES

MEMORABLE MENTIONS

Story Center: “We create spaces for listening to and sharing stories, to help build a just and healthy world. Our public and custom workshops provide individuals and organizations with skills and tools that support self-expression, creative practice, and community building.” 

San Francisco Tenants Action Group (TAG) Now called the San Francisco Tenants Union. “For more than 40 years, the city’s renters have turned to the San Francisco Tenants Union, a mostly volunteer-run organization, for advice on how to secure and maintain habitable and affordable housing.”

Thomas Melancon & Lindi Yeni : “When Kuumba House was founded in 1982 (by South Africa’s Lindi Yeni and Houston’s Thomas Meloncon), the company’s main focus was producing plays by noteworthy playwrights.”

Life on the Water: A vital San Francisco theater space that featured the work of three of the Bay Area's most talented artists. Bill Tallen, Ellen Sebastian, and Leonard Pitt. See Stage Left, a documentary about San Francisco’s activist theater tradition.

WeVideo: A versatile and affordable online video editing web site.

The Moth  “For 20 years we've been collecting and sharing stories. Now we're taking a moment to pause and look back, from a whiskey-fueled dream in Georgia to the storytelling movement of today. We honor and celebrate the diversity and commonality of human experience, with 25,000 stories to date, shared live and without notes.”

This American Life  “Mostly we do journalism, but an entertaining kind of journalism that’s built around plot. In other words, stories! Our favorite sorts of stories have compelling people at the center of them, funny moments, big feelings, surprising plot twists, and interesting ideas. Like little movies for radio. Our show is heard by more than 2 million listeners each week on over 500 public radio stations in the U.S., with another 2.8 million people downloading each episode as a podcast.

StoryCorps,: StoryCorps’ mission is to preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world. Its Library of Congress archive is the largest collection of recorded stories in the world. 

Dave Isay: "An American radio producer and founder of Sound Portraits Productions.[1] He is also the founder of StoryCorps, an ongoing oral history project.[2] He is the recipient of numerous broadcasting honors, including six Peabody Awards and a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. He is the author/editor of numerous books that grew out of his public radio documentary work." (Wikipedia)

NursStory Project: “In 2008, StoryCenter and nursing researcher Sue Hagedorn began Nurstory, a collaborative project that examines how personal stories of nurses and other providers can contribute to nursing education.”

Susan Hill: I’m an eccentric combination of very small towns in New England, and very very large, diverse, multi-lingual cities: living by the ocean is the constant. My relatives include a clipper ship navigator, a detective, excellent carpenters, a race horse trainer, a car salesman, a dressmaker, an artist who changed / Americanized her name, nurses and teachers and wonderful cooks. I love the risks, the service, and the high craft implicit in their lives.

Bill Cleveland: [00:00:00] This Episode’s conversation is with Susan Hill. Susan is a good friend with whom I spent many years traversing the, often difficult, confounding, even hilarious, landscape of the of the California Department of Corrections. We spent over a decade bringing artists into institutions up and down the state. Susan's particular beat was Southern California, her creative launching pad an organization called UCLA Artsreach, which she directed. In that position, she functioned as an impresario, an inspiration, a creative thinker, and as a master navigator of difficult and challenging environments bring a band of great artists with her all the way.

In other chapters, Susan also worked with Judy Chicago as a midwife for the iconic feminist art installation The Dinner Party was a principal driver of the historic Art in other Places Conference and is an accomplished textile artist. She has, I think. One of the best minds, and hearts I know for translating human creativity to needs of the human community. In our conversation we talk about how that complex alchemy works, and doesn’t, getting the respect of people who really distrust you, and what happens when the lights go off in a high-security prison classroom.

This is Change the Story / Change the World, A Chronicle of Art and Community Transformation, my nave is Bill Cleveland.

BC: You got it to work.

Susan Hill: [00:01:17] Oh, yeah. Yes. got it to work, got the dogs fed, but really, there should be a rule that you don't call up people in Maine in late February, because we look awful. We have vegetables stored in the basement and we look fairly similar.

BC: [00:01:32] Well, at least you have something to eat.

SH: [00:01:34] Yes, exactly. Exactly.

BC: [00:01:37] So how you be?

SH: [00:01:39] Okay. Maine is one of the states that, has a really low rate of incidence we live in a very small community and on the whole it's been really cooperative. and although there is a very strong contingent here of deniers.

BC: So, my reason for doing this is to give you an opportunity to go into your Rolodex of available stories. But before I start one thing, I would ask is how do you describe that as a way of working in the world?

 SH: First of all, I'm going to say, thank you, bill Cleveland. And I really want to acknowledge that you have been a fellow traveler in so many ways. And I'm so grateful for all of that.

But the question of “How do I describe the work?” is really lovely. And when I thought about it, I thought, my first real jobs in the world was --- one, I was a summer waitress all night from when I graduated from high school and all through college. And after college, when I moved to New York, my first jobs were: I was the receptionist because I couldn't type, to the president of the Ford Foundation, and in the holidays, in my spare time, I sold toys at FAO Schwartz. So, the linchpin of me working in the world is good service and fun and interesting people.

BC: [00:03:09] Okay.

SH: [00:03:10] And there were interesting people coming to the Ford Foundation for money, with good ideas. And there were wonderful people coming into FAO Schwartz to buy toys. I consider myself an artist, but I'm self-taught, didn't go to art school--- didn't have those goals. So, I see myself more as a facilitator for good service. I want to work collaboratively, and for the purpose of social change, whether it's small or large, and I really am committed to collaboration. I'm committed to working in council circles so that everyone has an equitable voice, and I'm committed to nonviolence.

BC: [00:03:46] That's a wonderful package.

SH: [00:03:48] it's a Rolodex.

BC: [00:03:50] Yes, it is. So, one of the things that features prominently in my experience with you, is that you have facilitated many things. But the way in which you go about doing that is very much as an artist. And every place I have visited that you have lived has, I would say, is more of a studio than it is a living room or kitchen. And so, I think if you, as a working maker in the world with the thing you love.

SH: [00:04:23] Yes. Well, first of all, I hate housework. But I, I believe implicitly that everybody is creative. And I believe that creativity is not from our brain, it's not part of the logic that we have, that as Jung says, it's actually from the heart, that the soul is located in the heart. And that creativity is a deep intelligence that we all have that manifests differently.

Creativity is very much like cooking. there are certain ways that it demands, that given the ingredients, it has to be done. You can't rush it. You can't overcook it. Yes, I really love walking into places and, creating the environment. I think it's equally important, even if you're borrowing a classroom from the history teacher in the California youth authority prison system, the way that you, what we used to call, create the rules of the room, is as important and has to work in the service of creativity. And then you go about the business of being creative.

BC: [00:05:28] And the other thing, which was implicit in what you said is that the artist is not some kind of elixir that spreads creativity on everybody in the room, but it's an equal opportunity, resource --- everybody there has it.

SH: [00:05:41] Everybody there has it.

BC: [00:05:42] Yep. Yep. given that path, how did you come to it?

SH: [00:05:45] I grew up in very small towns in Massachusetts, south of Boston, quite close to Plymouth. And my grandmother was the oldest of 12 children, six boys, six girls, and they all. lived in that area. So, we had tons of relatives on Cape Cod. We had tons of relatives in Maine. So, we were continually, in these small, new England towns --- going fishing.

BC: [00:06:11] Yeah. Were there other artists in your family was creativity in abundance around you?

SH: [00:06:17] that's an interesting question because I think actually one of the greatest artists in my family, was my grandmother, my little short, Scottish, Anna McDonald McNeilen, grandmother, who was, as I said, the oldest of 12 children. And she was taken out of school when she was probably 10 or 11 to stay home and help her mother. But I think I learned about beauty from her and I learned about making things grow. From her, I learned patience from her. She had an intrinsically artistic soul. We did have one artist in the family, my great aunt, Emily Josephine O'Hare, who was the granddaughter of a celestial navigator on clipper ships.

BC: [00:07:02] Wow.

SH: [00:07:03] And her name was Emily Josephine. Her sister's name was Susan. But Emily Josephine went to Pratt in New York and was an artist and she taught in a private school in Boston if she had shows, and she traveled and everyone thought she was, crazy. So

BC: [00:07:21] yeah.

SH: [00:07:21] it wasn't a good thing to be an artist. But I think the other side of it is that people in my family, women and men alike could make things. And things got made or things got repaired and effortlessly, and that, was always wonderful to see. Yeah.

BC: [00:07:37] Yeah. And with the materials that are available. Which is okay. We call that recycling now. So, A story or two. so what are you going to tell us today?

SH: [00:08:37]] I think, as I thought about this, I do want to acknowledge that we, you and I we're so fortunate to have lived in a golden time when everything aligned and not only that but it completely bore out.

BC: Okay.

SH: Ex-hippie philosophies, that the world is good, and everything will work out. But we were in Arts in Corrections in the earliest days of Arts in Corrections when there was a small number of prisons and the budget was adequate, and there were enlightened people in the community. And in the California legislature that supported that work that saw the benefit of that work. So, we were given a kind of support to do something on a large scale that was quite phenomenal.

Then my experience is that our experiences really deepened as we got to work with more artists. and I think in that system, we also knew that this could not possibly last. The California prison system is I think the largest paramilitary well-armed bureaucracies in the world.

BC: [00:09:07] Yep.

SH: [00:09:07] …dedicated to punishment. What the fuck would did they let us in there for? there was something really deeply prophetic and wonderful about the fact that we knew that it wouldn't last in its earliest incarnation so that we really paid attention. And I think that what was, important was, as I said, learning to be bilingual, so that when we did work with the prison administrators, which we did, I think the partnership was so solid, but we had to speak the same language. We had to acknowledge the same goals.

So, when you, ask about my work and telling stories, I think part of it is to say that I personally went in and was an artist. That's how I started. I was invited by Susan Allen Loewenberg, bless her, of LA theater Works to go and do a large project in what was then the only women's prison. And out of that, I became the director at ArtsReach, which was the Southern California partner for Arts in Corrections. So, I would go in and be a resident artist.

BC: [00:10:56] With an interesting cast of characters, with, I recall, three Manson Family members, right?

SH: [00:11:00] With a very, yeah very interesting cast of characters there. But I also was the director of ArtsReach, which meant that I was in collaboration with all of these institutions and funding sources and artists. We had usually about 150 artists that we could call on. It was usually 50 people under contract at any one time. We wanted the artist teams to look like the prison population, which was largely black and then brown, and then, white, and then "other." Which we did. We had to break a lot of people out of the comfort zone, That kind of collaboration, I think, is something that I learned from. And it informed me for all of the work we did. Our work in prison was good, and we were invited. then to go and duplicate the program in the California Youth Authority, which was a separate prison system for kids ages 12 to 18. Although they could be a little older. We were specifically told that we had to create a theater program. And we did. And we had an ensemble of nine Los Angeles actors that were multilingual diversified, funny, irritating, troublesome, fabulous.

And they were trained, by some of the best which included Laurie Meadoff, Dexter Locke from City Kids in New York, John Bergman and Geese Theater Company, , phenomenal, Rebecca Rice. and they were trained to work in teams and to work with incarcerated kids. And we did plays that they made up. And I think the prison system really thought when they asked for a theater program, I think they meant a talent show. And from there we also worked in continuation high schools in Los Angeles. Multi-generational. Community high schools that were also multi-lingual worked in a, facility, it said over the door for abandoned and neglected girls. it's been, and I've worked in also, I did a program in a elder facility in Los Angeles.

:[00:13:12 And one of the things I will say actually for advice is that I came to believe that we all have a special constituency that we're good at. I was really good in dangerous situations that required , adrenaline, and quick thinking. And I think part of what was always really important to me was that we brought a kind of humanity into the room. And the rules of the room included, that we didn't know anything that it brought the person to be incarcerated. They didn't know that much about us either. And so, when you meet there, as Rumi says, there's a field beyond right and wrong. And it was neutral turf. Also, we were very fortunate that, although the prison system was very racist and gang oriented, that we got mixed groups of people in the room so there would be people in the room who might be enemies in the yard, or certainly not talk to each other, but they became part of the ensemble once in the room.

And then also we never patronized anybody. we just worked to the highest standards we could. We just thought, “Come on, you want to do this good, don't you? Let's do this good.” Which meant in that place music was rehearsed, and there was genuine constructive criticism that everybody shared. And the language was non-violent language. We used given names. And so, when aguard or a staff person or an administrator would come into the room, very often they would come over. to me and say, “I've never heard them call each other anything except their gang name. And he just called him Daniel. He just said he was his friend. Do you know who those two guys are?” “Yeah. That's Daniel and Luis.” Or one guard came up to me and he, watched this kid and he said, ”I didn't know, he could talk. And you have him singing.”

And there was this play that we did, where there was one white kid in the play. And most of the rest of the kids were black. And we were working with some African drummers in it. And the white kid decided he was going to play the sax. “Okay.” And he was going play the fool and, “Okay.” So, he came out first in the play, like the narrator, the guide, and the kids in the audience began to laugh and he began to play his...

Episode 29: Becky Reardon - Finding the Moon

Becky Reardon describes herself as “In the music” Her songs, tell us about the human community, our mother earth, and the reverence, and awe, and humility, and joy, and solace, and deep understandings that can rise up when you make time and space to listen to what she has to say.

Becky Reardon's voice is familiar to the millions of people who heard her sing on the Charlie Brown TV specials (Charles Schultz called her his favorite singer!). She is a composer whose songs and rounds are sung by community and university choirs, and song circles throughout the US, Canada, British Isles, and Germany. Sometimes jazzy and fun-loving, sometimes trance-inducing and deeply spiritual, her music always conveys her passion for the natural world and the cycles of life. She teaches and performs nationwide, using improvised singing and movement to inspire singers to write their own songs. She is currently writing a musical about a women’s singing circle.

Delicious Quotes

Transcript

BC: [00:00:00] If you're lucky, every once in a while, you cross paths with a singular soul whose way in the world Intersects with yours at an inflection point that contains a powerful lesson that makes profound sense for you, in that moment. Becky Reardon is one of those, at least for me.

We met at a while back during the deep mask times. On a bench by the San Francisco Bay. She and her wife were visiting my friend and Change the Story / Change the World musical collaborator, Judy Munson.

Now, Becky describes herself as “In the music” I'm thinking, it's more like, “She is the music.” And that music has a compelling story to tell about the profound wisdom that surrounds us here on our planet. Her songs, tell us about humans, and our mother earth, the reverence, and awe, and humility, and joy, and solace, and deep understandings that can rise up when you take the time, and make the space to listen to what she has to say.

We're all lucky that Becky has been kind enough to share those songs through her records, and concerts, and workshops all across the country, over the past decades. We spoke in the spring of 2021 about these things: The natural world and community, and the place of songs in the spaces where they come together.

This is. Change the Story / Change the World: A chronicle of art and community transformation, I'm Bill Cleveland.

Listeners, you will notice that this episode includes a lot of Becky’s wonderful music. If you are interested in hearing more, you can go to beckyreardonmusic.com or click on the link in our show notes. Now here’s Becky sharing, among other things, her recipe for finding the moon.

BC: [00:02:07] Part 1: In the Music

So, it looks like you've returned home in one place in one piece. Yeah. Yeah.

BR: [00:02:14] To one place, one piece I'm here. Glad to be here.  Were you out at the bench this morning?

BC: [00:02:22] Yeah, that bench, if there are solace and soul helpers over this last year and that bench has been one of them, for sure.

BR: [00:02:31] Kind of like a rock.

BC: [00:02:33] Absolutely. So, just, before we start, could you describe what's outside the walls of your place where you are?

BR: [00:02:41] Sure. I'm in the high desert of Northern New Mexico. I'm on a piece of land. That's five acres. it's on a little rise above a very long valley, an arroyo that's full of Russian olives and little Rocky Mountain junipers, lots of sticky thorny things. I can see a Talus Mountain to the east. the Rio Grande Gorge is to, to the west of me outside my window there. I have Russian olive trees in my backyard. I have mockingbirds singing wildly right now. The arroyo used to be full of sheep, that’s years and years ago. Nobody lived out here except sheepherders. So that's a little bit of my, my terrain.

BC: [00:03:29] I usually ask people that I also ask who are the people who were there before we came, the white folks showed up.

BR: [00:03:37] The Taos Pueblo. Indians. Yeah.

BC: [00:03:40] Who are very much. still there

BR: [00:03:42] Still there? In fact, they are, as the crow flies, about two miles over there to the east. I'm just west of the Taos Pueblo, and yes, they're still there. Their village has been occupied continuously for a thousand years.

BC: [00:03:58] Yeah. Which is amazing. First of all, thank you for doing this. I've spent time with your music, and it's an extraordinary way to be introduced to another human being. So let me begin. So, your work in the world how would you describe it, your way in the world, your path?

BR: [00:04:13] I'm in the music. I used to sign my emails “In the music,” cause that's where I am. I'm a musician songwriter, performer, and that's the medium through which I express what's important to me, which is the natural world and community. And I know I start with myself. Where I am. I'm here. Here's my body. Here's what's around me. Here's, what's singing to me. Here's what I'm learning. And I make songs out of that, and I share them with my community, with my family, and hope they are useful.

BC: [00:04:55] And it's so clear to me that spending time in the natural world that you are reflecting on is supremely important to you that feeds you.

BR: [00:05:07] Oh Yeah. And especially during this pandemic, I feel lucky that I live in a place where I can still get out to trails up in the mountains out on the mesas, because yeah, that definitely keeps me alive.

BC: [00:05:23] What took you to the place that you've spent so much of your life in this communion and this musical symphony that you've generated around you.

BR: [00:05:35] That's such a question. I saw a movie once, and I don't remember the name of it, but the premise of the movie was that after you die, there's about 10 seconds of consciousness where you relive all the important things in your life, and all of a sudden it makes sense.

BC: [00:05:51] Yeah.

BR: [00:05:52] All of those puzzles are answered, and you know, what it was all about. And when you ask a question like that's takes me there. And I think about being raised in a family in the middle west, that was pretty religious. My, my dad was a minister. My grandfather was a minister and a missionary, and I grew up singing hymns. And the best part of that was singing four-part harmony acapella, so all of those chord changes, all that stuff is just in me. And songs like

"Farther along we'll know all about it."

Yeah. That song.  Sing, pop songs, lots of jazz, listening to Fitzgerald, the Gershwin tunes studied opera music. I traveled. I went to France for my junior year in college, learned some folk songs there. Then went to the Philippines in the Peace Corps. it was always like I had a ukulele or a guitar or something. I was always learning songs. Came back and moved to the Bay Area. And I sang in a little folk club called the Vene Fomage, on Solano Boulevard, and just sang songs that Joan Baez would have sung and Bob Dylan. And that's the early part of this journey.

BC: [00:07:14] And we share a lot of that, but at a certain point you decided that you would make your own music, your own songs, and I'm wondering where that emerged, and how that flowered?

BR: [00:07:31] It took a long time. I'm very slow to, I didn't start writing my own songs really until I was in my fifties. And A lot of other paths I sang with top 40 bands and bars and sang at a folk club called the Purple Onion in San Francisco and yeah. And, I was always singing other people's songs and I tried to write songs, they were like love songs and I didn't like them. And I didn't really have my own voice.

And then there was one year where all of these fantastic things happened. I started taking singing lessons from the wonderful jazz improvisationalist, Rhiannon. who's part of Bobby McFerrin’s group and a fabulous singer in her own. Right. And she just opened this whole world. Of hearing my own voice to me, and starting with vocables not singing words, but just like the Mockingbird I was listening to this morning, I was like,

“Mocking bird scat singing”

making enough, whatever kind of came out of my body and my own rhythms and my own excitement or quiet or whatever it was. I met her, I had two lessons and I knew that she had just given me a lifetime's worth. So, I met her, I started singing with Kate Munger and, that's another whole story. Kate is the woman who started the Threshold Choirs. they're groups that sing at people's bedside in the last stages of their life. But years ago, this was like 30 years ago, she had a group of women out in Point Reyes, and I would come join them. And we'd just sing on the full moons out on the shore, on Bay and we'd sing rounds from all over the world. And after a while, I would go I, think, “let me try my hand at that.” And so, I wrote around about the cycles of the moon, Where is the Moon." And I think the third thing that happened that year that I came out with some friends to the four corners area.

BC: And that's New Mexico where you are now, right.

BR: [00:09:50] Yeah, and I just, we came out in two, two trucks and all of a sudden, I just wanted to go off on my own. And they went up to Telluride and I went down to the canyonlands and just not having ever been there before, not knowing what to expect and started hiking in the canyons and I felt something there just in the pace of walking and being surrounded by such astonishing landscape, the immensity of the landscape, and then the intimacy of the little wildflowers that were there. It just took me back to a place. I don't think I've been to I was a kid and the world was really alive to me. And so, all of that, I started singing back, just after I'd been walking for a while, I would just make up songs, and often not words often just S just responding to, to do what I felt around me. And that's what really happened. It changed my, my, my music.

BC: [00:11:01] There's an old school practice that I think you and I probably both had, which is you go into a music store, and you flip through the albums that are stacked up. And you look at the names of the songs and the back of the albums and you look at who's in them.

And so having spent time with your music, I feel like I am flipping through a book of specimens photographs, sounds, of a long, long walk through the obvious paradise that you avail yourself of out there in the world. And there are times when I feel like I'm being introduced to your friends, your family in a sense.

There's one of my friends, who's your friend, which is the Raven, obviously the monkey flower and the Cocklebur and the rivers and the stars. At some points I'm feeling like I'm intruding—that this is a private moment. Okay.

That's an important thing because sometimes it listening to your music, obviously the intention is to share it, but I feel like I'm in, in a sanctuary and I'd like you to talk a little bit about two things. One of them is the round and what it means to you. and this idea of sharing these things with groups of people who sing,

BR: [00:12:24] Oh, my mind is just so full of stuff, so, I will talk about rounds and where it started, then I started singing my own songs with other groups. Like I said, it's in the music. I just, I want to play just a little bit

BC: [00:12:44] Good please do

BR: [00:12:48] You were just talking about the Ravens, and it makes me those services song. So, I was out in the Valley of the Gods, which is in Southern Utah. it was hot. And we were walking along in the red rock and looking for some shade. And that's where this came from.

Walking in the red rock,

in the summer heat

looking for the shade of a cottonwood

A raven sees me walking.

She knows, but she's not talking.

Some place green,

Down by cool stream

Deep Shadow

So that's a round. the round form back to that group, singing on the shores of tamales bay, like the, I think the second round I ever wrote was, Where is the Moon? And first of all the round, that happens to be a perfect vehicle for writing songs about cycles of nature.

BC: [00:14:06] yes.

BR: [00:14:07] And so this round started before I had any recording equipment.

And I was out here in New Mexico and the first line came to me cause’ I was thinking about the moon. All right. if I see this little Crescent, the curve is facing. to the right. I, what does that mean? Is it waxing? Is it waning? if I see the moon, when I'm waking up in the morning, is it new? Is It like old? and then I learned that the full moon rises at sunset every month, no matter what month it is. And anyway, so I'm thinking about this, and this line comes to me.

Where is the moon?

When the moon is new,

it's a sliver on the right

growing bigger every night.

And I went, oh, I better write that down. And later on, I was hiking with some friends, and I made them sing that part over and over again until I came up with the next and so forth.

But anyway, I want to play that for you so you can hear how it sounds when it turns into a round.

BR: [00:16:13] all right, so I'll play those for you so you can see how this alternate into, around.

Where is the moon?

When the moon is new,

it's a sliver on the right

growing bigger every night.

Where is the moon

When the moon is waning

 Fading to the left

Till there’s no moon remaining

BC: [00:16:53] You don't mind if I learn that song, I love that, that's really beautiful. And it, in two ways. Obviously it's a great round, but the minute that the picture starts to emerge, the moon, and then, the question, okay, what's going on here? it, I, I lose myself in that song really easily.

BR: [00:17:16] Great. I know you like rounds.

BC: [00:17:18] I do.

BR: [00:17:18] You have long history with them.

BC: [00:17:21] I do.

BR: [00:17:22] Yeah, that round is very fun to teach. because you have to kind of deconstruct it a little bit, cause it's a little bit complicated, but you start with half the room singing the questions and the other half singing the answers.

And then in turn that around. Oh, I'm so happy that came to me. And I heard, oh, some years ago that folks were singing it at Oberlin College, and they called it the Moon Instructional Round.

BC: [00:17:48] That's great. that's called a, that's a musical epidemic, right? When you know, you travel the world and you bumped back into something that you gave birth to. Isn't that nice?

BR: [00:17:59] did you say a musical epidemic? Oh, I see

BC: [00:18:02] yes.

BR: [00:18:02] a good way.

BC: [00:18:03] long before this stupid pandemic I became obsessed. Uh, with epidemiology --- not as a science of biology, but as a science of human behavior. And I've always felt that at least my work was in part about creating of viral responses to good things. So, like music, like rounds, like great stories, that mutate along the way.

BR: [00:18:30] Hmm. Hmm.

BC: [00:18:31] Yeah.

BR: [00:18:32] That made, that reminds me. So, I was thinking about your podcast

Change the Story / Change the World, and how important it's been for me to, to change some of the stories and the religious upbringing that I had. And you know, so I wrote a song called All of Us, Um, it's just happens to be another round and it's, it goes,

All of us are chosen people

chosen by life to be alive.

Wherever we walk is holy land,

holy by life's returning

under heaven only one true birthright

to create whatever we love.

And yeah, you'd ask how did I start sharing my songs? In the world. And that really happened out here in New Mexico, I just had the fortunate circumstance to get involved with a group of women out here who were building their own moon lodge. I mean, that's, that's what, one of the things attracted me Taos in the first place. The women were all doing these fabulous things. They were building their own houses. They were making their own sacred spaces. They were gardening, they were hiking in the mountains, they were going on, wood runs, they were playing softball. they were artists. So, I

THE NOUVELLA: STORY-BASED COMMUNITY ARTS TRAINING

Hi I’m Bill Cleveland, the host of Change the Story / Change the World. This week we are going to share something a bit different. In June of 2021 I participated in an international conference convened by the Art in Society Research Network. My part was a presentation about using story-based strategies for community arts training. Because of the pandemic, the conference was entirely online, with most of the presentation were delivered asynchronously, or what I call In UNREAL TIME, Which I have to admit is not my favorite mode of teaching. My response was to use a few stories about how using stories help prepare artists and their partners from other community sectors for work in communities and social institutions. 

What we came up with is a game show, a scene from a novella about artists working in prison, and a visit to a fake town in the midst of a harsh reckoning around issues of race, justice, othering, and belonging. 

Welcome to a special edition of change the story Change the World —- as we pay a visit to the 16th Annual Art in Society Conference. 

*****

Hi: I’m Bill Cleveland. I am speaking to you from, Alameda CA, near Oakland which is the traditional land of the Ohlone people and home our county’s new VP Kamala Harris.  

I run the Center for the Study of Art & Community Our name is a mouthful to be sure but we have a pretty simple mission. Which is basically, helping to Create new community art partnerships in service to building caring, capable & equitable communities and then telling the stories that rise up. Over the past couple of decades, the Center has done that by conducting research, providing cross-sector community arts training, and producing studies, articles books and a podcast on arts-based community development and social change efforts all over the world. 

Enough about us. I’d like to begin this presentation by inviting you to participate in one of our fabulous Quiz shows. 

The show is actually a little game called TRUTH OR NO. The object of the game is to spark your imaginations and have a bit of fun. To do this you will need write a few things down, Yeah, I know you thought this conference would be just sitting and watching, but please, indulge me here. I’ll give you 30 seconds to grab a pencil and paper. 

OK now lets start. The game goes like this: In a little bit I am going to share 4 really short-stories that may or may not be true. Your job is to identify the ones that are false. Before I start t you will need to write 1 through 4 on a piece of paper. Now after each little story I tell write T for those you think are true and N for No for the fabrications. This will happen very fast. So here we go. 

1. Space Out: Way back in the 20th century the US Space Program felt they needed more public support. So, they decided to engage artists to help them to draw more positive attention to their efforts. This NASA arts program started with a bang – hiring Oh Superman, Laurie Anderson and Pop artist, Robert Rauschenberg as resident artists to make art celebrating the exploration of the cosmos. 
2. CRACKED: Once upon a time A group of neighbors found themselves with a crack house problem. They responded by engaging law enforcement, zoning officials, and the city council, all to no avail. In their desperation they turned to a group of artists from the community. These artists went crazy, whipping out a mural that was so powerful that within 24 hours of its completion the dope peddlers had totally fled the scene, never to return. 
3. MAXED OUT: If you are incarcerated in SuperMax prison you spend 90% of your life locked in an 8x10 cell and will breath fresh air only 60 minutes a week. A woman artist who felt that this was a terrilble thing decided to use her art to shut down her state’s supermax. After she created her work the governor of her state decided it was time to shut down the state’s, 700 bed supermax prison and now its gone. 
4. TREES, WOLVES, & DEMOCRACY: There was once an artist who planted trees, slept with wolves and decided to change the world. To do this he and some fellow artists created an artwork that resulted in the election of thousands of progressive candidates to local and national elective offices in dozens of countries around the world.  

Four pretty crazy, improbable stories. So, how did you vote. If you get them all right you have won am an all-expenses paid trip to a place called St. Francis Maryland, which I’ll tell you about in a moment. Here’s the lowdown on the 4 stories.

1. NASA: Yes, Laurie and Robert were employed by a NASA arts program that goes back to the 60’s
2. CRACK HOUSE This is true too. In Atlanta mural artist Normando Ismay and a mural crew turned a crack house into a Massive multicolored 4-sided billboard advertising the best drugs at Deep Discounts. For some reason, customers stopped showing up.  
3. SUPERMAX: What can I say, this one seems like a stretch, but its true too. In 2008 Laurie Jo Reynolds, a videographer who calls herself a legislative artist launched TAMMS ten year, an arts project to expose the inhumane conditions at an Illinois’ supermax prison specifically designed for sensory deprivation and solitary confinement. In 2013 Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn announced its closure. 
4. ART and ELECTION: Number 4. There’s no way for this one, but what can I say. The green party was established as something called a social sculpture by a group of artists led by Joseph Beuys. 

This game was a quick and silly way to introduce some history that has helped define what has variously been called community arts, or arts-based community development, or more recently creative placemaking and social practice. In it, we used a fictional game show to tell some hard to believe, but true stories. Along the way, some of you may have encountered some degree of skepticism about the power of the human imagination to provoke change. When we train artists and their community partners for creative collaborations, we use games like these with multiple rounds to have fun, and get out of their heads, and into a place where they can exercise their imaginations, individually and, most importantly together. 

This workshop is about how stories can help us access some of the most difficult lessons about art making in service to community learning, building, healing, and mobilizing. In Truth or NO the story was a game that I made up that you, hopefully played along with. Playing is the key here, because PLAY, is basically life practice. This is true for all the creatures in the animal kingdom, including us. When we are young a lot of our play is physical testing and problem solving. As we get older it migrates more and more into realm of thinking and what we call adult learning. As community arts trainers we are trying provide a memorable learning experience that can help our students respectfully engage often complex and ambiguous institutional and community systems and cultures. 

NORTHCOAST CORRECTIONAL FACILITY

Another of our most effective training resources are stories about fictional neighborhoods or agencies that we use to tell the real story of what it’s like to navigate them as creative change agents. In these narratives’ artists, and community members, administrators and staff explore the conundrums and contradictions, the heartaches and little victories that creative partners dance with every day in these “other places.”

The example of this I’m going to share was created during time I ran California’s Arts-in-Corrections program. Its called The Nouvella, which is a work of fiction by writer/teaching artist/activist Judith Tannenbaum that was used to train artists getting ready to teach one of California’s 32 correctional facilities. At the time A_I_C was the largest arts residency program in the world, with over 1000 artists and 25,000 students. As I am sure you have noted, it has also provided the title of this workshop. 

North Coast Correctional Facility (Unit 3, Third Tier) 

NCCF is on indefinite lockdown following an inmate stabbing. Because of this, writing instructor Susan Robertson is working with her students through the bars of their cells. She approaches Mitch Reiser’s cell.

"Hello, Susan. Coming this way?" Mitch Reiser's voice broke into Susan's thoughts on violence and its effect on the mind and soul. She walked past a few cells to where Mitch was housed. 

"Are you psychic or what? How did you know it was me?" Susan asked, always on her guard with Mitch. 

She was never able to be herself with Mitch around. And Mitch was always around. There were so many silent ways in which Mitch made sure he was there, always there. 

"I am psychic where you're concerned, but this time I have to give credit where credit is due." 

Mitch pointed to the small mirror that he could adjust to give him a reflection of just what was coming along the walkway. Susan stepped back and looked at the other cells and saw that many such mirrors were now focused on her. 

She shook her head, "I’m a trained observer, but I'm not seeing anything well today!"

“You may not be seeing well, but you sure are looking good."

Susan smiled, "Cute. Corny, but cute." 

This parrying with Mitch was easy, but dangerous. If she wasn't careful, he'd pick up whatever she said and run with it as far as he could.

“Susan, come closer." 

"I can hear you fine." 

"But I want to smell your perfume." 

"I don't wear perfume," she said, then thought, Shit, he's trapped me. I've

got to get out of this dialogue without one more personal exchange.

“Then why do you always smell so sweet?" 

"Mitch, what poems are you going to read at the banquet?" 

"I don't want to talk about poems."

"That's what I'm here for." 

"Does your husband give you flowers?" 

"Mitch ... " 

'Im going to send you flowers. You'll see. Sometime you'll be home alone, night will be coming on. Maybe you'll be taking a bath or rubbing oil over your naked skin. And they'll be there, these surprise flowers. And you'll know they're from me." 

"Okay, Mitch; that's it." 

Never had the promise of flowers sounded so like a threat. 

"I'm going to love you forever," Mitch whispered toward Susan's departing back.

 Although she tried not to hear, she heard, "I've got all the time in the world, Susan, and I'm going to take as long as I need to convince you. And I'll convince you, you'll see. 

A bird had flown in through the open transom and was singing in the block; Susan focused on this bird. Its song made her hear the weighted silence of the gray sky outside, the ocean water; she listened to these silent sounds that rode under her quickly beating heart, under all the noise in the block. She wanted to leave Unit 2, run back to the office and talk to Al about Mitch. But she decided to see the rest of her students first, and she walked down the tier. As steady as she could… 

*****

This scene is a dramatic turning point in one the many subplots that are woven into the 100 page narrative that unfolds in The Nouvella. Beyond the episode with Mitch, the North Coast story unfolds with other unsettling twists and turns, all of which are based on the true events chronicled in Judith’s Tannenbaum’s exhaustive one year research process.  

In addition to the fatal stabbing and subsequent lockdown, there is a discovered tryst between a teacher and a prisoner, a crippling state budget freeze, and most devastatingly for the arts program’s teachers, students and their families, the cancelation of the first-ever arts program awards banquet, which had been a year in the making.

Despite the intensity of this string of events, Judith Tannenbaum’s narrative is not overly dramatic, and pointedly so. This is because one of the most incongruent characteristics of prison life is the plodding drumbeat of hard-to-imagine juxtapositions — boredom and fear, cacophony and silence, bad news and no news. If the joint could talk, it would surely be shouting. “You think you caught us at a bad time? Nah, this is normal. You think this is crazy? Wait ‘til next week!”

As daunting as it might seem, Judith understood that her principal job here was as a translator — making some sense of a place where the Queen of Hearts and the Mad Hatter would feel quite comfortably at home. A place where seemingly simple questions about the “right” thing to do are answered with alternating layers of clarity and quicksand. 

A place where the signs and signals we all depend on to find our way are offered up in a “Yes/But actually No” oscillating current that is both confounding and oddly thrilling. Our task here with the Nouvella was to create a story that attracted and supported new creative colleagues but also discouraged slackers? Who else but an artist could render this world in a way that conveyed the elusive truth of this foggy netherworld without scaring away the potential pathfinders? 

Like I said, the stories in the Nouvella are all based on the real-life experiences of the dozens of staff and incarcerated artists she interviewed during her research. These, of course, included Judith’s own experiences as a writing teacher working on the prison planet. Which is a place where truth, beauty, trust, tenderness, vulnerability, color, sensitivity, choice — all the intangible qualities humans need to thrive — are virtually nonexistent. 

But through her teaching she made these things available to her students. In the process, they become creators with a chance to own bit more of their unique story — an act of personal agency that is a precious thing, on the inside. 

Doing this takes courage for both the teacher and the taught. Writing the Nouvella, though called for another kind of bravery. This is because the scene you just heard was a fictionalized version of a real struggle Judith had with one of her students. Like “Mitch”, this poet, a lifer, with two rape murder convictions, was a persistent edge pusher whose obsession with Judith became more and more tenacious over time. The line was crossed when a staff member overheard him describing in detail his plans for Judith to fellow prisoners. 

This was a terrifying situation for Judith. And, because of the program, other women at Q, the rules, and a dozen other reasons, both paranoid and real, the incident could not be written off. Her conflict about reporting it up the chain of command only added to her distress. Her compassion in telling this difficult story in the Nouvella is a testament to the enormous sense of responsibility she carried for each of her students.

Prior to the Nouvella we relied primarily on the institutions to orient our new artists. This often turned out to be what we used to call a dog and pony show – A two or three hour power point workshop with a Sergeant up there saying, “Part your hair wrong, and you're in trouble. Here's the Director's Rule’s, read them, remember them, follow them, and you'll be just fine”

But for us, that did not cut it. Our artists did need to know the rules, for sure, but given the intimate nature of creative teaching they needed to understand the culture too. Something that could shed a little light on shifting shadows that define life inside—something Like the Nouvella. 

So now you might ask: How did this turn out. We created a training that used the Nouvella as its foundation. Here is what the department’s research showed. 

• We found our artists were less inclined to stereotype corrections staff and incarcerated people. 
• When problems arose artists tended to ask questions rather than make snap judgements. 
• We saw improved trust for artists among staff and incarcerated students
• There was better communication between correctional staff and artists
• We saw better cooperation from line staff and institutional administrators
• We got greater respect from students who appreciated the increasingly savvy artists they encountered.
• We saw a marked Increase in participation in the program
• And there were Fewer program threatening incidents involving artists. 

Most importantly, the characters and stories represented in the Nouvella became a safe space for exploring the complicated often contradictory issues and forces that defined life and work in prison. At the end of the day, it was much easier to ask a critical question about the fictional Susan Robertson or Assistant Warden’s motivations or decision making than it was to challenge a colleague or staff member. PAUSE

St. Francis. Our third example of how an invented storyline can help build skills and understanding takes the Northcoast institutional strategy to another level. It was developed with the University of Massachusetts', Arts Extension Service which provides online professional certificate and degree programs for arts leaders in the US and overseas. In this case, rather than provide a story about a fictional place, we asked the students in our Creative Community Leadership course to spin their own saga playing (There’s that word again) playing arts leaders in response to an escalating series of events that precipitates a mini- cultural war in the fake town of St. Francis Maryland. Along the way they learned a lot about the power of the imagination for good and ill, and each other.

Teaching Basketball Online

When theater artist Kathryn Bentley and I began designing this course we were faced with a daunting question. How do you train for relationship intensive work like community arts using a distance learning platform?

We likened this conundrum to trying to teach basketball online, which, of course, is impossible. It might work for a course on the history of basketball, its rules, and maybe some coaching theories, but the game itself can’t be learned without players, practicing hoops together on the court.

The same can be said of community arts practice, which like basketball, involves groups of people with different skills and perspectives, trying to work well together. Applying arts-based strategies to critical community issues like health, affordable housing, public safety, education, and equitable development requires trust-based partnerships. 

Learning to collaborate effectively across community sectors, takes a lot of practice with real partners, working in real communities. So, once again, how do

How do you describe your work in the world?

What is happening when young people catch fire in a performance?

What is the art of teaching?

What makes Studio Pathways unique?

Jessa Brie Moreno is Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director for Studio Pathways and has collaborated as a pedagogical advisor, instructional designer, and facilitator for leading-edge arts organizations and educational institutions nationwide. Studio Pathways' projects, partners, and clients include: Rise Up! An American Curriculum, The Kennedy Center, Turnaround Arts National, Othering and Belonging Curriculum for UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute, Racial Healing Curriculum/WKKF Foundation, Instructional Designers/Zaretta Hammond, Favianna Rodriguez' The Center for Cultural Power, the California Spoken Word Project, Turnaround Arts National CA, California Alliance for Arts Education, Hewlett Foundation, Los Angeles Education Partners, Youth Speaks, Youth In Arts, Museum of the African Diaspora, Oakland Museum of California, and County, District and School Sites. 

In addition, Moreno has held posts as Adjunct Faculty with the California Institute for Integral Studies (BA, MFA programs) and San Jose State University (Theatre Dept.) is a founding member of White Educators for Racial Justice (WERJ) and has facilitated with RISE for Racial Justice. Moreno (alongside Rankine-Landers) formerly co-led the Integrated Learning Specialists' Program, professional development in and beyond Alameda County that supported transformative K-12 school change through the arts. Moreno served the California Alliance for Arts Education as a Local Advocacy Field Manager building community leadership networks for Arts Advocacy statewide. She was the founding director of both the Oakland Theatre Arts Initiative and of award-winning student theatre company OakTechRep. Jessa's directorial work has appeared in collaborations with CalShakes, Stanford, UC Davis, and in Edinburgh, Scotland. Professional Awards as a performing artist include an Emmy (Motion Capture Specialist), Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle, Dean Goodman, and Shellie Best Actress Awards.

Moreno utilizes a stance of "creative midwifery" to assist in the ethical "birth" of transformative practices in education, arts, and culture. She wrestles actively with a complex lineage as a sixth-generation settler colonist to Ohlone lands, fourth-generation artist, third-generation activist, and mother to two young women. She is a graduate of Scuola Internazionale dell'Attore Comico in Italy, holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts and Creative Inquiry from CIIS, and a English Language Arts Teaching Credential.

CSCW EP 26 Jessa Brie Moreno

 BC: [00:00:02] That's the sound of children playing together at school. Until very recently all across the globe, those echoing voices, were as common is the wind. Now, not so much. Hopefully that will be changing soon.

There are very few who would disagree with the idea that our children, their safety, their ability to learn are of primary importance to all of us as a community. But sometimes, maybe I should say all too often, what we do in that realm, how we treat our children, does not align with that sentiment. This is particularly true with our schools, which many regard as the clearest reflection of how society values as children, and, by extension, nurtures and grows its future.

The other sound that has been missing from our children's lives is the voice of the teacher. Together with them in the classroom, encouraging, cajoling, pointing the way, providing the substance, the way points, and the glue for their learning journey.

Among many other things, Jessa, Brie Moreno is a teacher of teachers. Through a program. she founded with her colleague, Mariah Rankin Landers, called Studio Pathways. She describes this work as helping educators give birth to the rigor and magic inherent to the art of teaching. As a theater artist and teacher, herself, she knows this territory intimately. She also knows that if we, as a society, are going to deliver on the promise, embodied in all those joyous, unexpected voices. Once again, filling the air back in the classrooms and playgrounds of the world, our teachers will be at the critical center.

We spoke about this and much more in early 2021. This is Change the Story, Change the World, a Chronicle of art and community transformation. I'm Bill Cleveland.

Part One: The Art. Of Teaching

So, Jessa if someone were to put a moniker on you, or your work what would it be?

JM: [00:02:16] I often refer to myself as a midwife of creativity, thought creative energy. Yeah. I think of it in my dual roles as an educator and artist, as holding space for the birth of someone else's creative thinking and inquiry. And so, I liked that idea that, if something goes wrong here, I can hold the space, but, pretty much, it's your experience here? And I've got some guidance for you.

BC: [00:02:46] In the field of creative midwifery, what are some of the skills or capacities that are serve you?

JM: [00:02:53] I guess training I had in theater, I actually did training in Italian street theater a million years ago. And. Something about risk and disruption and attempting to be present with the soul or spirit of a thing is the precise energy that education is in need of.

BC: [00:03:17] Yeah. So, you do have a significant relationship to education. So, before we go into some of the specifics. How did you come to this work that you do as a creative midwife?

JM: [00:03:30] I think, at first, by way of necessity, like most teaching artists, or artists who teach, I needed a way to make a living at the time as a single parent, navigating, moving from being a regional theater artist to something that would give me roots in one place longer than three months at a time.

So, I fortunately, my mother's also an artist educator, taught ceramics her whole life. So I think I had it in my bones, whether I wanted to or not. And then found my way to Oakland Technical High School – A big, comprehensive public high school in Oakland, California, where I got to start the performing arts program that's been there for the last 15 years now.

BC: [00:04:15] So growing up your mom was a maker. (Lisa Reinertson)

And were you interested and excited by that realm of work early on as a kid?

JM: [00:04:26] It’s funny you asked tha,t because I was not. I told her I was going to become the president of a tall building with no art on my walls because art had ruined my life. Yes, rebellion, rebellion.

BC: [00:04:38] Absolutely.

JM: [00:04:39] But I did grow up also daughter of a single mother on the floor of my mom's art studio in clay. And she's the sculptor of primarily public monuments to peace. So, sculptures of Martin Luther King, Today's his birthday. She's his family's favorite portraitists of his image.

(Also) Cesar Chavez, different activists through her art. So, her work was really developing art. That was her activism. So, I was witness to that as the base culture of my life.

BC: [00:05:10] And you couldn't escape it, it rubbed off on you, even though you rebelled.

JM: [00:05:14] I couldn't escape it. It seemed, in the end, it was the most meaningful thing to do with one's life. Yeah.

BC [00:05:20] It is interesting how that, that opposition that occurs, how often it ends up returning to its, its mothership. Very much .

So, talk about education, much of the work I know that you do focuses on making and doing experiential work both with teachers and with students. Could you talk about why you think that's an important element of learning for humans?

JM: [00:05:49] Sure. Yeah. So, I guess I can tell it through a story at Oakland Technical High School. I had the journey from artists to teacher. I think some teachers have the opposite journey. They realize later that they're also an artist and that teaching is an art. But seeing that it was one of the only spaces on campus that was able to operate without being beheld to standardized tests.

It was one of the few places that was not a segregated space. It was large comprehensive high school, very, ethnic racially, diverse school. However, the classrooms themselves are completely segregated and still are to this day. So, the arts and the performing arts were one space. Students were coming together and making meaning of everything else.

So, all the other disciplines were coming together, and this is the place that a young person could grapple with them and make them make sense in their own lives. And so, I think the more I realized that what I was talking about to other teachers was a   arts integration or integrating, or doing education through the arts, because it's liberating, because it gives students voice decision capacity to practice being an adult. All of those elements are present in the educational experience outside of this old standardized-test-bound routine. Yeah.

BC: [00:07:13] Did you have a sense, was the school enthusiastically supportive of your refuge that you created there?

JM: [00:07:21] Yeah, no, I think that's the old thing of asking forgiveness, not permission in terms of taking the risks. I went ahead and did things that I felt were important for the students. So, for example, first year when there hadn't been the arts they'd been cut out for so many years, as and we did an open mic Friday.

And so I would say, no, not all of the campus was excited about having large rap battles on campus every Friday. But boy, did I get the most amazing performers to show up? They would have never shown up otherwise and become core to the b

building of that program. Students truly with a passion for performing.

BC: [00:08:01] Well, and also there are a lot of things at school that a lot of kids don't look forward to, and it's great to have something that is really exciting. That's happening. That's maybe even surprising, right?

JM: [00:08:13] Yeah., the way that students, who have been marginalized or failing their other subject matter. So suddenly if they're center stage as a star, performing with brilliance it's a way for even other teachers to have an asset-based understanding of them, to really see them for them, their true selves, because they're bringing their true selves to the work rather than trying to fit into a model that wasn't created to serve them at all.

BC: [00:08:40] Yeah. So, 15 years you were there.

JM: [00:08:43] I was there 10. So, I've been gone since 2015. So, I guess six years now.

Part Two: Studio Pathways

BC: [00:08:53) OK, So, you are in your new chapter now, really comparatively, and you've created this Studio Pathways as a advisor to people involved in education and all kinds of areas. Do you want to talk about that?

 JM: [00:09:08] Yes, I do. So, it started as myself and one other. Jan Hunter was the only other theater teacher in all of Oakland when I was teaching theater. Which just think about that for a second--- we've got Oakland with incredible artists coming out of Oakland. We can think of some academy award winners, right? And no theater artists, teaching artists in any of the public schools. So, it started with Oakland Theater Arts Initiative, training history and English teachers to become theater teachers at their school site so that students had access. And yeah.

BC: [00:09:42] What a great idea. And you had support for that.

JM: [00:09:45] I had some support for that. Yeah. So, there were some great measures in Oakland that the taxpayers were paying for some arts programming for several years, understanding that they'd been really cut out because of prop 13 and all of that. And so, a couple of measures passed that helped focus funding on the arts for that time period.

BC: [00:10:05] You created, in essence creative leadership among non-arts teachers. And does that persist?

JM: [00:10:13] Several of the teachers are still teaching theater. Several of those programs are award-winning. I'm thinking of, amazing, Awele Makeba, who's at Skyline High School. And she was just in the presenting, the HBO special around the MLK Oratorical Fest that takes place each year and went through that program.

She was already an amazing theater artist, but that was a part of that cohort of folks. That gave me my love for teaching teachers. I think that experience of getting to work with other educators and being in inside---Can we transform education together? That got me very excited about that. And so, I moved on to the Alameda County Office of Education, where I teamed up in co-leadership with my partner in crime now, Mariah Rankin Landers, who's my Studio Pathways Co-director, co-founder. And she and I were co-directors of a program called The Integrated Learning Specialists Program there. And so that was training teachers in arts integration, basically. So, we would go through a series of learning about how to collaborate with their curriculum, how to think about assessment differently as a dialogue with a student, with dialogue, with the material and really just how to engage themselves as artists as educators in the classroom and shift the way they did education.

BC: [00:11:33] so I know one of the tensions that all teachers have is how to fulfill the requirements, the structures, the expectations of the system they work in. And sometimes under difficult circumstances with a lot of shifting demands. And every once in a while, someone comes around with a great new idea.

 But one of the things that I know you've worked with the Kennedy center as well. Yeah. And one of the things I've really appreciated about the Kennedy center is they treat teachers like they're very special. And it seems to me that's what you're doing as well.

It's not like here's another continuing education credit for you. It's, “You are an artist and you can be a creator in the classroom.” Is that accurate?

JM: [00:12:18] that's accurate, that's it? I think that's really, it is elevating. The art of teaching to its highest level, which is really this transmission of wisdom, right? If we look human history, we're talking about a very different frame than the last hundred years of what education is, and how we pass on ethics, and values, and culture,s and art forms through education.

Those were the primary functions as well as tools for survival and somehow all of that, including the tools for survival, seem a bit out the window with our industrialized education frame, right?

BC: [00:12:54] Yeah, really tough. One of the other questions I had is that, given your long history, if there's a story that has unfolded that really personifies what you feel is most powerful, beneficial, about your work. Got one for us?

JM: [00:13:11] I guess in, in thinking about the teachers I will point to our most recent work with the Solano County Office of Education, which people don't generally think of county offices of education as particularly transformative spaces.

However, the folks who've come together, there are doing work that. Is taking a long view. So, we invite folks to use contemporary artists as their guides long frame thinking, strategic daydreaming,...