Award-winning author Jai Chakrabarti explores how art serves as both lifeline and caretaking tool during humanity's darkest moments, as well as during a typical day of working and parenting.

Drawing from his novel "A Play for the End of the World," Chakrabarti shares the extraordinary true story of educator Janusz Korczak staging Rabindranath Tagore's play "The Post Office" with orphans in the Warsaw Ghetto just weeks before their deportation to concentration camps.

When discussing his writing process, Chakrabarti reveals how fiction functions as an "empathy machine," allowing both creator and audience to cross cultural boundaries and inhabit others' experiences. He draws an illuminating parallel between creative work and parenting. Both require "a willingness to imagine them in their fullness" while accepting that children and characters alike "become who they become" regardless of our intentions. 

Hear Chakrabarti read from “A Play for the End of the World,” as well as from his short story "Lilavati's Fire," from his award-winning collection “A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness.”

During COVID-19, Rowena Richie and her colleagues were struck by the unprecedented isolation faced by elders. Their response was to connect artists—suddenly without performance venues—with older adults through a project called "For You." What makes this approach unique is its focus on reciprocity. "We started calling it a gift FOR them," Ritchie explains, "but then it really became a gift WITH them." 

Richie took these insights into her work with Memory Cafes, where people with dementia share poems aloud, and as a Fellow with the Atlantic Foundation's Global Brain Health Institute, where she observed different cultural approaches to care around the world.

Collectively, these experience help us see what creative care can accomplish: reciprocal courage, patient listening, and the recognition that each of us—regardless of age or cognitive ability—has something valuable to give.

"Where are these girls on our screens?" With this question, acclaimed director Sarah Gavron embarked on creating "Rocks," a film that would transform both its young cast and conventional filmmaking approaches. In this intimate conversation, Gavron reveals how authentic storytelling demands radical vulnerability from both creator and subject.

Rather than imposing narratives on teenage girls, Gavron spent months in London schools creating safe spaces for young women to share their realities through improvisation and play. The production dismantled traditional power structures—shooting chronologically, never calling "action," using continuous dual cameras, and incorporating the actors' own mobile footage. Beyond creating an award-winning film, this process sparked "Bridge," an ongoing mentorship program connecting marginalized youth with creative industry opportunities.

Gavron eloquently explores the complex relationship between caregiving and creativity throughout her career. While acknowledging that parenting responsibilities reduced her film output, she notes how these experiences profoundly deepened her work: "I would never have made 'Rocks' if I hadn't had a girl growing up at home." This perspective extends to her current book project (with Sophie Herxheimer) exploring her father-in-law's imprisonment at Theresienstadt, the Nazi concentration camp where imprisoned artists continued creating under unimaginable circumstances—some documenting truth through secret drawings that eventually cost them their lives.

Whether discussing Ukrainian musicians playing in bomb shelters or her mother dancing to Elvis despite illness, Gavron reminds us that art doesn't merely distract from suffering—it helps us process, ground ourselves, and create meaning within chaos.