Meditations On

In this episode, our guest is Rita Ezenwa-Okoro, a creative culturist, performance activist, communications expert, and founder of the Street Project Foundation.

In this episode of Toks Dada, we explore the innovative approach of London's South Bank Center's classical music head, the UK's youngest senior curator.

In this episode, we host Reem Allam, the new Associate Director of Artistic Planning at the Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi and former executive manager and artistic programmer of the Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival in Egypt.

Muriel Miguel of the Kuniyala and Rappahannock nations is the founder and Artistic Director of Spiderwoman Theatre, the longest running Indigenous feminist theater in the Americas. She facilitates Storyweaving Workshops - a signature Indigenous performance methodology that she pioneered - in universities and communities across the US, Canada and Europe.

Diana Teresa Gutierrez, CEO of Embodying Reconciliation based in Colombia, and Juan Philippe Miranda Medina, a lecturer in Peru at the Universidad Catolica San Pablo, lead movement and embodiment workshops designed to promote empathy, meaningful reconciliation, and individual and collective well-being. Their programs are aimed toward marginalized communities and are designed to help communities from different social backgrounds and ethnicities expand their capacity to manage stress and express emotions in a common space. Diana and Juan spoke with Meditations On host Ilter Ibrahim in November of 2021 and discussed how arts leaders need to first understand themselves to begin building sustainable relationships and mutual respect for one another.

The Afghanistan National Institute of Music has been a source of national pride and a symbol of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan's renewed dedication to arts, culture and education. But what has the return of the Taliban meant for ANIM and music education in Afghanistan as a whole? How did the organization navigate the chaotic and rapid fall of the previous government? And what are its plans for the future? In December of 2021, Meditations On host Ilter Ibrahimof discussed these issues with ANIM founder and director Dr. Ahmad Sarmast at his and the school's new home of Lisbon, Portugal.

As we all feel under pressure to vastly expand our organization's digital footprint and use technology to innovate the way we connect with our audience, how can we make sure we don't neglect accessibility? In this episode we discuss this topic with three distinguished colleagues from three different perspectives: artist Debbie Patterson (Sick + Twisted Theatre, Canada), consultant Maria Vlachou (Acesso Cultura, Portugal), and presenter Anna Gallagher-Ross (Fusebox Festival, USA).

Darren Walker is the visionary President of the Ford Foundation, an independent non-profit 13 billion dollar international social justice institution. A true catalyst for positive change, in this episode Walker sat down with us for a feature interview. He discussed his personal journey, the future of arts leadership, and how social justice, empathy, and radical thinking must guide the way.

In this episode, hear from Berlin-based artist musician Nahum as he guides you into an unsettling journey and engages in a critical dialogue about the politics of existence, diversity, and space exploration. Navigating between the real and the imaginary, Nahum’s work focuses on creating unconventional perspectives of human experience by using outer space technology, illusionism, and hypnosis.