“In Order to Survive, We Create”: A Selective History of Sonny Assu
“Trickster” is the word that Janet Rogers uses to describe artist Sonny Assu in her forward to his recently published collection, Sonny Assu: A Selective History. The term seems very fitting. Like Raven or Coyote, Assu’s art is mischievously clever. He is both a thief and a creator, taking hungrily from the world around him →
What We Talk About When We Talk About Schools
This post is based on the article: Education Coverage in Television News: A Typology and Analysis of 35 Years of Topics. Check out the full article for free at AERA Open. When US residents are asked about the priorities they want policymakers →
Four Ways to Shift Culture Toward Justice
The struggle for the soul of U.S. culture is heating up. White supremacy and anti-immigrant sentiment are on the rise, along with attacks on truth and accountability. Meanwhile, social movements are helping us to reckon with how society (de)values Black lives and the stories of cis and trans women facing sexual abuse. Groups across the →
Culturally Sustaining Civics: Questioning the Civic Achievement Gap
Every generation, it seems, worries that the next one is not as politically active as it should be. But, in recent decades, a new concern has emerged: “gaps” in civic knowledge and participation in the US along lines of race and →
Art is a Basic Human Need: An Interview with Felicia Young
Featured image of the Hudson River Pageant, Photo by William Bourassa Jr. On the day that 45 was inaugurated into office, I had a very hopeful conversation. I spoke on the phone with long-time cultural organizer Felicia Young, founder of the nonprofit Earth Celebrations, who was getting ready to hit Washington DC for the big protest. →
Creating Art That’s Needed: An Interview with Mat Schwarzman
When I was starting out as a community-based arts educator in Chicago, the Beginners Guide to Community-Based Arts — with its welcoming, bright-yellow cover — was one of the most thumbed-through books on my shelf. Recently I had the chance to speak with one of its co-authors, Mat Schwarzman. We discussed his background in political →
Sign Now: USDAC Pledge on Cultural Rights and the Muslim Ban
The US Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC) is calling on artists, designers, cultural organizers, and other cultural workers to sign the following pledge: to stand with humanity against inhumanity at this vital political juncture. Commit your creative energy to the struggle, and stop by this blog in the coming weeks to find advice, resources, →
Take a Stand for Cultural Democracy
USDAC launches Cultural Policy & Action Platform At November’s Culture/SHIFT conference in St. Louis, some of my fellow cabinet members at the US Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC) took the stage. They were there to mark the launch a national “policy and action” platform we’ve been working on, titled Standing for Cultural Democracy. The platform outlines a →
We need creativity and imagination as much as (or more than) ever
On Tuesday night, while I was half-watching MSNBC, I kept one eye on Twitter. As the outcome of the election became clear, the rise in emotion was palpable. People were processing the result in so many different ways: in tweets of mourning, in calls to action, in blame and recriminations, in critical analysis, in “I told →
How do you visualize a world you haven’t yet seen?
Earlier this year, I did some graphics work for the Family Leadership Design Collaborative (FLDC), a group whose mission is to radically re-imagine family engagement in schools and other institutions. It turned out to be one of the toughest design challenges I’ve faced. In this post, I want to share a bit of that design process with you. The back-and-forth that →