For months, I’ve been asking artists to imagine helping strengthen democracy. I’ve come to think I was asking the wrong question. The question wasn’t how artists could become more civically engaged. It was this: What have artists been practicing all along that healthy democracies cannot function without? That realization changed the way I think about Res…
“Artist” names a wide spectrum of disciplines: painters, musicians, authors, actors, dancers, architects, filmmakers, and the technicians who make creative work possible. Across these practices, we share deep curiosity and an almost boundless imagination. To create, artists cultivate observation, perseverance, resilience, originality, self‑criticism, and a willingness to experiment. We tolerate ambiguity. We understand courage. We…
It is easy to feel overwhelmed. We can doomscroll. We can tune it out. We can become consumed by anger. We can tell ourselves that somebody ought to do something. Or we can become part of that “somebody.” Throughout history, people have resisted injustice in countless ways. They have marched. They have organized. They have…
A broken bowl is easy to discard. A kintsugi bowl asks a different question. What if the break is not the end of the story? In the Japanese art of kintsugi, shattered ceramics are repaired with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. The cracks are not concealed. They become part of the object’s history. Democracies break, too. Trust…
Books get burned. Newspapers get censored. Frequencies get jammed. Artists disappear. Anthems are outlawed. But music always finds a way to outwit the walls built to contain it. A Song Can Preserve a Nation Governments try to erase languages, cultures, identities. Music resists. Yankee Doodle began as a British insult, a catchy tune meant to mock rustic…
When Nations Lose Their Minds, Artists Help Them Remember From fascism to apartheid, history shows the arts do more than protest. They preserve truth, protect imagination, and help societies find their way back. The twentieth century offered repeated examples of governments trying to define reality for everyone else. In Nazi Germany, modern art was condemned…
Writers, musicians, actors, filmmakers, designers, and other culture-makers spend their lives imagining new possibilities. What happens when they turn that creative power toward civic life? The Future Won’t Imagine Itself We live at a time when corruption, greed, control, prejudice, boorishness, and denial are idealized. Often weaponized. Most of us recognize this. Many of us…
The curiosity of creativity keeps leaving things at my doorstep and saying, “Here, trip over that.” But First, How I Got Here My training was in theatre. Acting, specifically. From childhood into my 30s I was a good theatre workhorse who never broke through due to my own fear. But I did have my moments.…
There is no point in waiting for U.S. leaders to do so. Union • Unión • L’union • 联盟 • Unyon This week, the Presidents of the European Parliament, Council, and Commission issued a shared commitment to protect, promote, and invest in culture. “Europe’s story is told through its art, culture and creativity,” said Roberta…
Whether you paint, write, design, or perform, we can out-imagine and outmaneuver political malevolence. Our nation’s creators were preemptive In 1787, 55 delegates sat in a sweltering Philadelphia room and drafted the United States Constitution. They didn’t just tweak an existing system; they designed a representative framework from scratch, balancing democratic participation with structural checks…