Cartooning for Peace is an international network of editorial cartoonists who use humor and visual commentary to defend freedom of expression, human rights, democracy, and respect among people of different cultures and beliefs. The organization grew out of a 2006 gathering convened by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and French editorial cartoonist Plantu following…
The imagination has a curious double life. It allows us to invent symphonies and constitutions. It also allows us to invent enemies. That may sound like a contradiction, but it is simply a truth about being human. The same faculty that helps us envision a better future can also persuade us that people we barely know…
No one rehearses a fire drill because they hope for a fire. No orchestra rehearses because the concert has already happened. A rehearsal is where habits form before the moment they are needed. We rehearse not because we know what will happen, but because we want to become the kind of people who can respond well…
Musicians understand something policymakers have largely forgotten: tradition is not the enemy of innovation. Every musician begins with an inheritance. A jazz standard has a structure. A sonnet has fourteen lines. A blues progression has twelve bars. A fugue has rules. A raga has conventions. Even improvisation happens within a shared framework. Form is not…
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…
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.…
A very creative person knows the feeling. You are standing in front of something that does not exist yet. There is no blueprint. There is no guarantee. There is only the decision to begin, and the set of skills you have built, through years of practice, for navigating exactly that uncertainty. A novelist staring at…