Making Change: Teaching Artists and their Role in Shaping a Better World
By Eric Booth, published June 2023
Introduction and Chapter 1
Introduction
IN THE ROHINGYA REFUGEE CAMP in Bangladesh, tensions were running high between
Bangladeshis and Rohingya refugees. The Artolution program brought in teaching artists who
led a project in the joint creation, by refugees and Bangladeshis working together, of a series of
giant, colorful murals throughout the community that vividly depicted health concerns shared by
all participants. Tensions lessened markedly, and the local government changed policies in
response to the health concerns.
*
THE SING SING CORRECTIONAL FACILITY is a maximum-security prison in New York State that
houses 1,400 convicted men, most serving long-term sentences. Every week, a few dozen of
them—currently thirty-five, few of whom had played a musical instrument before—gather in a
room and make music for hours, led by teaching artists from Carnegie Hall. The program has a
long waiting list. Within months of beginning, they were playing and singing together; within a
year, they were performing original compositions in front of a packed house of other men at the
facility. Curriculum varies; teaching artists sometimes dedicate an entire year to the study of one
composer, guiding composition in that style (one year was dedicated to Duke Ellington’s Sacred
Music, another to women in music, another to Afrofuturism). One member of the group
performed an evening of his music at Carnegie Hall on the day of his release. None of those in
the program have “re-offended” after their incarceration.
*
GOTHENBURG, SWEDEN, an old and robust port city on the North Sea, has become a major
endpoint in the journeys of refugees from a host of countries in turmoil—Afghanistan, Syria,
Albania, Somalia and many more. Some of these refugees are children and teenagers who arrived
alone, without their families, after terrifying journeys of uncertainty and danger. Seven years ago,
teaching artists at a community music for social change program began giving these young people
instruments and group lessons (and, often, food and shelter); today, they are accomplished
members of The Dream Orchestra, a performing and touring ensemble that participates fully in
Gothenburg life. The orchestra became their family, and the music became their lifeline.
*
LIKE SO MANY coastal cities, São José, Santa Catarina, Brazil, is increasingly battered by climate
change. Many citizens feel hopeless, even disconnected, because of the rising crisis. The School
of the (Im)Possible (devised by local teaching artists at Platô Cultural) worked with classes of
nine-year-olds for ten weeks in school, making them secret agents in touch with a climate
scientist living in 2072, who invited them to join an (im)possible mission: “to re-write the future
with sustainable solutions.” In the all-absorbing mystery improvisation, the teaching artist guide
helped them gather clues, study the local environment, take careful notes and solve challenges,
eventually to write their own books about what’s going on and what they want to do about it. In
a culminating event at the school, they confronted their parents (who don’t usually attend school
events) and local leaders with hard questions about what the grown-ups were going to do about
these challenges. The kids became the environmental educators and activists of São José. The
mayor ordered The School of the (Im)Possible to spread to schools across the city; it has also
been adopted in two schools in Scotland.
*
FOUR STORIES among thousands in which engaging in the arts provided solutions to the world’s
most intractable challenges. This book introduces the workforce of artists, called teaching artists,
who do this work. With joy.
Chapter 1
Everyone brims with artistry.
CALL IT WHAT YOU WILL, deny it if you like—we all have it. We use it here, there and everywhere
we make things we care about. Like cooking a special meal. Or getting into a great conversation.
Or adding final touches to an important presentation. Or making up a story for a child—or making
up a story as a child. Of course, there is artistry in symphonies and sculpture, and there is an
artistry to bricklaying and pie-making. There are books about the art of tennis and the art of
motorcycle maintenance. We even use the term “medical arts.”
So what? Why does artistry matter a lick in the complex, speedy, pragmatic world we inhabit?
Slow down and read on— you will recognize this ancient, underutilized power tool that not only
creates beauty but also creates change. This book honors the arts workers who know how to use
that tool, who delight in activating its use, and who do so, often quietly but with remarkable
effectiveness, around the world.
Does “artistry” sound effete or elitist? If so, you might want to talk to a great carpenter, or a great
surgeon, nurse, athlete, therapist, teacher, chef, gardener or waiter. Anyone who gets absorbed
and creatively engaged in their work can tell you where artistry lives in their success. Artistry
makes the difference between competence and excellence; between good enough and beautiful.
Maybe you prefer a different word, like creativity, or flow experience, or innovative capacity—
functionally, they mean pretty much the same thing. Whatever you want to call it, life, work,
love, and just about everything that matters goes better when we are using it. Some animals
show signs of having artistry—I’m looking at you, bowerbirds—but theirs is modest compared
with human artistry.