Good Life Project - Max Levi Frieder: Art as an Act of Collective Elevation.

Episode Date: May 29, 2017

Guest: Max Levi Frieder is the Co-founder and Co-executive director of the international community-based public art organization Artolution.His projects have taken him from Israel and Palestine to the Jordanian-Syrian border, Turkey, India, New Zealand, Australia, Costa Rica, Colombia, Cuba, Peru, Mexico, Canada and throughout the United States.Story: Max has traveled the world facilitating public, collaborative art-projects, working with refugees, hospitals and patients, survivors of abuse and addiction counseling. Through art, trauma relief, reconciliation and conflict resolution, his work focuses on cultivating public engagement through creative facilitation and inspired participation.Big idea: Art can be not only a form of expression but an act of connection, celebration and healing.Current passion project: ArtolutionRockstar sponsors:Camp GLP is, more than anything else, about finding your people. Letting your guard down and, maybe for the first time in years (maybe ever), just being you. And knowing that’s enough. Come join us. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I remember I was working in a place called the Alin Hospital, which is a hospital for children with brain damage and spinal cord injuries, largely for more trauma in Jerusalem, both Israeli and Palestinian. And it's actually one of the only hospitals that brings children in from Gaza. And it was so intense, you know, because these parents, all they want is their children to heal, you know, because these parents, all they want is their children to heal, you know, Palestinian or Israeli. And I remember looking at this one, he was a religious Jewish man who was, he was Haredi, and his daughter wasn't able to move her body very much. And she was going under years of physical therapy. And he came up to me with tears in his eyes and he said, you know,

my daughter has moved her arms more in the last hour than in the last six months combined because of the art. Today's guest, Max Levi-Frieder, took the pretty traditional approach to art. He went to school, went to RISD, actually a great art school, got his degree, and something happened along the way. He decided that he wanted to actually travel the world and focus on some of the most war-torn, the most devastated areas in the world, and especially creating public collaborative works of art with kids who are going through incredible trauma. He's been on the ground all over Israel, Palestine, Turkey, Jordan, Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, Costa Rica, Syria, all different places and doing these incredible public works of art, very often these giant murals where he doesn't drop down and sort

of outline it, but he really turns it into this co-creative experience that makes a real big difference. He has, along the way, created a foundation, Artolution, and he is now training people on the ground in all these different places to continue this legacy and deepen into the community and create a sustained impact. Really powerful, beautiful conversation. I was so inspired by Max and his incredible heart and the work that he's doing in the world. I'm 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him.

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So fun to be sitting down with you. You like relatively new to my radar which is always fun i like i love finding new people who are doing awesome stuff and we're hanging out in new york but you're from denver area yeah yeah i'm from colorado uh yeah from denver and uh yeah i lived there for most of my kind of childhood life and then yeah who's max the kid who was max the kid was obsessively covered in paint i would say from what like what age oh you know like out of the womb you know more or less and um yeah i kind of just got obsessed with with making art from a young age and were your parents in the world of art um i was a first grade teacher and my dad was in the construction world and um but comes from a sculpture kind of ish

background and um i kind of yeah from a young age was was obsessed with making art and making paintings and um kind of worked to get to the point where i could go to art school and so i i kind of worked for years to try to get to that and then i applied and what what was the um because this is really interesting to me especially because i've had a bit of like a raging debate about art school with friends, and including friends who've been to the best art schools. And some of them are like, best thing I've ever done. And some of them are like the worst thing I've I'd say, let myself go into a magical imagination world while I was there. And while I was there, it was very much, you know, I had this idea that I was going to be like making paintings, right? That you're like an artist and that's what artists do. They make paintings and they make art, right? And I was there and I was feeling like, but there's so much more that art can do, right?

Than just making paintings. And not to say that there's anything wrong with just making paintings. But – and so I started – I had this kind of crazy opportunity going to art school where I had the opportunity to be the creative director at an arts camp in Adirondacks. And it was kind of like this, like, laboratory where I could do whatever I wanted, right? On unlimited budgets, super talented, passionate, more or less kind of privileged kids where I could, where they said, go crazy, do whatever you want. This was like a summer camp. In the summer camp.

Right. Yeah. And so they said, we want you to innovate our program, do something crazy. So I started getting all these kids together and painting murals. And I kind of was like, okay, well, how far can I push this? What are the things I could do? So I did like horseback riding painting where we'd lay canvas out and have, I'd dip the horses hooves in paint, or we did a rock climbing painting where we-

You dip the horses hooves in paint? Yep. That's crazy. And then, and then we also, you know, we did all these things that I like had always kind of imagined of doing, but never thought I could actually do. So you're like, I'm in the woods with a, with a budget, with like a bunch of kids that have to listen to me. Let's just go crazy. Exactly. That's exactly what happened. And so I kind of had this opportunity and I spent about

three months just pushing this as far as I could to 25 like giant murals. And after I was leaving, I started really thinking, wow, maybe I could make a life out of doing this. You know? What was this? This was painting murals with kids and having large groups of kids or small groups of kids coming together, coming up with their own ideas about how to tell a story and then being able to put that onto a canvas or onto a wall. And I started to think, wow, well, me as a facilitator is actually its own art form. And it was this very bizarre kind of like realization where then I went back to art school where everyone's making paintings to go into galleries and to try to get into this competitive New York world. And it was in Rhode Island. And I looked at it and I was thinking, that's not what I want to do. I want to build giant sculptures with kids. I want to paint these huge things and try to figure out how to do it as

a form of kind of healing or empowerment for kids who may not have had that opportunity. And so it kind of transitioned from being like, okay, I could do whatever I wanted. Well, what if I take this and put it into a world of kids who don't have that chance? And so I started kind of thinking, okay, well, if I could try to do that, where would I do it? And through some bizarre series of events, I ended up getting an opportunity to go to New Zealand and did an exchange program in New Zealand working with Maori communities, the indigenous communities there. And it was this kind of wild experience of working with incarcerated youth, working with kids who never really hadn't had that opportunity. And it was like, wow, there's a lot of potential here to make a life out of doing this. Right. Tell me about the first time you hit New Zealand. So you're,

you finished school? No, no, no. It was an exchange program. Okay. So this is while you're still in school. It was while I was still in school. So you're already like off on this completely radically different direction, which i'm also guessing kind of pulls you out of a lot of the mainstream of school totally right tell me about that oh man so i was at the rhode island school design and very well known like yeah school yeah this whole school and it was this very bizarre thing where i was I actually had to really kind of argue for the fact that community arts mattered. For the concept that being an artist and facilitating art with kids, teenagers, people who may not get that chance is actually really important. And being, you know, next to colleagues who were definitely not in that mind space was, I'd say, a back and forth.

Yeah. Tell me what the counter argument was to that. I think it was very much that that's not so much fine arts. That's something that maybe is in the world of education or social work, but that that's not something that really exists in galleries. So is it almost like it's not, quote, real art? I don't know if I would say that's not real art. Maybe some. I think there are people who would make that argument. me, my conflict was the kind of environment or the setting that I was discussing it was, you know,

you'd have somebody making really tiny, like minimalist paintings, and then you have it next to, for example, one of the programs I did right before I went to New Zealand was called the Foundstrument Soundstrument Project. And it was collecting trash and found objects from across Rhode Island, from Providence, and bolting it all together and painting them synesthetically. So think about what's the difference in sound between hitting something that's made of plastic versus metal versus wood, and then painting them according to those sounds, and then bolting it all together, attaching drumsticks to it, and having this giant interactive

percussive sculpture. And I had an exhibition at the Providence Children's Museum. And, you know, you can imagine having this giant kind of monster made of trash in the middle of, you know, a perfectly white critique room next to tiny minimalist paintings. And you can imagine which one of these things is not like the other, right? Exactly. Yeah. But I learned a lot through those kinds of kind of, I'd say that struggle or that conflict or those conversations, I learned immensely from it about, well, what makes my work different, or what I think important, or what don't people think is important, arts education. And like I said, I know there's a lot of shifting and a lot of factions right now in that space. Was there any conversation around like whether this, like what qualifies as art and what doesn't? And also, if you stepped into that role that you're sort of like thinking, is facilitating art no longer being an artist? It's a huge question, right?

So if you're facilitating art and that facilitation, is that an art form, right? That's the question. And I think I have my own answers. I think I'm guessing I know what you're right. Of course, I guess it's my life. So I would say yes, but I think and realistically try to draw this cup, right? Versus saying, okay, let's look at this cup and think about how does this reflect what's important to our lives. And then let's tell a story together and have a collective narrative where we can figure out, well, maybe this cup actually represents what's most important to me when I want to become a fireman when I grow up, right? Well, what does it mean to facilitate those kinds of conversations, to come up with an does it mean to facilitate those kinds of conversations, to come up with an idea together, especially with a group of kids, and then to take those and transfer it onto a wall, right? Where I'm there facilitating that process, where it's really kind of almost trying to open up kind of a crack into imagination, right? And I think how one does

it can be an art form, but it's not inherently an art form in itself. Yeah, you have to raise it to that level. It's like you have to raise it to the level of craft. But then even then, someone would look at that and say, well, okay, so you've raised that to the level of craft where that is an art form, but it's not fine art. And if you're in a culture and a world where it's all about that, it's got to be really interesting tension. I had a chance a couple of years to sit down with a guy who goes by the name of Days. He's one of the original graffiti artists in New York in the 70s. And Chris Ellis, who's now a well-known gallery artist with his work in museums and stuff. And he does, he's done a little bit, not on the level that you have, but he's done some traveling around the world and

done these outdoor sort of collective art projects with kids. But I was talking to him about the jump from graffiti to fine art, which is really interesting because he's one of the few guys from that time who made that leap. But he also said all the outdoor art that they would do back in the day, he's like it wasn't about the craft or the art so much for them. At that point, it was a dialogue. They were making statements.

Their crew would paint trains and he knew that message would go from the Bronx and it would go talk to the crew in Brooklyn or wherever it was. And it's almost like they were sending messages back and forth. So there was this bigger container for what they were actually doing. Yeah, it was interesting. So right after I was working at that arts camp, I ended up doing a trip where I bicycled from San Francisco to Rhode Island. It was a nice ride. Yeah, it was a good ride, you know. And we were making public art across the country.

We were doing different murals and doing kind of these big public arts pieces. And it became that same kind of idea of that dialogue. Right now, it's a little bit different if it's a train going cross-country. But at the same time, you think about it. And when you put a piece of art in the public, right? different if it's a train going cross country. But at the same time, you think about it. And when you put a piece of art in the public, right? And especially when you put a piece of art in the public that anybody can see that isn't in a gallery and isn't in a museum, right? But that's on a wall or on a train, then all of a sudden, who it's talking to and what it's saying, kind of,

you take yourself out of the control realm, you don't have control over it. And that's something that is this kind of, you know, it's like creating a little creature and then walking away and seeing where it walks to, you know? And I think that's something that making that transition, and then you take that creature and you pick it up and you put it in a gallery and you put it on a pedestal, right? What happens? Yeah.

You know? It's a really interesting question. It is. And one of the things when I started thinking about this is I was like, wow, this is an evolution. And that word kept happening for me, this evolution. What is the evolution in the arts? How can this be a solution?

Can it be a revolution? Can it be a resolution? And these illusions started happening in my mind. And then I thought, well, what about an art illusion? And that word kind of snapped. And it kind of like tattooed itself on the back of my brain. And since that day, really, after I did that cross-country trip and after I was the director there, and it was actually right after I came back from New Zealand, that word has now kind of been a huge part of my life, which now I guess I'd say however many

years later, about eight years later, now it's the organization that I founded here. But it came from that same idea. Yeah, so interesting. I was wondering what the genesis of that phrase was, actually. And it makes total sense. I mean, it's somewhere out in my bookshelf. I have a book on the art of revolution and dissent. And it's like all these posters. And it really is. I mean, you can say so much. Yeah, recent marches in New York City. And it was amazing to me to look at the posters that people were holding over their heads. It was kind of mind blowing to see what some people did. Totally. And how powerful some of them are, like you can really moving. to go to DC for the big march, for the women's march there. And it was the same thing. We just see the sea of crowds, right? And you feel like there's this unbelievable energy. So what I had actually done is I didn't make a sign. I had actually had a scroll that I had. And as I was walking, I would write and draw all of the different signs that people had made. So I

ended up making this kind of huge scroll that ended up being kind of really big that I would just kind of roll out and draw and roll and draw. And I ended up having this piece that was probably, I don't know, six or seven feet long, but it was of all the other people's sides. And it was kind of this amalgamation, this kind of collage of seeing this amorphous kind of amoeba of humanity and how they feel about what's happening in the world today. Very cool. So let's kind of jump back into the timeline a little bit here. The first major trip you took then, you were still in school and you dropped down in New Zealand and you're hanging out with the Maori culture. What's it like when you land there randomly met this woman who had started something. I went there saying, I want to work with Maori communities. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm going to figure out how to do it. And I met this woman who had started something called the New Zealand Children's Art House Foundation. And she had art houses throughout the country. And I contacted her. She was like, oh, I can set you up with an internship where you can basically just go from one art house to another. And these are basically houses that people start up where kids can all come and make art. And so –

They're just like public houses where, like, any kid's in the neighborhood. Exactly. For those who don't know, share a bit about the Maori culture because it's an interesting and fraught history. Completely. You know, the Maori culture is this very strong indigenous culture. And by no means would I say that I'm an expert, but it did have a lot of personal experiences with a lot of Maori communities. And the history is amazing there, you know,

especially compared to the rest of the colonized world, especially because they really fought so hard to maintain their rights and maintain their land ownership and maintain their culture. And so because of that, they really have this unbelievably strong kind of drive to maintain their culture. And you see it in the way that they make patterns and their unbelievable wood carvings and tattoos. And so I had this opportunity. And so I started traveling to these different art houses after I left this program. And it was wild, you know, and it was a mix of what they call Pākehā and Māori culture. Pākehā is non-Māori New Zealander. And so it was a mix of these different kinds of communities. And then it kind of, I'd say I had kind of an apex. I was

working in this place called the Potaki, which was mostly a Māori community. And I was working with all incarcerated kids, kids who'd all just either just gotten out of jail or were on parole. And they were all, most of them, interestingly, were convicted of stabbings. And I started working with them and I worked with them for a while and had these kind of unbelievable conversations with these kids, you know, all their parents are the ones who started the gangs. And, you know, these are like 11, 12, 13 year olds, you know, but then they're like way bigger than me, you know, like way taller. And I met some of these kids, you know, and it was this kind of unbelievable experience where through talking to them, I was like, wow, you know, you've been through some hard stuff, you know, and as we're painting was almost like through that process of painting together, they started to talk about these things. And some people might call that art therapy, but it wasn't really therapy in the sense, okay, we're going to take your drawing, we're going to assess what your mental issues are. But it was more an art therapeutic act through a community engagement process, right? You have all

these kids together, they're all painting. And then through this process of just casually talking, they start to let out these really intense things. And that comes through in what they're painting, you know? And it was this kind of this realization moment where it was like, wow, this has a lot of potential to do things more than just making something beautiful. The actual process itself, I was like, wow, there's something here that could have some kind of an impact into something bigger. And I remember that moment with a kid named Rylan. And I was talking to him and he was, and he looks at me and he was like, do you know what I go through every day? And I was like, no, I have no idea. He said, here's what I go through. I see my parents doing drugs and I tried

to, and I try to leave on the horseback. And they told me I'm not allowed to leave. And I said, screw that, I'm leaving. And they sent their people after me to come try to get me off the horse. And I said, I'm not getting off the horse. And he grabbed me and I took out my knife and I stabbed him. And I was like, wow. He's like, yeah. And that's happened a couple of times. And they won't let me live my life. And it was this thing where me being from America, I'm not New Zealand, I'm not New Zealander, I'm not Maori. And he's sharing these very intense things with me. And it was kind of like, I wonder why this is happening.

And I kind of realized it's because of the arts. And it's not just that we're making art together. It's that we're painting a mural together. We're doing something public, which I think has a certain amount of trust that, okay, if we're coming together and we're a team, that has certain elements to it that I start to think, well, how could this affect other people in other parts of the world? Yeah. I mean, so there's so many levels there, but it's so interesting when you get somebody

engaged in some sort of creative process and then you get people doing it collectively. It almost feels like there's something, there's an inhibition that shuts off in the brain when a certain part of your creative and cognitive bandwidth is allocated towards a creative process where stuff that you've been keeping down, whatever the gate is that was stopping it from coming out, like that gets lowered and it just starts to, there's something that happens where it just starts to come out. And it's not like a deliberate extraction process. It just happens organically. I'm curious about this too. My experience with this in a much smaller scale is that with guys, especially with males, that tends to be a much bigger opening of the gates.

Because we tend to be culturally, I mean, no matter where you are in the world, I think a lot of times just males culturally are much more the expectation is stoic. You keep it inside. You don't do this stuff. You know, somebody once gave me this phrase. He said, women talk face to face, men talk shoulder to shoulder. Meaning that like your shoulder to shoulder, you're doing something. And the conversation just comes out.

You know, like when you're actually doing something, like instead of sitting down for the purpose of having a conversation. I'm curious whether you've noticed that in your work or whether that's validated, not validated, just anecdotally. It's a great question. And I think it's a great observation. So I have to skip ahead a little bit in order to answer that question is from there, I started working in Latin America. And then I ended up working a lot in the Middle East. And I worked a lot in Israel and Palestine. And I did a lot of programs with Syrian refugee camps, working with a group called APTAR and working with organizations with UNICEF and with different UN organizations. And I'm skipping a couple steps,

but I had a lot of experiences with men in those environments, with Arab men, with Jewish men, with religious men, and women as well, kind of equally. there is that kind of, you know, constrained nature of saying, okay, I want to express myself, but I have to be cool when I'm expressing myself, right? And that kind of element of that needing to be cool, right, amongst your peers, and especially in communities where men and women are separated, I think you're right about that shoulder to shoulder mentality. But that doesn't mean that they don't have the same sentiments as some of the women. It's just how they come out. And I think especially in suppressed societies, societies where you can't just say, I love you, you know, to a man.

Even if you're – or I think even more so when you can't say what you think on a basic level, right? Everything has to be cryptic. The arts do take that shoulder to shoulder mentality that you're discussing and kind of break down those walls, but do it in a very subtle way. Because I think if you say, okay, you need to start talking to each other, right? People are going to be like, screw you. I'm not going to do that. But if you say, okay, let's make art together. Let's discuss some of these hard issues, but let's do it in a way that's fun, that's engaging, that's exciting, right? All of a sudden, it's almost like that fun can be a catalyst for some of the really hard stuff to come out. And I think there's such deep therapeutic elements to it, but you can't call

that therapy. Because the minute you call it therapy, they're like, well, I'm not sick. There's nothing wrong with me. It's very stigmatized, right? And I think that's with men and women, especially in a lot of parts of the world. But to say, okay, we're going to do think that's with men and women especially in a lot of parts of the world but to say okay we're going to do something that's creative i think sometimes the therapeutic elements are ingrained but they're subtle and that subtlety i think is what gives them power yeah i mean it's so interesting it's interesting that the distinction between art therapy versus the therapeutic effect of art or co-creating together because they're just the frame is gonna open it like the frame the way that you frame it is gonna make people freak out or completely reject even participating with the others like oh this is cool we're like

all working on something again i'm curious what the um i'm sure that you deal with sort of like one of the the basic things which is like you drop into a community and you're like we're all getting we're gonna get a whole bunch of people to get this really cool mural outside or something like that. I'm not an artist. That's, that's constant everywhere. And for some reason at this kind of between childhood and adolescence, people lose that, or they're told that, that if you're not a really good artist, that you're not an artist at all, which is a very strange conception to me because I think all humans are artists in some way. All humans need to express and just look at history, right? Throughout all of history, throughout all cultures everywhere in the world, expression is part of how we live,

how we are human, you know? And it's interesting because so many times I hear that from people, oh, I can't make art. I can't make this. But what's interesting is when you start to see, when you say, okay, we're going to do this together. You don't have to be a good artist. You don't have to quote unquote good, right? With the quotes around it. But all you have to do is you have to care. You have to want to make an expression and you have to want to say something to your community. And you have to want to say something to other communities in the world. It starts to change it a little bit when it's not about being a good artist, but your ideas that matter, that the ideas are what the number one most important thing is. And when you put that emphasis on the concepts, everyone's got something

to say. Everyone's got something to say. And they may say they don't, but they do. And when you put it into a form of saying, okay, we are going to say something, it's not just you, right? We're not relying on your quote unquote being an artist, right? But we are relying on us as a team, us as a group coming together to be able to make something happen. It changes the complete context, right? The context becomes what you say matters just as much as what she says and what he says. And only when we all come together, can we tell this story? And I think it always comes down to that idea of storytelling, which is really the foundation of culture, you know? And so I think that whole idea and people say, well, okay, I have this idea, but I don't know how to make it happen. And I think that's

where a lot of the facilitation comes in. Okay, well, if you want to make a person, you don't know how to paint a person. Well, what does a person have? You dissect it. Well, they have two eyes, a nose, a mouth, maybe ears, hair, right? And these very basic components that when you start to phrase it simply, it becomes much more accessible, I think. What I think is much more interesting than that is the poetics of it, right? Where you share the opportunity for people to think, okay, it's not just about me putting a person, but I have to think of a story that communicates really difficult images without using cliches, right? So, you know, this idea of, okay, let's communicate something with an Israeli and Palestinian community about coexistence. So there's always the kid who says, oh, let's do a peace sign, right? Or a smiley face, or, you know, these very kind of things that they're comfortable doing. But what gets much harder is you say, okay, let's come up with a story that tells something about peace, right? And I remember when I was sitting down and I was working with my partner, Joel Bergner, who's my co-director, and we're facilitating this conversation within a group of Israelis and a group of Palestinians with the U.S. State Department. And we said, okay, well, tell us a story. What's a story we can come up with? And through both sides, coming up with different components, they came up with this

idea, this is just an example of, okay, well, we're all in the same boat together. Okay, a boat. Okay, great. We ride a boat. And so we said, well, we come from the same roots. We all come from Abraham, right? So how about a tree? We all come from the same family tree, right? And another kid said, what if we make the tree growing out of the boat? And another kid said, what if we're in the sea, but the sea is all made of Arabic and Hebrew letters intertw boat. And another kid said, what if we're in the sea, but the sea is all made of Arabic and Hebrew letters intertwined? And someone else says, well, what if leaves are dropping from the tree that represent all the people that we've lost? And then somebody else says, oh, but what if we put another boat in the background

that looks like what the hope is of the boat that we can get onto in the future, right? And you see that it becomes these layerings of different ideas. And none of those kids had had experience with arts. And yet they come up with these ideas that I never could have come up with because it's their lives. Yeah. So powerful. And in the context of let's create a collective art project together, it sounds like they would offer those in a way where if you just said, let's sit down and talk about our commonalities, it's not going to have the same effect. Exactly. Yeah.

And so interesting. It's exactly what you just said. You have to have a reason to come together. Right. Right. And if you just say, let's get in a room and talk about things, it can actually make things worse at times than they make it better. Sometimes it can make it better.

But it's about facilitating that dialogue where there's a common goal. Okay. We have this goal where even though it seems like we have nothing in common, we have different cultures, we have different languages, we have to do something together because we have this giant public wall that we need to paint together or we have this sculpture that we need to build

or we have this story that we need to tell. And I think when you have that common cause, there's a reason to talk. And that reason all of a sudden transcends a lot of the walls that are built by the way that children are raised or the way that society ingrains these divisions, you know, like a nice background in the US, you end up in a summer camp with quote privileged kids who are, but your job is like, let's go crazy and do collective art together.

And then from there, you're like over to New Zealand. And so now you're in a culture where there's been incredible internal strife and also strife between sort of, you know, the indigenous minorities and the, you know, the other New Zealanders has been a lot over the years. So it seems like a lot of that was, it's like stages, it's like this, you know, evolutionary process for you. And from New Zealand, it was like, okay, so let's create something where these kids who've been through a lot of trauma can start to express what they've been through in a way where we don't just say, tell us what happened to you. And then making the leap from that to going into

what a lot of people would consider extremely high risk, dangerous parts of the world where there's mass conflict that has gone on for a long period of time. How does that evolution happen? That's a great question. So in between those two things, I had the opportunity to work in Costa Rica. And I was working in Costa Rica on the Panamanian border and on the Nicaraguan border in a series of different indigenous communities. And what I did is I built a suit of percussion armor out of trash and found objects that I basically attached to the suit, packed it up in a suitcase, brought it with me. And I would come out before I would start painting these murals, and I would have the kids banging on me. Yeah. So they would all come out.

I'd be banging on myself. I'd give them all drumsticks. They would all come and bang on me. And I was kind of this crazy character that came out. And I started to see, although it's not necessarily the same kind of trauma that I was working with in New Zealand, it was kind of seeing that not just painting, but also just the arts can transport people into this realm of magic, almost. You know, this thing where you're like, wow, what is this crazy guy coming here and doing this for, you know? But by being able to be kind of ridiculous and crazy, all of a sudden it breaks down

people's walls. And I started to see that through this project I was doing. And I was thinking, wow, in a place like a refugee camp or in a place like, you know, I was working in the National Children's Hospital in Mexico City, for example, with kids who have terminal illnesses. And, you know, you see such traumatic and kind of very gruesome things. And I was thinking, you know, if you can kind of put on this, you know, this kind of being a creature from another planet, right? Or from another world. All of a sudden, everybody, the doctors, the kids, the humanitarian aid workers, or the teachers, they all look at you

and think, wow, this is like, this is not normal. This is kind of the making of special, right? This is something that's special. And so from having that experience and from doing a series of projects there, and then also in Rhode Island, and from being from this RISD background, I was thinking, wow, it almost feels like there's a responsibility here. It almost felt like this is something that's too important to just keep in a place where this can exist naturally. Maybe not naturally, but in a way where you take that concept of privilege, right? Okay, the idea that art education is a given, right? That you go to school and you get to make art. That is a huge privilege. And in so many places I've been, even the idea of art education doesn't exist whatsoever, right? And so after this whole

kind of concept of being like, okay, so maybe this could do something in an environment like, let's say, a refugee camp. What happens when me and, you know, I have this image to tell a story to reflect on your question, where I walk in and I was working in the Oz Rock refugee camp, which is right on the Syrian border in Jordan, excuse me. And I walk into this tent and it's all teenage girls and maybe 10 to 16. And I walk in and they hadn't seen someone who looked like me really with like long, you know, locked hair and the way that I covered in paint, you know, and they all look at me like I'm like from another planet. Like, what is this guy doing? And who is this? And the minute that I come out and I start – and the first thing I do is I start showing them photos of murals that other kids have made in other parts of the world.

Right? So they start to see kids from Costa Rica. They see kids from Mexico. They see kids from New Zealand. They see kids from other parts of the world. And they look at it. And all of a sudden, it's like these lights click. And they say, wow.

Okay. I get it. Okay. so we're going to make something together. We're part of this larger kind of movement or network or very religious Muslim, right? But then as we start drawing, as we start talking, right? It was almost like that tenderness just like flew away. And they just became these unbelievable eccentric wild characters that were dancing and singing and totally came to life through the paint as they're painting. And when I start to hear some of these girls' stories, I mean, they're tragic. They're these horrifically scary and traumatic stories. Yet I'm seeing people who in many times are at maybe one of the worst points in their life. Maybe they've lost their families, but seeing them at their best, right? So that's this amazing kind of dichotomy, right? Where you're looking at and you're thinking, wow, someone who's maybe lost their family. Or, you know, even I work with a boy, I remember he rolled up his sleeves and showed all these scars

of how he'd been tortured by the Assad regime, you know. And you're working with these kids who've been through such horrible things, but you're seeing them with these huge smiles on their faces, right? And you're seeing them being a kid, being a teenager, you know? And seeing that, I feel like almost transcended a lot of the things you would think people might be in an environment like this. And again, you know, there's elements of it that are deeply, deeply therapeutic. But again, you're not calling it therapy, right? Because for them, this is something fun. This is great. We get to paint together. We get to do something exciting. But at the same time, it actually is so important to express oneself when you've been through such difficult things. Yeah, so powerful.

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Like what's... Take me there. Yeah, totally. That was actually, that's been one of the hardest things for me is because, you know, I do a one, two, three, four week project, right? Or a couple months. And then you leave, right? And it became really difficult for me. After doing this, I did this for about five years where I worked for – I didn't live in one place for more than a couple months.

For about five years, I was constantly doing projects. And you'd leave and I'd stay in contact with the kids and with the teachers. But I had this really deep underlying frustration because I would leave and then it would end. And I'd be in contact with these kids. And even in some of these refugee camps, they have Facebook. Yeah. And they would send these messages saying, when are you coming back?

We want to make art again. You know, we want to paint another mural, you know. And it was so painful to hear these things and do everything I could to try to continue this and not to be able to do it, right? And not to leave the seeds where this could continue. And it really became this kind of eating away virus inside of me of I've worked in, you know, 20 different countries and all these different environments and in really hard spaces, and they weren't able to continue.

And so that kind of spurred me to say, okay, I need to move this to the next step. Something needs to happen. And that's when I decided to go and get my doctorate and to really develop a body of research on how this can be sustainably implemented. So what's the link to me? Right, right, right. So where's the link? Like, how does that make sense? So it was basically deciding, okay, in order to make this happen, you need sustainable funding. Because the reason why this couldn't happen is because there weren't the resources to make it continue to happen, to be able to have somebody there for it to continue. And I realized, okay, the real power, and this is really what I'm doing right now in my life, which is through doing these programs, really being able to have a participatory base for training and education for artists, teachers, and educators, for being able

to have local artists and educators being able to have the tools to be able to continue to do these kinds of programs. Because I met some just unbelievably talented artists, unbelievably talented educators who would love, who when they saw this, like, we want to keep doing this. But they didn't feel like they had the resources or capability to do that. So through this process of kind of going back to develop a body of research. I've really been developing a curriculum and a training manual and ways that this can continue, really with the emphasis that hopefully, this can be something that can be sustainably implemented. Because the problem is, is you drop in and you do this project and you leave. And you don't leave any way for this to continue. It's like

you open this door, and then slowly that door closes if you don't continue to cultivate what already kind of had been planted. Yeah. And I would imagine, tell me if this has been your experience, but part of my curiosity is you, so you pull out after three weeks, let's say, you've had this incredible experience and all of a sudden these, like all these kids are reconnecting to something deeper inside of themselves and probably reconnecting to a sense of joy, you know, for the moment, collectively creating something which is public and visible. And then, but you, then you have to pull out because you have to pull out, you know, like you said, resources are resources. And also there are other places you want to go and, and be of service. And there's this thing that gets left behind. And, and I guess my curiosity is on the one hand, it was a famous Dr. Seuss quote. It's

like, don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened. There are these two different emotions. One is, it's this daily sort of like reminder of how awesome this experience was. And it's this daily reminder that we're not doing it anymore. You know, I'm reminded I was working in this last summer in the Samos refugee camp, which is right on the Turkish border in Greece. I was working there and it was this wild experience. I had worked there right after working in the Calais refugee camp in the jungle, if you're familiar with it. And it was this very bizarre thing where I had that exact feeling where, you know, think about this. Okay, I was painting, I was painting murals, it was mostly in Calais with Sudanese and Syrian men, men from Afghanistan. And these are all people who've kind of made it to France, and right on the French-British border, and who ended up in this massive, unregulated refugee camp, right? And we ended up painting all of these murals,

painting about four murals about the stories of their lives. And two weeks after I leave, I'm still in contact with a lot of my friends who I made there and some of the people who were working there. The whole camp got burned. Yeah, it was burned by the French authorities. And it's that feeling, right? Do you appreciate what happened and the fact that they got to have these moments of beauty?

Or do you mourn for the fact that that beauty was destroyed? Right. And in the Samos refugee camp where I went directly after that, we had the opportunity to build a found instrument with the kids, right? So remember that thing I was doing, right? So we built a found instrument, sound instrument. We were with the kids. We collected all of this trash and we got them all to paint everything.

We gave the kids zip ties and wire and they zip tied and wired everything together. And we bolted the whole thing together and had drumsticks attached. And there was this kid. I remember this kid. His name was Hamadi. And he was little. He was probably four. Right?

And he was extremely, he had a lot of behavioral issues. Right? He would take rocks and throw them at other kids. He would hit other kids. And on the last day I was there, his mother got extremely sick and had to go to the hospital. And he was completely powerless, didn't know what had happened to his mother other than she had gotten sick. And I remember he came over to the found instrument and he grabbed one of the sticks. And he started banging, right? Like with

his whole might, he just was banging. And he looks up expecting us to yell at him, right? So he can't make noise because he was constantly being told, don't make noise, stop hitting everyone, behave, right? And instead we looked at him and said, yeah, yeah, go hit it as hard as you can. Let it all out, man. And that moment for that kid, that moment of expression was something I think close to the ultimate resilience, right? Of being like, I needed to let it out. And to go back to that Dr. Seuss quote you just said, do I appreciate the fact that he had that moment, right? Where he got to let something out, that deep rooted frustration and pain and have this amazing moment of joy. And yet, when I leave, what happens, right? And there has to be both. I think it's kind of like a symbiotic relationship.

But then at the same time, I also personally believe that the ultimate, ultimate goal is as, you know, to go back to the cliche, right? It's better to teach a man to fish than to give a man to fish, right? So being able to impart these kinds of tools unto educators and artists who live in those communities, I think is so unbelievably powerful, because then you leave, but they get to evolve it in their own ways, right? Being able to use poetry or being able to use their own cultural traditions and fuse it together, to me, I think is kind of the best of both worlds. Got it. So that's how it all ties together with the doing your doctoral work. So that's the thing that lets you say, okay, let me build a trainable curriculum so I can go back into these countries, take these amazing artists and these people who,

you know, like they have a gift or talent, you know, they've worked to develop, but they may be really uncomfortable facilitating the way you facilitate. I mean, there's only one max, right? But somehow lighting that fire in them. So it's not just the kids anymore, but saying, hey, listen, you've seen what I did. I'm me, but you're you. And like, I'm going to give you the skills and the intelligence and the process to essentially continue to do this on a regular basis and make it

a sustaining thing. That's kind of the vision. You know, more or less, I think it's being able to provide the tools for their intelligences and their skills to come to life, right? Because many times, if you're an artist or you're an educator, but you've had a lot of things taken away, right? Or you've had to flee your home or displacement, right? You sometimes feel like I'm not using my potential. I'm not using this talent that I know I have, right? And being able to say, well, there are ways that you can use this to be able to benefit others and that it actually becomes a form of trauma relief or therapeutic kind of feeling for those people themselves as well. I think one of the other elements, which is one of the hardest things, and this is something that I've thought deeply about,

how do you measure the social impact of these programs? How do you know there's been a difference made into that one kid Hamadi's life, right? And that's a really hard question to answer. And then how do you take that and show it to people who need that to be able to fund you on the long term? So how do you deal with that? How are you take that and show it to people who need that to be able to fund you on the long term? So how do you deal with that? How are you grappling with that? So that's a lot of the reason why I realized I don't know the answer to that.

So I went back and I'm working with people who are now kind of illuminating some of those answers. Now, some of those answers, I think, are very basic things like taking interviews with people and getting the quotes of the kids saying, this is how it affected my life, being able to have surveys and questionnaires. Being able to have kind of longitudinal kinds of studies where you say, okay, five months after this happened, ten months after this happened, two years after this happened, how has this affected you, right? And especially doing that of the educators and artists as well as, of course, of the kids themselves. And kind of tracking that over time and saying, well, this may be affected a certain element of these are the learning outcomes, let's say, right?

Okay, we see that maybe their cognitive skills have improved. Maybe they've been more calm amongst a time of very serious trauma, or maybe this has been a way of expressing things that they've experienced in a more healthy manner rather than it coming out through violence, let's say. And so finding ways of explaining that is really hard. How do you measure the arts? That's a really hard question. I mean, that's been one of the questions of the ages.

We're seeing that question unfold in this country in some interesting ways also. But in the context of what you're doing, it is, especially because in the world of, I know the word charity is out now, because in the world of, I know the word charity is out now, but in the world of nonprofit for purpose, however you want it, there has been a very definitive move over the last decade to wanting to fund definable, measurable, trackable outcomes, which on the one hand is good because you want to know that your money is actually well spent. You know, on the other hand, there are certain things where it's, you know, that you're doing good work, but it is, it is so much harder to actually track it in metrics that funding organizations would say, okay, this is valid in the context of what we look for. Yes, it's got to be really interesting, sort of like, not dilemma, but work right now. Well, so we relatively recently just got our 501c3 tax deductible status, our dilution. And it was really interesting, right?

Because it was kind of like after years of doing this kind of as a quote unquote by the official world independent contractor, right, being hired to go out and do this, it was kind of like, okay, this needs to grow to the next level. Well, what does that mean? That means making an organization where this can really function. Now, what does it mean to make an organization? You have to have, you know, a legal team that's backing you up. You have to be able to have the financial backing. You need to be able to have an accountant. You have to be able to have a governance structure and a mission and a vision and all of these really kind of responsible things that create credentiality, right? This is a credentialed official organization. Now I know what I'm doing is important and what we are doing is important, right? That this work that Artolution and I think many other organizations

in the world are doing is important. I know it because I've looked in these kids' faces, right? I know it because I've had people come up to me in tears and be like, I've never seen my child do this, right? I remember I was working in a place called the Alin Hospital, which is a hospital for children with brain damage and spinal cord injuries, largely for more trauma in Jerusalem, both Israeli and Palestinian. And it's actually one of the only hospitals that brings children in from Gaza. And I was working there right before the last Gaza war. And then I actually worked in the region for the entire last Gaza war in 2014. And it was so intense, you know, because these parents, all they want is their children to heal, you know, Palestinian or Israeli, you know. And I remember looking at this one, he was a religious Jewish man,

who was, he was Haredi. And his daughter had, wasn't able to move her body very much. And she was going under years of physical therapy. And he came up to me with tears in his eyes and he said, you know, my daughter has moved her arms more in the last hour than in the last six months combined because of the art, right? And hearing someone say that, right? Now it's years thinking back to that. That's been the fire, right? That's been that seed that's been kind of that's felt a need to do all these process where I may spend 60, 70, 80% of my time writing proposals, writing budgets, being able to put it together so that these projects can happen, right? But the reason why is because at the core, I know that this really matters, right? It's like what you were saying. People need to have this kind of proof that this matters, right? You have to be able to develop a metric to say, well, how much

did it matter to that kid, right? Now, that's a really hard thing to do. But you also realize that it is doable in the sense that if you know that at the core, the soul of it exists, developing that framework or that scaffolding around it, I feel like not only is it important, but it also makes it transvertible or translatable into the sciences, into people who maybe are very focused on psychological well-being or people who are really focused on humanitarian aid as a measurable tracking difference. You know, it's something that's really hard to track, but it's not impossible. And that's been something that's been a lot of the work I've been doing recently is tracking the work that Artolution is doing and saying, okay, a couple years down the line, what happened? And I remember I just had a conversation with a Palestinian girl and she said, you know, because of our project, I went to art school. And now I'm making art. Here's my art.

What do you think about it? You know? And so it's this kind of unbelievable balance of saying, okay, you have to have the metrics, but you've got to remember the soul of it. It's that kind of back and forth. Yeah, it is a real balance. You have to hold this duality at all times. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you.

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Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Is that where you're headed right now?

I mean, well, you know, yes. And yet at the same time, so, you know, I was talking before about this idea of needing to have kind of sustainable funding for this work. But also what I realized is that doesn't just come from giant foundations and giant philanthropists,

although that is kind of very crucial, but it's also individual people. You know, I mean, that's the whole world of why would somebody go through the years of, you know, developing a board of directors and having to go through all the application process to get a quote unquote 501c3, right? To make a tax deductible donation. It's also for people to make that one $20 donation, right? Who feels like, okay, I'm doing something that matters and you don't even necessarily have to show me the metrics. I just want to be part of something important and that it's all equal, that it like, okay, I'm doing something that matters. And you don't even necessarily have to show me the metrics. I just want to be part of something important. And that it's all equal, that it's all important, you know, whether it be that one person who can only give a dollar,

whether it be someone who can give a million dollars, right, that they all matter. And I think that's been part of forming the organization. However, kind of in addition to that, I think it's also finding new ways of cultivating these kinds of programs. And so I was just recently working, get this, in an experimental pedagogical center in a favela community in Rio, working with an artist named Vic Munez, who created a film called Wasteland. And I had an opportunity to work with him in his studio. And we built this found instrument project. But it was with the idea of teaching about biology and bacteria. And we partnered with the biomedical research facility at Columbia to be able to teach these kids about bacteria and about cells and about biology, where then they actually painted all the cells and all the different bacteria on the different body organs of the pound instrument. So that you have these, it was mostly three and four year old kids, really little kids who are having this idea of bacteria, who are living in this favela community, and being able to then create this permanent sculpture that they're able to play that has all of

these different cells inside of it. And so, you know, being able to fuse this with different kinds of literacy based programs, being able to fuse it with different kinds of education of all kinds, in addition to the trauma relief, is something that I think is really important, you know, how much potential it has for many different kinds of education. But at the same time, you know, I really think heavily about the fact that I believe this is the next movement in the history of the arts. I believe that having communities coming together to create public arts pieces for themselves is what I think is the next movement in the history of the arts. And I think that's so important when we look, okay, you know, when you

look at art history, and you look at how there's these constant movements, you know, a lot of art theorists talk about how we're in this postmodern era, right? And that now everything is art, right? That's true. However, I also think that there's something to be said for the fact of what is the potential that arts can give? What can it share? And I think that's something that's huge, where I don't view myself to go to these communities and that I'm there to give anything. I'm there to share an opportunity where I feel like I'm learning just as much, if not

even more from these communities than they could learn from me. And I feel like once you have that kind of opportunity or that experience, I think it's so important for people to get to have ownership over the space that they live in. And that this idea of empowerment, people use this word all the time now, right? But when people are making things on a public level, especially children, adolescents, and they have that opportunity, I think there's absolutely something to be said for the fact that a child with a paintbrush in their hand and a wall is just as important as an artist making a giant piece of art that's going to be going in a museum. And it's trying to create that kind of egalitarian statute or that kind of world where the ideas and stories of children, especially in disenfranchised communities, have the opportunity to be in conversation around the world. Yeah. I mean, so powerful. And I completely agree.

You know, it's like, I feel like there are almost like sort of like two overarching purposes of art. One is the expression of the artist, but two is the evoking of emotion in those who would experience. But maybe there's this, like, what if you could be both simultaneously and feel fully expressed and simultaneously be the one whose emotion is evoked through participating in a collective process of it. That's cool. And that's it. I mean, that is the art illusion.

That's exactly what I believe it to be, which is this idea that there's this kind of, if you imagine it looking something like a city and you're looking up from above and each child is kind of their own building, right? And you start to see all these roads develop and you start to see all these connections and all these ideas and all of these kind of lights coming in and out. And you have this perspective and then you take that and you put it up on a wall, right? And you see that all these kids who have their own experiences, who've been through their own stuff, you know, and you say, okay, you take all those ideas and you put them onto something that we can see. What does that look like? What does it feel like? What does it smell like, taste like here? What happens? And it almost becomes this opportunity to transcend yourself, right? Where any individual kid could not have

made that. I could not have made that i could not have made that no artist could have made that but only as a whole they become the single unit almost and i feel like especially when you're talking about these these common traumas you know i remember i was working with this girl and i had this experience where this was also in one of the syrian refugee camps and it was this experience where she was talking about how we were coming up with an idea. And the humanitarian aid worker came up to me and she was like, you know, that girl that you just talked to,

she said, you see that baby over there? And there was a baby and they actually came over and gave me this baby. And I'm holding this baby and I'm looking into this baby's eyes. And I give the baby, you know, back to the girl. And they said, yeah, that's this girl's baby. She's 12 years old. This baby is one years old. She was married when she was like 10. And you hear the story and say, wow. So what do we paint? She said, I want to paint a woman whose veil, whose hijab or whose garment is made of water. And I want to paint this, I want us to paint this

as an homage to all of the mothers, period. I love that, right? I couldn't have come up with that idea. And when you look at that and you think, wow, this is something where she, as this girl, came up with this idea and kind of got out of herself for a second, right? Was able to kind of remove herself from herself and become this person who maybe she never thought that she could be, which is really this professional public artist. And we painted this mural, right, of this woman in a hijab made of water. And it was kind of this moment where I started to think, wow, like this is the stuff that needs to be in museums. This is the stuff that needs to be in the galleries

and that needs to be kind of seen by the world. And through having that experience and many of these experiences, it's kind of these moments where time stops. And you look at it and you think, wow, how can this evolve what we think the arts can be? How can this be a model? And I think that's very much what Artolution has been the light behind Artolution, I guess I would say. Is the idea that the entire concept of what the arts can do can be shifted. And that's, I think, what we're seeing in the world

is that there's such potential for people to communicate with each other, for people to be able to humanize. I think we're in a time where so many people are dehumanized, you know, where everyone who looks this way or is of this culture, you know, is not of the same human level as others. And I think the arts are one of the ways that you can rehumanize populations. And it's so important. It's so important that that can happen, I think. Completely agree with that. It feels like a good time to come full circle also. So maybe this is a good life project. So if I offer that phrase out to you, to live a good life, what comes up? Fulfillment. I think living a good life and the good life project.

It's the idea of living a good life. I think that every day you wake up and you feel like you're in a journey, you're on an adventure, right? That there's something that's meaningful every day you wake up, that the colors on the inside of your eyelids have meaning, right? That every thought that you could possibly have about why you wake up in the morning, I think about that, you know, the Good Life Project. So as soon as I wake up in the morning, I open my eyes, I have this image in my head where I imagine children, different parts of the world, you know, somebody in an Aboriginal community in Australia, somebody in a Syrian refugee camp, a child in a remote part of Colombia, right? And I imagine

them all waking up and their eyes opening. And they wake up and they brush their teeth and they put on their clothes and they get their books and they put their backpack on. And they all walk to school in these different parts of the world. And they all walk to school and they all enter either the school or the adolescent friendly space or the community center or the library. And they enter and they see this giant mural that they painted, right? They all look at it and they think, and I don't know what they think, but I know that they think. And for me, that gives my life meaning, right? To believe that these kids can wake up and see this every morning, right? And every morning for years, this happens with hundreds, if not thousands of kids and families. And the meaning

behind that is that I hope that it made their life a little more good and it made it a good life, right? And do I know that? I think inside of myself, myself i know that but at the same time i think it can always grow right and that's what gives that meaning right which is that it never ends and i think one of the things is if you look on the website of the work that we do at artolution.org you'll see points on a map all over the world and i like to think that uh i've talked to some kids who they're able to look at other kids in the world and seeing I like to think that I've talked to some kids who they're able to look at other kids in the world and seeing what they've made, right? And thinking, wow, this story that I told actually starts to talk to this other story that these other kids made, right? And that as a

whole, this idea that the arts make life worth living, I think makes me feel like it makes me live a good life. And I think it hopefully makes them live a good life and that the idea of a good life is something that it's so important to feel like what you do that some part of your life has meaning maybe not all of it

but that some of it does and I think that the arts are one of the things that does that kind of for me at least in the most powerful way in the world. Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If the stories and ideas in any way moved you, I would so appreciate if you would take just a few extra seconds for two quick things. One, if it's touched you in some way, if there's some idea or moment in the story or in the conversation that you really feel like you would share with somebody else, that it would make a difference in somebody else's lives, take a moment and whatever app you're using, just share this episode with somebody who you think it'll make a difference for. Email it if that's the easiest thing, whatever's easiest for you. And then of course, if you're compelled subscribe so that you can stay a part of this continuing experience.

My greatest hope with this podcast is not just to produce moments and share stories and ideas that impact one person listening, but to let it create a conversation, to let it serve as a catalyst for the elevation of all of us together collectively, because that's how we rise. When stories and ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change happens. And I would love to invite you to participate on that level. Thank you so much as always for your intention, for your attention, for your heart. And I wish you only the best.

I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

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