Arlene Goldbard

I’m not in classrooms every day, only dipping in occasionally when I’m on a campus to give talks. But I came up K through 12 in the California public education system, I vote here now, and I have more than a casual interest in the future of the human species, which gives me ample reason [...]

I don’t know if this is a political problem, a spiritual one, or a psychological one: I’m fairly certain it’s all of the above. Or maybe it just feels that way based on all the space it’s taking up in my mind. How do people overcome the obstacles—fatigue, disappointment, magical thinking—that make them reluctant to [...]

For several months now, I’ve been ending every talk I give with the same message to artists and activists: This moment of seismic shifts and insecurity in economies, governments and communities challenges us to make our work equally valid and powerful as art, as spiritual practice and as political speech or action.
The first time this [...]

A couple of weeks ago, Adam Liptak of the New York Times reported from the front lines of the U.S. prison-industrial complex:
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.
Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of [...]

Thousand Kites, the project started by artists to awaken our national conscience to the realities of our prison-industrial complex—the planet’s biggest and most costly, bar none—has launched a great new Web site where you can learn about and make use of theater, video, audio and other tools to involve your community. You can share stories, [...]

It’s that time of year again: piped-in Christmas carols and tinsel thick on the ground, toy marketing at fever pitch, when the good people at Thousand Kites record their annual “Calls from Home” special, broadcasting messages from families on the outside to loved ones locked up. (Read on to learn how to take part.) And [...]

This is the first part of the text of my keynote address offered at the Western Pennsylvania Arts in Education Partners Resident Artists Conference in Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania, 16-17 May 2007. There’s a link at the end you can use to download the whole text in PDF format.
I’m working on a community arts project that [...]

The French have a saying I love: even a broken clock is right twice a day. Our court system is broken in so many ways, perhaps chiefly owing to judicial appointments’ use as political tools. But even so, sometimes they get it right and those times are worth noting with appreciation. Here are two of [...]

I’ve been chewing on a thought for days: that nearly all the violence in our society is grounded in the perpetrators’ felt sense of powerlessness.
This speaks to an existential paradox: although our days are filled with choices and decisions, in an ultimate sense we are at the mercy of forces far larger than ourselves, [...]

The last six months have been some of the most interesting of my life as a writer and speaker. Since New Creative Community was published in November, I’ve been visiting conferences and campuses, giving talks and workshops to artists, activists, funders, policy-makers and students. I’ve met hundreds of people, seen all kinds of work, had [...]