If I hear one more person (however grudgingly) admire the Republicans’ “long game” and compliment them on masterminding a fifty-year strategy to overturn a longstanding consensus on rights, bodily autonomy, guns and more, I’ll scream. In fact, I’ve screamed already. It’s not that the U.S. Right doesn’t long for a Big Daddy and eagerly follow …
This is the text of a talk I gave on 8 April 2022 at the Community Built Association conference held at the Kaneko Foundation in Omaha, NE. I began by telling the assembled community-based artists and designers that I’d found it easier to react than to think during the last two years. My aim in …
Since the start of the pandemic, calls for new public-service job programs have been thick on the ground. A lot of smart people felt it was a no-brainer to call government in to employ folks who were out of work, paying them to do things for the public good. If you google “new WPA,” you’ll …
Last week, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the launch of the City Artist Corps, a $25 million initiative that will give around 1,500 New York artists funding this summer to mount “performances, public artworks, pop-up shows through New York City’s Summer Rising program, new murals and canvasses, and more,” according to the official …
I recently heard a member of the Idaho Nez Perce/Nimiipuu say that if you have the sense of having lost something, you should gaze in that direction and it will come toward you. I’ve been trying to gaze in the direction of democracy. People mean a million different things by democracy, but it seems there …
What—apart from the fact that U.S. prisons are pandemic petri dishes and prisoners’ lives are officially regarded as dispensable—does the colossal, ongoing disaster of our criminal justice system have to do with the current disaster of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout? You might answer that having the world’s largest prison population (indeed, more than 20 percent …
NOTE: My too-modest friend Francois Matarasso writes about our new monthly podcast series, “A Culture of Possibility,” dropping today. Here’s the link to subscribe on iTunes. Let us know what you think! I’m not much for patriotic displays, so I was surprised when I teared up during Lady Gaga’s singing of the national anthem at …
NOTE: This article by Charles-Éric Blais-Poulin was translated from the original French version which appeared on 16 January in La Presse, published in Montreal. I was one of several people interviewed for it. You can find the original version here. The original article described me as “autrice et référence mondiale en matière de démocratie culturelle,” …
The year is almost over, friends, and I have yet to understand exactly what is happening. How about you? I mean, sure, the COVID numbers, the unemployment figures, the police murders, the packed prisons—all of this can be quantified and at least on the level of sheer numbers, comprehended. But what boggles my mind is …
One thing we’ve been hearing a lot about since the quadruple pandemic hit is the hope that instead of trying to restore our civic and market systems to their former flawed and inequitable state, we should see this enforced pause as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make essential change. People see the opportunity to strengthen democracy, …