Today’s guest blogger is writer, educator and activist Louise Dunlap, author of Undoing the Silence.
It’s a thrill to be coming to Wordstock on this particular weekend—with the whole country taking on a new mandate for positive change and citizens across the old lines of red and blue brimming with the new energy of “yes we can!!” Fellow author William Cleveland and I have planned a conversation-session for Saturday at 1 pm to engage creative people (and that’s everyone!) in the “yes we can!!” spirit. Both of us have written books about the power of the arts—and in my case, especially “the word—to stir deep change in communities in crisis.
I’m very excited about being in conversation with longtime advocate of the arts in social transformation, William Cleveland. His new book, Art and Upheaval, tells the spellbinding stories of music, theater, and other arts projects pulling people together to resist nuclear devastation in Australia, apartheid in South Africa, oppressive rule in Serbia, and more. Mine, Undoing the Silence, shows how to put reluctance aside and write ordinary letters, articles and proposals that can help to change the world. With the icecaps melting, oceans rising, wars sapping our resources and moral strength—all of us can be part of the change. And this week, we’ve turned a corner as a country opening the doors to fuller participation. Both Bill and I will be giving workshops during Wordstock, on Saturday or Sunday, but our “Conversation on the Role of Art in Social Change” will stir the creative energy we can be using as citizens during these extraordinary times.
For more about us, look for Bill at http://www.artandcommunity.com/, for me at www.undoingsilence.org, and for our books and our wonderful publisher (who specializes in books to build vibrant communities) at www.newvillagepress.net.