1.: How Art and Social Change Shaped My Life

Bad home, Drugs, and prison. A predictable story? Sure, except when you throw in the National Cathedral choir, a geodesic dome, and the stubborn belief that art can save the world. This is the first episode of a podcast produced by the Center for the Study of Art & Community called Change the Story, Change the World. (now called ART IS CHANGE) My name is Bill Cleveland. In this first episode I share the very personal story of how this podcast came to be and try to answer why would anybody want to listen to it. It’s a journey of many decades. It begins in the leafy suburbs of our nation’s capital around the time that America started losing what some have called its innocence---Along the way we encounter hippie communes, the requisite drugs, sex and rock and roll, art colonies in prisons, and armies of artists doing battle with the likes of the Slobodan Milosevic, Pol Pot and the US Department of Justice. This week on Change the Story, Change the World, I share how my story crosses paths with the early history and extraordinary growth of the global community arts movement.THRESHOLD QUESTIONS AND DELICIOUS QUOTES ?Can the creative process be a lifeline for people who are struggling? "The pervasive, penetrating pulse of all that music was a god damn miracle, all at once a soothing balm, a shattering depth charge, and a transcendent window into other dimensions." ?Can art help us re-imagine and recreate the social and cultural fabric of our communities? "One of the bedrock understandings of the hippie universe was, to coin a phrase “you can’t always get what you want, but if you really need it, well, you can make it yourself.” So, in no time at all, we found ourselves imagining that we could make our OWN music.”?What was CETA and how did it give birth to an ever-expanding community arts movement? "The prison partnerships we forged … were both groundbreaking and challenging. They taught is a whole lot in a hurry about what artists need to do to build trust with new communities and neighborhood organizations."? How can art help change the toxic nature of America’s prisons? "In those instants, we could see prison artists kind of tuning in, you know, moving from static to clear reception." ?How can these transformative stories feed the development of a growing community of creative change agents? "By the end of the Art in Other Places Conference, we had a mountain of documentation on artists and programs from all over the country. We had made a commitment to NEA to produce … a report, but to really tell the story of what was going on we had to do more, much more." ?How can artists help re-build civic infrastructure, heal unspeakable trauma, and give new voice to the forgotten and disappeared? "Art and Upheaval took me on an 8-year global journey, documenting artists working in communities facing intense, real-time conflict and trauma.” ?What is Change the Story / Change the World and why should anyone want to tune in? "We are doing this because we believe that meeting the obvious and daunting challenges of this century is going to require a revolution of thought and deed — in essence, a new set of stories powerful enough to change beliefs and behaviors." LINKSThe Hangin' On, William Cleveland from Songlines, by Cleveland PlainsongWashington's Howard Theater played host to many of the great Black musical artists of the early and mid-twentieth centur was billed as the "Theater of the People."Fritz Perls, a German-born psychoanalyst Perls coined the term 'Gestalt therapy' to identify the form of psychotherapy that he developed with his wife, Laura Perls, in the 1940s and 1950s. Perls became associated with the Esalen Institute in 1964, and he lived there until 1969.CETA and the Arts (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) Here is an analysis of the impact of the U.S. Federal Government's largest annual investment in the arts.The William James Association's Prison Arts Project contracts with visual, literary and performing artists to provide in-depth, long-term arts experiences for incarcerated men and women in California state prison facilities.Art In Other Places: Artists at Work in America's Community & Social Institutions, William ClevelandArt and Upheaval: Artists on the Worlds Frontlines, William ClevelandTRANSCRIPT(Music) THE HANGIN ON “The Hangin On” is probably the saddest song I’ve ever written. But its more complicated than that, because, you see, the unfortunate story it represents also precipitated its creation. So, for me, it’s also a song of redemption, one of many that have emerged over the years that have both taught me, first-hand, about the healing power of human creativity and, to put it bluntly, probably saved my life. From the Center for the Study of Art and Community this is Change the Story, Change the World, A Chronicle of Art and Transformation. I’m Bill Cleveland.Bad home, Drugs, rock and roll, prison. A not uncommon and fairly predictable trajectory, but not really, especially when you throw in the National Cathedral choir, a geodesic dome, and the stubborn belief that art can save the world. You’ve tuned in to the first episode of Change the Story Change the World. In this first chapter we share a very personal and, no doubt highly biased account of how I came to believe that assertion with all my heart and soul.It’s a journey of many decades. It begins in the leafy suburbs of our nation’s capital around the time that America started losing what some have called its innocence---Along the way we will encounter hippie communes, the requisite drugs, sex and rock and roll, art colonies in prisons, and armies of artists doing battle with = the likes of the Slobodan Milosevic, Pol Pot and the US Department of Justice. This Change the Story, Change the World, I share how my story crosses paths with the early history and extraordinary growth of the global community arts movement.Part 1I’m a lucky man. Lucky and incredibly fortunate. To be sure I am a white guy who grew up in the suburbs with good public schools and a swimming pool down the street. All obvious markers of middle-class white privilege in post WW II America. But no, what proved to be the real impetus for what I now think of as a charmed life, came from a different, less obvious place. A place that has much more to do with survival than the silver spoon.You see, the story unfolding in the Cleveland house was, like too many others I came to know, not what it seemed. My brother, sister and I grew up in a in a slow-moving nightmare born of my parents making what some folks call bad choices and I call just doing bad shit when they drank too much, particularly my dad.Don’t get me wrong, I loved my parents, and they taught me a lot, but, sometimes bad is just bad. The obvious antidote was, of course, to split as soon as possible. So, as we came of age, the three of us, ran in different directions. Predictably, the compass for my own escape, pointed, well--- due nowhere. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate, my one-way ticket was...