Lily Yeh: Creating Art is Building Community

Podcast Interview with Lily Yeh, Barefoot Artists Lily Yeh is an unconventional changemaker for cities guided by abundant hope. In this episode of Trustees Without Borders, Lily Yeh speaks from the heart, sharing approaches she has taken across her career to build community through art, learning, land transformation, and economic development. Lily Yeh is an artist whose work has taken her to communities throughout the world. As founder and executive director of The Village of Arts and Humanities in North Philadelphia from 1968 to 2004, she helped create a national model in creative place-making and community building through the arts. In 2002, Yeh pursued her work internationally, founding Barefoot Artists, Inc. to bring the transformative power of art to impoverished communities around the globe through participatory, multifaceted projects that foster community empowerment, improve the physical environment, promote economic development and preserve indigenous art and culture. In addition to the United States, she has carried out projects in several other countries. Interviewers: Lydia Gilmer, Master of Urban and Regional Planning Candidate at Virginia Tech, and Small Business Solutions Specialist for Pulaski County, VA, and C. Meranda Flachs-Surmanek, an artist, cultural organizer, and master’s degree candidate in Virginia Tech’s Urban & Regional Planning and Theatre’s: Directing & Public Dialogue programs In Partnership with the Virginia Tech School of Visual Arts