In this episode of ART IS CHANGE, theater artist and educator Derek Goldman shares how performance can become a civic practice — not simply entertainment, but a way for people to reconnect with themselves, each other, and the deeper responsibilities of citizenship.

This episode is part of a special Art in Action series we're producing in partnership with the Charles F. Kettering Foundation’s Democracy and the Arts program. In these episodes we'll be speaking with artists, cultural organizers, and arts leaders who are navigating and challenging current efforts to limit free creative expression and free speech. Together, we'll explore what freedom of expression means in practice, not as an abstract right, but as a lived responsibility at the heart of democratic life.

Drawing on his In Your Shoes™ methodology, Goldman explores how storytelling and embodied listening can open surprising pathways for mitigating polarization, isolation, and fear.

At the center of the conversation is a deceptively simple process: Two people talk deeply with one another, transcribe the conversation, and then publicly perform each other’s words. The result is not debate, but encounter. From collaborations between conservative Christian and progressive theater students to work in prisons, hospitals, public health spaces, and global conflict zones, Goldman describes how theater can function as “relational fitness” — strengthening the neglected civic muscles of empathy, attention, and human recognition.

This episode explores three interconnected ideas:

• How the In Your Shoes™ process transforms strangers into collaborators through radical listening and embodied storytelling,
• Why Goldman believes democracy depends not only on freedom of speech, but on the freedom to speak vulnerably and be heard without fear, and
• How artists can work across sectors — from diplomacy to public health to incarceration settings — to rebuild trust, connection, and civic imagination in communities.

Notable Mentions

People

• Derek Goldman – Laboratory for Global Performance & Politics
• Theater director, educator, and co-founding director of Georgetown University’s Laboratory for Global Performance & Politics. Goldman is the creator of the In Your Shoes™ methodology and the co-leader of the Art of Care initiative discussed in this episode.
• James Thompson – University of Manchester / Care Aesthetics Research
• Applied theater scholar and author whose work on care aesthetics explores the artistic dimensions of caregiving, humanitarian performance, and social practice.
• Thornton Wilder – Author of Our Town
• Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose classic meditation on everyday life and human presence became an unexpected touchstone in Goldman’s work with incarcerated students.
• Studs Terkel – Oral Historian and Broadcaster
• Legendary oral historian and radio producer whose conversational storytelling approach echoes through Goldman’s ensemble-based methods of testimony and listening.
• Tony Kushner
• Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright referenced in relation to actor Tom Story’s reflections on drawing strength from performing the role of Prior Walter in Angels in America during his own medical recovery.

Organizations & Programs

• Center for the Study of Art & Community
• The home of ART IS CHANGE, dedicated to research, training, and storytelling at the intersection of arts, democracy, community development, and social change.
• The Charles F. Kettering Foundation
• Headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, operating foundation with a mission to advance inclusive democracies worldwide by fostering citizen engagement, promoting government accountability, and countering authoritarianism.
• Democracy and the Arts
• The Kettering Foundation's focus area for integrating the power of the arts into democratic life locally, nationally, and globally.
• Laboratory for Global Performance & Politics
• Georgetown University initiative co-founded by Derek Goldman that connects artists, diplomats, activists, scholars, and community leaders using performance as a tool for civic dialogue and global engagement.
• Georgetown University
• A Jesuit university in Washington, D.C. where Goldman teaches and where many of the projects discussed in this episode were developed.
• Mosaic Theater Company
• Washington, D.C. theater company that collaborated with Goldman on The Art of Care, an ensemble-based performance exploring personal and civic dimensions of caregiving.
• Belarus Free Theatre
• Internationally recognized theater company founded in Belarus in resistance to political repression and censorship. Goldman references their influence on his thinking about freedom of expression and artistic risk.
• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
• Public health institution partnering with Goldman’s team to integrate arts-based relational practices into healthcare and community wellbeing initiatives.

Projects & Initiatives

• In Your Shoes™ – Laboratory for Global Performance & Politics
• Derek Goldman’s signature relational storytelling methodology in which participants interview one another, transcribe conversations, and publicly perform each other’s words as a practice of empathy, listening, and civic connection.
• The Art of Care Initiative – Laboratory for Global Performance & Politics
• Cross-sector initiative exploring care as both an artistic and civic practice, connecting artists, healthcare workers, educators, and community leaders through workshops and performance.
• The Art of Care – An In Your Shoes™ Workshop Experience – Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: An example of the expanding application of Goldman’s methods within healthcare and public health environments, focusing on storytelling, listening, and relational care practices.

Publications & Plays

• Our Town
• Wilder’s landmark play about everyday life, mortality, and human awareness became a powerful framework in Goldman’s theater work with incarcerated communities.
• Angels in America
• Seminal American play exploring illness, identity, politics, and care during the AIDS crisis; referenced in relation to actor Tom Story’s recovery narrative.

Derek Goldman:

From the Center for the Study of Art and Community, this is Art Is Change, a chronicle of art and social change where activists, artists, and cultural organizers share the strategies and skills they need to thrive as creative community leaders.

My name is Bill Cleveland.

This episode is part of a special Art in Action series we're producing in partnership with the Charles F. Kettering Foundation’s Democracy and the Arts program. In these episodes, we'll be speaking with artists, cultural organizers, and arts leaders who are navigating and challenging current efforts to limit free creative expression and free speech.Together, we'll explore what freedom of expression means in practice, not as an abstract right, but as a lived responsibility at the heart of democratic life.

Now, in today's show, theater artist Derek Goldman shares “In Your Shoes,” a deceptively simple process where people listen deeply and then literally flip the script. So I perform you, and you perform me.

Along the way, we explore theater as a way to rebuild the muscles of listening, respect, curiosity, and human connection in a time of isolation and uncertainty. We'll also look at the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, where performance becomes a tool for civic dialogue, cultural democracy, public health, and cross-sector collaboration, and dig into the roots of Derek Goldman's belief that freedom of expression is both a constitutional right and an essential civic practice.

Goldman's work asks, "What happens when people stop trying to win the argument and start making room for the human being across from them? This conversation offers a practical reminder. The work of democracy begins long before policy. It begins when we look again, listen longer, and risks standing even briefly in another person's shoes.

Part One: Performing One Another

So, we'll begin this episode with a short story. Here's the scene. It's the closing session of a four-day theater conference at a prominent American university. Everybody's gathered in the main theater, the lights are low, the stage is bare, except for a podium at stage right and two empty chairs facing each other at the center. Derek Goldman steps up to the podium. Everybody here knows him as one of the theater professors who helped organize this gathering and now, in these final moments, he wants to share something personal: a process he's been developing and refining for many years.


I've done it in spaces where people are coming together from quite different worlds, literally and figuratively, and it involves a coming together in a circle and standing and noticing what's present, and I ask people to make eye contact with each other. Then from there, people just speak their full names as they were given to them to say it, and for everybody to hear the name fully and to repeat the name back to them.

That's the whole first exchange. We go around the circle, and we do that, and it's a very powerful experience typically because it slows down something, and people feel held by that. We go from there, and I often ask people to conjure in a place of significance to them, and they name the place, and people repeat that.

Suddenly, we have places in the room and some little wisp of story. Then I a- invite people to say a person of significance to them who's not present in the room, and then we repeat back the name. And then the last part of this is to make it a simple first-person statement. It just has to be true. You know, I had a bagel for breakfast.

Derek had a bagel for breakfast. I feel alone in my country. Javier feels alone in his country. So that's five minutes we've been together in that work. It's different in different contexts or at different times. It's call and response, basically. It's like a muscle. You get some information about people, and it becomes its own kind of narrative journey.

And then the second phase of the work is called performing one another. Basically, I have people have a conversation on their own. It's not an interview. It's a conversation, and there's sometimes a prompt like talk about home. The only thing is they're both recording that conversation. Then they go away, and they listen back to the conversation, and they choose a very, very precise piece of the conversation, including all of the uhs and ums.

They transcribe that, and they come back, and in the context of a group, they share what they've done of each other. It's really very simple. Again, it's just amazing to me what happens, and subjectively, like, I find it the best theater going It's really, really beautiful to me what happens, and especially with people who are scared of it and don't think of themselves as expressive, communicative people and don't wanna be on stage.Those are the people who actually get the most of it.

He describes how they met regularly across an entire academic year and that what happened defied every expectation. Little talk about politics and a lot about loneliness, faith, loss, longing, and the creation of friendships nobody predicted. Then he turns and introduces two of those students, Kate from Georgetown and Hope from Patrick Henry, who take the two empty chairs at center stage.

Kate, the Georgetown student speaking Hope's words, begins.

Most of them are very loving people, very caring people who just happen to hold very sincerely-held religious beliefs that directly contradict, like, current, current political thought. I guess like, um, specifically like what you see with Westboro Baptist Church, like, like against the gay community. 


But my parents, for example, like my mom. . .. There are a couple of ladies at my church who absolutely, they love the gay community, and they say first and foremost, we just want to love them and share love of God with them. All that stuff. My parents, they would be, they're not at all in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church, you know, being like, God hates gays, which isn't true. God does not hate gays.

[00:07:32] Hope (Student Speaking Kate’s words): I wish that I were about to talk about something more intellectual or related to the greater good or something about community or family or relationship. But something else has been eating up my mind recently. It's actually a bit ironic because I'm about to talk about how I don't always want to talk about the fact that I'm gay.

Surprise, right? Well, that's the thing. I don't know. Recently I felt really boxed in by this aspect of my identity. Many well-meaning friends have pegged me as the gay friend. I feel like that label has started to follow me around and precede all other aspects of my identity. I mean, I do think that I should take a second and step back and say that this experience goes to show how much privilege I inherently have. This is the first time in my life I've truly felt othered, and it stinks.

I don't want to be your gay friend. I just, I just want to be your friend. I don't want to be a good gay actor one day. I just want to be a good actor. Not the gay cousin, but just a cool cousin and on and on and on.

Part Two: Building Relational Muscles

Derek Goldman, welcome to the show. Please tell our listeners where you're hailing from.

[00:09:13] Bill Cleveland: right now I'm on Alameda Island, on the unceded homelands of the Chochenyo speaking Ohlone peoples. So, Derek, if you had a handle or a street name, what would it be?

[00:09:50] Bill Cleveland: Or a quilt maker.

[00:09:53] Bill Cleveland: Speaking as the threader or the quilt maker, could you describe a bit more about your work in the world? if you're talking to somebody sitting next to you on the airplane, just going, hey, “What do you do?” How would you respond to that?

I've always distrusted the notion that it's [theatre] some higher form, and when there's the whiff of that, I've always had a bit of, I've distrusted it. So that's what I do. And that has taken many forms and I think what's been interesting for me lately is I've been less and less focused or interested in specifically just doing that in art spaces or in theaters and more and more interested in taking the foundations of what we do in the theater around deep listening, around our muscles of empathy, and going into spaces that are, public health spaces, global health spaces, places with, broadly speaking, everyday people, sometimes people who are being brought together because they're polarized and are in disagreement, sometimes just people who are grappling with things we're all grappling with.

And what I'm trying to offer, in some very simple ways, are some practices, some muscle building around excavating the connections that are there between people in any space but that often go, untapped, unrealized, because people are there to do something else. They're there to get work done, they're there to get business done, so that, that discovery never gets made. And as a result, trust never gets built and so I'm, trying to find that and I think my reason is not some high and noble save the world reason, but it's actually that work is very joyous right now. I feel like the blessing of it right now isn't as broken and as dark and as fractious as the world feels. These rooms that I get to be in most days, people leave feeling pretty, pretty buoyant, pretty connected to themselves and each other in ways that maybe small, but deep.

[00:14:46] Derek Goldman: I think as you were talking — you talk about the muscles — I think we're trying to do is a kind of relational fitness. Like we have physical fitness. We understand that if we don't do anything about our bodies, we don't go to the gym or take a walk, as sometimes I don't, there's atrophy. But I feel like these are muscles of how we listen, how we connect, the etymology of respect is to look again, right? To look more closely to respect.

I think these are things that need practice and I find often that the practices I'm engaging in haven't necessarily changed or evolved that much over the years, but that the stakes and consequences of doing the same things have changed because the world has changed so much. And the people coming into the room need something so much deeper from the same thing we were doing because when I was up training in the theater 25 or 30 years ago, we weren't competing for attention quite as much. It wasn't so radical to just come into the circle and breathe together because there was no phone to go look at the break, and so in my classrooms with my students the materiality of the theater is not that different. I don't actually think this work is so much about innovation. I liked your word recuperation, like it's returning us.

[00:16:15] Derek Goldman: Yeah, I'm a big Thornton Wilder guy. I come back to Our Town. We've been working with incarcerated students in the D.C. jail. And that text, which was not the text I imagined would resonate so deeply there. But it's because there's something [in the play] about the capacity to notice what we take for granted and what we don't take for granted. And when we are attuned and able to be sharp enough to notice what's happening in the world. And, of course, these extraordinary, men and women who I've gotten to know through that work in the D.C. jail, they're in a very particular relationship to the time they have now, you know, to how they're noticing the world. I think those ancient lessons of our capacity to be present, to notice.

I'm much less interested these day in any space where somebody is trying to convince someone of a thing that they already know and are certain of. I don't trust because I'm like, “How are we so certain actually?”. And isn't it so much more important right now to be curious about what we might not understand yet, what we don't know. And so I feel like that's actually very rigorous. I think sometimes people think of it like this work we're doing around the art of care is like a soft skill. Like we're just trying to be like warm and nice or whatever.

I actually think

[00:17:59] Bill Cleveland: It's addictive. It is absolutely —

Part Three: Cross-Sector Curious

Derek, you're at Georgetown University, you have a number of theatre-based programs. Could you describe the different kinds of work that you do?

A lot of this work is about building relationships with artists and change makers around the globe, a lot of whom are working in relative isolation without a lot of resources. And part of what we've tried to do through projects like our Global Fellows program, which is a Mellon-funded program, is bring artists and change makers together to inspire one another because often they're working in such isolated, unsupported, unnetworked circumstances and so much of the energy of that work is about the spark of collaboration. So if I'm in Zimbabwe working in one context, I'm in Palestine working in another, I'm in South Africa working in another, what we've found is the incredible, power of these artists and change makers having structured ways, supported ways, not just to give them resources to develop their own personal project, but to actually build collaborative muscles between them.

So that's broadly speaking some of what the Lab does. Within that, as a theater maker and a teacher and a facilitator, I've developed over many years a methodology called In Your Shoes that really began as a set of techniques like so many of us doing this kind of work use, in spaces where I was trying to build trust in a fairly efficient way because we were there to do something difficult. Like you're there to direct in several weeks a play about genocide and sexual violence in World War II Poland or something like that. And you've got four weeks with these people and you're like, “Here we're going to tell this story together. Who are we doing this together?” And you're trying to build some genuine trust around that or just in any classroom where we're going to deal with difficult topics.

So this was initially not meant as a special technique of any kind. It was just stuff I did to do that [build trust]. And then what started to happen is that in some settings things would happen in those trust building exercises where people would reflect at the end and say, “That thing we did at the beginning is what really is staying with me that was so powerful.” and I started to feel that way.

And so about ten years ago, I started to lean in a little more to, I guess, slowing down the different parts of that process and starting to be a little more intentional about understanding what was really going on, how some of that work was building on things that others had done, and how some of it was really specific as a method, and it's now a method. We have many facilitators and a research and practice center around it, and we use it in a whole range of settings, mostly non-art settings, although it turns out that it's also a very powerful tool for devising performances in art settings. But the settings that interest me the most are any spaces where people are just trying to build trust and connection so that In Your Shoes work is really central.

And then one other component from In Your Shoes and then through the pandemic, a lot of my focus now is around something we call the Art of Care initiative, and it's really, looking at art as care, not just art about care. How do we understand our artistic process and our artistic work as a form of care? And equally and perhaps less obviously, how do we think about care practices as forms of artistic expression. And I've learned a lot and been inspired a lot from colleagues like my colleague James Thompson in the UK who's written several beautiful books and articles about what he calls care aesthetics, looking at the rhythm and pulse and the musicality of the way that care workers work with Alzheimer's patients, or the way they work together with bandaging. So obviously those are medical examples but as we've grown this Art of Care initiative, we are working across from what we think of as four dimensions of care that overlap:

— Mental health or inner work or spiritual care,


Interpersonal care, how we care for another human being that we're in
relationship to (whether this is a loved one, a friend, a patient, a someone we're listening to), 


Civic care (very importantly in terms of our shared interest in arts and democracy. How care gets modeled publicly in critical moments in relationship to policy in a context in which we're inundated with so many examples that are uncaring. What does civic care mean and look like?) and 


Planetary care.

We didn't start out with that formula, but because so many people are like, “Well care, it just sounds so broad, I don’t even know where to start” it's been helpful to map a little bit those different dimensions of care in order to be able to track what in different settings some of the things that are surfacing around care when this work.

[00:26:34] Derek Goldman: Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things that's been really striking from the beginning of when we founded the Lab and just in my whole journey is that, I as someone who trained in theater, was at Northwestern, got a PhD in performance studies, was working in the professional theater. My mentors were professional theater artists. That was my modality. I was shy to think about the degree to which this work would be welcomed in those cross-sector spaces. I was like, I just do this other stuff. I mean leave me alone in my rehearsal room. That's how we're trained.

[00:27:12] Derek Goldman: And so, coming to Georgetown and coming to Washington D.C. and into a place that was intentionally global — the Lab is a joint initiative with the School of Foreign Service, the School of International Relations here, where I have a joint appointment. But I didn't start by being like, “I want a joint appointment.” It really came from actually people in the world of international relations and cultural diplomacy finding themselves genuinely interested and responsive to this work. And then that grew and I started to find, “Oh, that seems to also be true over here in the public health and the global health space.”

And so one of my, legacies as a teacher is going to the places that aren't in the arts and saying, “I have this to offer as an artist, as a storyteller. I'm curious about a seat at the table or an idea for a project.” because I feel like my whole journey has been about the people who have been most responsive as collaborators being in some of the most unlikely [places] or the places I felt the least expertise.

All I was curious and open and interested in what the skills I had might offer to these other places where I thought really powerful work was being done, but maybe the story of that work isn't being told. And then ironically, I guess, I think sometimes my experience in the arts world is that cross-sector work was — I don't know — distrusted, misunderstood, a little bit devalued. My observation would be that there's a tendency to think of this public facing work as not really art.

[00:28:58] Derek Goldman: it's instrumental. It's “Oh, it's nice that you do that also for the world.” And as somebody who, has believed from the beginning that actually to do that work responsibly, you need to bring the highest standards of artistry. Those may not look like the Grand Opera house. They may manifest in different ways, but the highest standards of artistic responsibility, aesthetic responsibility to those stories, because they're in the fabric of real, people you're not buffered. That's, I feel like I've sort of spent a lot of my life, not fighting it by fighting it, but feeling like, oh my gosh, the work happening in this community room, in this housing project this morning is of absolutely the highest artistic value and integrity and is not charity, is not some. “Oh, I'm also bringing my little lunchbox of skills out over here, but this is where the work is.” And I've, of course, learned from a lot of people who, are trained even more that way than I was. I've had to kind of find that. So here at Georgetown I wouldn't be doing any of the stuff I am doing if at a certain point I hadn't just been like, I'm going to show up in Khartoum with my friend Ali Mati for this thing that I don't feel like I have any expertise, but I'm invited and I'm curious and I'm going to see what might come of that.

The adventure of wondering what you might connect up with. So, you talk about ways of being in the world and I think of artistry that way. And I think that, also, these days it is a bit of a counter to the bubble problem. Because I do sit in a lot of places and go, “This is powerful. I get it. But everybody here in this space already knew this” Like we are here having what we're convinced about affirmed, and we're applauding ourselves for already believing it and knowing that we're right.

[00:31:02] Derek Goldman: Yeah, and I'm part of that. I do it too, but I think for the arts to matter, for them to really make a difference in a broken world, we have to do something harder, which is listen to those we disagree, all these, all this other stuff.

[00:31:18] Derek Goldman: Yeah.

[00:31:21] Derek Goldman: Astonished. Exactly

Having worked in prison for a long time, places where people often avert their gaze or at least are totally ignorant of what's going on, you know, places where, you've worked, there's a level of visceral honesty that's going on when trust actually emerges, which is opening, opening your pores to things that you're not used to hearing.

And speaking of bubbles, the thing I want to commend you on is that one of the bubbles that is most insidious in our work, particularly in the academy, is that it can become a one size fits all clone factory and you have populated your courses with people from different neighborhoods: The people who want to be diplomats and people who want to be theater directors and healers, and just the act of giving those people an opportunity to rub up against each other and ask their question . . .

[00:33:21] Bill Cleveland: . . .which is always going to be different coming from public health or public policy or find all that common ground that nobody knew existed. I, that to me, that's the way of the world, as we move forward.

So, there's that thing, and through that in an embodied way, not just a textbook way. And then to have those students, alongside students in international relations, diplomacy, all these other areas they're like, “So I'm not an artist, I'm not a creative person.” And I feel like the more you can do to break it down, the sooner, the more, just the more interesting human beings are moving through the world. And the more tools those human beings are also going to have to do what I think is this necessary work in those cross-sector spaces.

Part Four: The Storehouse of Care

You've described both the Lab and the care project, is there a story that describes for an outsider what it's like when this stuff happens.

So, people were also learning about different ways to understand what being in pandemic meant and we were using this In Your Shoes methodology I've described. And I shifted the primary prompt I'd been using for these discussions that happened in In Your Shoes peer discussions for years. I'd always started by asking people what home meant to them because we were working around polarization and I always felt like that was a place for potential commonality. But during the pandemic, it shifted and I started to talk to people about what care meant to them. I started to realize at the end of the pandemic that I'd just been blessed by being in the presence of this extraordinary storehouse of care narratives.

I never intended that those would become a stage production per se. But then my former student was Reg Douglas, who had taken over as artistic director of Mosaic Theater. And because we were friends, I was like, well, we have all these care narratives. And because of the nature of that relationship, we were able to assemble an ensemble of artists who worked over a couple of years to use In Your Shoes to share their stories around care. And this ensemble of artists was really all people who had incredibly heightened relationships to care in their world. So one, Rahad Mlu, is a Syrian refugee who'd come to America through a series of diasporic journeys. So, her relationship to care was overtly political as well as personal. Tom's story, one of our actors had, had a very serious stroke during COVID and he talked about how his experience as an amazing actor playing Prior in Angels in America before this actually gave him the muscles, like literally he drew on his experience as Prior to understand how to be a patient.

So we literally are in previews before the Tuesday, we have audience, and then Wednesday night is opening night. So, if you can imagine just the temperature for the ensemble themselves, some of whom are quite vulnerable, just the intensity of emotions, and for the audience, in a piece around the Art of Care. And so even though this was not intended as a civic theater event, it was absolutely an event that was audience interactive. And the show then did strike a chord.

Our audiences were full and stayed afterwards to commune with the cast each night for long stretches of time. The toll on the cast in sharing these stories was significant and I think made even more significant by the sort of temperature of the world at that time. One of the small gestures of the production at the end of this kind of ritualized experience is we offered the audience a little pill bottle, within it little ephemera from the production like a peach cobbler recipe that had been referred to from one of the actor's late mother. And in it was a QR code to come join us, the Lab, me, the team, for workshops in the mode of In Your Shoes around care to come share your own stories,

So, if I'm honest, I felt that some people would take us up on it. I thought it would be modest, but we were really overwhelmed by response to that offer. Not just people wanting to show up, but people calling and saying, “I run this organization. Can I bring my team, my staff? We need to do this together.”

It was really quite a moment of realizing that this thing we'd put out into the world with a certain set of performer audience expectations was a catalyst. So Art of Care was not meant to launch an Art of Care initiative, but now I'm working at Mass General Hospital with the sickle cell doctor team. We're working at Bloomberg Public Health, We're working with Global Health Commissioners. It's happened completely organically. We're working in all of these spaces because a few artists were brave enough to say, “Here's my story.” and the ripple effect of that.

It's a window into how I have learned to trust this kind of chain of “If you keep listening to the next thing.” and asking widening the circle we call it, saying “We did this, now we invite you to do this.” And then that space is a genuine invitation. So that's really how this whole initiative is moving through the world. And I'm moved by that. We've offered a thing in a very genuine way and then we followed our nose to the next place that somebody is curious about it.

[00:42:18] Derek Goldman: For sure.

[00:42:32] Derek Goldman: Well, I love what you just helped me recognize, which is that part of freedom of expression is very connected to something I feel very strongly about, which is the freedom to share what's real without feeling that you need a special expertise or that it's dangerous. Exactly. That's just literally vulnerability and our humanity. I think the traction I'm finding in all of these spaces is because of shared humanity and the capacity to be vulnerable. It's not that people are like, “Oh my God, I'm so smart. I'm such an expert on this. I've come to fuller knowledge.” It's actually that something that, as you say, has been bottled up, is not only acceptable, but is affirmed. Over and over, our experience with the In Your Shoes work is that it's the people who were the most reticent about this kind of work at the beginning, who are the shyest, who were the least likely to share, who had the most radical transformative experiences with it because they built enough trust with one person to share something, that then, through processes that we're really careful and thoughtful about, which are almost like ripples of consent, then got shared in the group, and the group affirmed so deeply that then the person felt integrated in a way that they never would've let themselves get to. You know, so many people feel isolated, are marginalized, literally, figuratively, and if some of the work that we do in the arts and in community can just release the freedom for people to be themselves and connect at that level, I do think that's very powerful.

I also have been influenced hugely by my friends at Belarus Free Theater and so many other examples where the political dimensions of freedom of expression, carving out a space to speak, freedom to power in very direct ways, I think those are entwined values, because to do that sometimes is to make a political statement. But those person political statements come from, “I am a human being in this situation.” so, I think that the conversations around freedom are both deeply intimate and personal and hugely public. And that's why trying to thread civic care with inner work is that I think they go together. I'm thinking about our democracy in ways that are built on the intimate contours of people's stories and lives, I think that freedom is going to move people, so much of what we're trying to do is around moving people,

[00:46:03] Derek Goldman: Yeah, I mean, I feel so fortunate. Right now for me, so much of that is about collaborative influence. So we all have our circles of people who are working with but learning from at the same time. The biggest lesson of it for me is putting oneself in position to learn from one another in a horizontal way.

[00:46:32] Derek Goldman: It was a great conversation.

[00:46:40] Bill Cleveland (3): Art Is Change is a production of the Center for the Study of Art and Community.

Art Is Change is a production of the Center for the Study of Art and Community. We'd like to thank the Charles F. Kettering Foundation for partnering with us for this Art in Action series. And please know that the views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and the guests. They're not the views and opinions of the Charles F. Kettering Foundation. The foundation's partnership with us for this podcast is not an endorsement of its content. If you're interested in learning more about the foundation and its democracy and the arts program, please visit kettering.org or go to the link in our show notes, which also includes links to the many people, places, events, and publications mentioned in this episode.

Thanks also to the Art Is Change team. Our theme and soundscapes spring forth from the head, heart, and hand of the Maestro Judy Munson. Our text editing is by Andre Nebe. Our effects come from Freesound.org, and our inspiration comes from the ever-present spirit of Luke 2;35. So, until next time, stay well do good and spread the good word.