What if your art could both heal your

community & pay your bills? 

If you’re a musician or creative itching to drive real-world change without sacrificing your livelihood, this episode maps a path: how Music to Life evolved from a songwriting contest into a rigorous accelerator that helps artists design, fund, and measure community projects—so you can make change while making a living. 

• Learn how Music To Life helps musicians turn a community cause into a sustainable enterprise
• See real models you can adapt: Vanessa Lively’s Home Street Music built 500+ song circles, 230 sessions, & raised ~$200K serving unhoused neighbors in Austin.
• Learn about proven impact from Benny Esguerra’s mobile studio that measured violence reduction  to poet-healer Myles Bullen co-facilitating prison education to process tough emotions and build trust.

Tune in to hear strategies & stories that helped artists step off the stage and into community change—without abandoning the craft that got them there. 

Notable Mentions

People

• Liz Sunde – Co-founder and Executive Director of Music to Life, an organization empowering socially conscious musicians to become change agents in their communities .
• Bill Cleveland – Host of Art Is Change and Director of the Center for the Study of Art & Community, long-time advocate for artists as community leaders .
• Paul Stookey – Renowned singer-songwriter, member of the legendary folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, and co-founder of Music to Life .
• Vanessa Lively – Austin-based singer-songwriter and founder of Home Street Music, a program using music circles to support people experiencing homelessness .
• Dick Crispo – Artist who co-created the longest indoor mural in the world at Soledad Prison, known for his community arts practice .
• Beny Esguerra – Toronto-based musician and educator, founder of the Mobile Studio Project using music to reduce gang violence through recording sessions .
• Myles Bullen – Indigenous poet/ rap artist from Maine, who collaborated with University of Maine Augusta faculty on prison-based education blending poetry and Holocaust studies .
• Barbara Schaffer Bacon – Arts leader and consultant, co-director of Animating Democracy at Americans for the Arts, key in helping Music to Life secure Mellon Foundation support .
• John Lewis – Late U.S. Congressman and civil rights icon, famous for urging people to make “good trouble” in the fight for justice .

Events

• Kerrville Folk Festival – Long-running Texas festival where Music to Life hosted a 10-year social justice songwriting contest, spotlighting emerging activist musicians .
• Ventura Music & Change Festival – A Music to Life program in California that brought artists together for masterclasses, performances, and program development .
• Music to Life Academy (Change-Maker Accelerator) – Six-month training and coaching program for musicians to build community-based social change initiatives .

Organizations

• Music to Life – National nonprofit co-founded by Paul Stookey and Liz Sunde, supporting musicians as social change leaders .
• Music to Life's Academy artists Spotify playlist : A compilation of MCA Academy Artists Music.
• Wheel it Studios - WHEEL IT STUDIOS is Beny Esguerra's 16-week hands-on mobile recording studio engaging musicians from Toronto's Jane and Finch community advancing music making & transcending cross-neighborhood tensions.
• Community First! Village – Innovative housing development for people emerging from chronic homelessness, partner site for Home Street Music .
• Bloomberg Media – Partnered with Music to Life on multimedia music-for-change projects .
• Recording Academy (Grammys) – Engaged in conversations with Music to Life about supporting socially conscious music initiatives .
• University of Maine Augusta – Partner institution for prison-based education projects integrating poetry and Holocaust studies .
• Soledad Prison (Correctional Training Facility) – California prison known for hosting the world’s longest indoor mural .
• Americans for the Arts / Animating Democracy – National service organization supporting arts-based civic engagement .
• Mellon Foundation – Provided critical funding to Music to Life through arts and democracy initiatives .

Publications

• Braiding Sweetgrass – Book by Robin Wall Kimmerer blending indigenous wisdom, botany, and ecological philosophy .
• Seabiscuit: An American Legend – Laura Hillenbrand’s best-selling biography of the Depression-era racehorse and its unlikely champions .

*****

Change the Story / Change the World is a podcast that chronicles the power of art and community transformation, providing a platform for activist artists to share their experiences and gain the skills and strategies they need to thrive as agents of social change.

Through compelling conversations with artist activists, artivists, and cultural organizers, the podcast explores how art and activism intersect to fuel cultural transformation and drive meaningful change. Guests discuss the challenges and triumphs of community arts, socially engaged art, and creative placemaking, offering insights into artist mentorship, building credibility, and communicating impact.

Episodes delve into the realities of artist isolation, burnout, and funding for artists, while celebrating the role of artists in residence and creative leadership in shaping a more just and inclusive world. Whether you’re an emerging or established artist for social justice, this podcast offers inspiration, practical advice, and a sense of solidarity in the journey toward art and social change.

What if your art could both heal your community and pay your bills?

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

My name is Bill Cleveland, so if you've ever felt the pull to use your artistry for real world change but weren't sure how to put it together, how to fund it, how to measure it, this conversation shares a path being forged by musical change agents that I think translates to activist artists everywhere.

In it, we learn how a program called Music to Life evolved from a songwriting contest into a six and a half month accelerator that blends training, coaching and seed matching grants so artists can make change and make a living.

We also look at models we can learn from, like Vanessa Lively's Home Street Music for Unhoused Neighbors, Benny Askara's mobile studio bridging rival Neighborhoods, and Myles Boland's Poet Healer work inside prison alongside educators in the mix, we learn how these artists reframe their role from peripheral to central, from stage talent to creative problem solver who co designs with communities, measures impact, and builds supportive peer networks without abandoning their craft. As we all know, art often tells the story best, so we'll begin with something From Music to Life graduate Vanessa Lively.

I am not broken, I am not lost I'm just trying to let go and embrace the fall. There is a stillness, there is a.

Peace.

They would come and fill my chest if I could just release this long unending road has got me warm I feel tired and alone I feel torn. O deliverance, sweet deliverance, you've got me oh deliverance, sweet deliverance I fall into your loving arms. Find relief.

In our conversation with Music to Life's founder Liz Sund, we learn about how Vanessa's Homestreet Music project has become a healing force for hundreds of unhoused men and women in Austin, Texas and supported her musical career. We also learn how Liz, working with her father, Paul Stookey, built Music to Life as an extension of his extraordinary Peter, Paul and Mary legacy.

But before that, we learn how that amazing journey unfolded. Part one Thriving and Change so let me begin by welcoming you to the show, Liz, and asking, where are you hailing from?

Hello, it's lovely to be here. Thank you for the opportunity. So I am in Vermont, which is also known as N'dakina in the native Abenaki language, right?

And just want to take a moment and recognize that.

That this land is unceded and honoring the Abenaki's enduring connection to their homeland, the history of forced removal, and just ongoing contributions that they're making to Vermont's culture and environment.

And I'm in Alameda, California, which is the unceded traditional land of the Ohlone people who have had a major presence and impact on the history of the state of California. So Liz, in the course of your work, have you either become known by or have you acquired a handle or a street name?

I really do love this question. And as you can imagine, spoiler alert, I did get to spend a little bit of time on this. You just asking it at the moment.

I'm like rabble rouser came to mind. It's an interesting fit because the one I did give thought to, which kind of is related to Rabble Rouser is Paradigm Shifter.

Because finding myself as I do in the music industry, people have all kinds of thoughts about how that industry is supposed to run. There are all kinds of traditions around how that industry is run. It has been disrupted quite a bit by technology.

But the way artists are treated in that industry is part of my kind of paradigm shifting and so opening the eyes of certainly within the industry, but also within communities, how musicians can contribute not only as artists, but as change makers. And people, they're like, oh well, we'll do them on a stage, as a benefit concert, or have them write an anthem, or have them march in a rally.

And my point is these are obviously extraordinary entrepreneurial, kind of DIY business people who are looking through a creative lens at problems in the community and could be put to task to solve those. So with their music. So that's the paradigm that I'm trying to shift. And you know, the artists, they need a paradigm shift.

They might call themselves change makers, but they're shy around stepping into their value in that world. So helping them find the confidence they need to step into this new way of being.

Well, it's interesting.

I've spent my entire life practically as an 8 year old member of the National Cathedral Choir on forward, trying to make that case that artists can be creative community leaders.

And they bring a skill set that has been honed that is sometimes different, allows others to learn from the creative process as a way to see issues, ideas and opportunities in new ways. And you're so right. Sometimes the audience are people who never thought of artists that way.

And sometimes the audience is artists themselves who go, who me?

Yeah, 100%.

So when you sit down with folks who are not familiar with your path in life, how do you describe what you do? What's your work in the world?

Well, there are lots of things I can say because I think there's honest and spirit driven work of building a family wherever that family finds you.

And I do feel like I've had some success in my life and I hope that folks can take away some, some lessons or some insights or some different perspectives.

And I do want to say I'm very proud of being able to follow this path successfully and also sustain some really important positive relationships that keep me going. So I feel like that's a success.

But my work, my now paid work, I'm very happy to say, is identifying as we've been talking about these musicians who have a concept and idea that's been bubbling around in their head and their heart and their gut that has to do with changing their community in some way, making some kind of positive change in their community and really wanting to bring their craft, their music and their lived experiences in some cases into trying to be problem solvers. And the issue might be environmental activism, it might be racial justice, it might be immigration advocacy, it might be any one of these issues.

They've written songs about it, maybe they've been to marches, maybe they've been on the stage, but they've never really thought about packaging some kind of program that importantly not only will lend value but will return value to them.

And so my work in the world is really, we talked about being a paradigm shifter, on the one hand, creating a structure that will enable artists to learn skills that set them up to be these kind of engaged change makers.

And also the spiritual work of helping them recognize and be bold about their own value in that context and their own capacity to give back such that they can both make change while making a living. I'm really, I'm going off on a riff here, but I.

So maybe my work in the world ultimately is uniting, particularly for artists, these two parts of their life that have perhaps historically been disparate and even in conflict with each other, that it is possible to name your value, to be paid for bringing about change in the world. Right. This is not about a better volunteer musician.

So my higher level work in this world is uniting those two, helping artists understand that they can both make a living while making change. I think that's probably the biggest thing.

And it's so interesting. Our history is such a.

Well, it teaches us a lot, but it also, because it's so broad and deep and we forget most of it, that for most of human history, what you're describing was not something particularly musicians.

Performers needed to learn because it was intrinsic to their role in the community that 40,000 years ago, the ritual fire was not a PowerPoint presentation and there wasn't somebody there pounding a podium trying to convince people to vote for them. The pre art artist was a natural interlocutor between the community and the spirit forces at work in the world.

And people understood that without that song, without that movement, without that rhythm, without these rituals, our survival is at stake. And it's the same deal now. It may look different, but we're in the same situation. Seeing the world through the lens of a creative process.

Harmony, it can be an abstract thing. It is also a visceral thing.

Well, and I will add, as the daughter of a famous singer songwriter, so my dad, as Paul Stooke of the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, at a very young age, he was able to both do this change work and make a living almost without thinking about it.

And so when he and I get into this work together with Music to Life, I had to remind him that actually his was a particularly unusual and lucky and fortuitous start in this down this path of music and change making because he has an altruist's heart. But it's been fascinating to bring him into the reality of most singer songwriters don't have that fortune.

And so if we want representation from these communities that so desperately need, as you're saying, the fire and the light and the perspective and the creativity, we need to find ways, and there are ways to pay them such that they're not leaving the very communities we need them to tend to go find income. But we're training them to deliver value in their change making such that the whole community wants to buy into that. Absolutely.

You're going to help us address an issue. Yeah, we'll pay for that. And so that. So, yeah, so it's fascinating. It's been fun to bring dad along in that journey. That kind of reality check.

I'll say. Because he had a magical rise at 23. I think it was 22. 23.

Yeah. Not many people get to be on that train. No. So you remind me of a story a friend of mine told me.

One of the guys who actually created the longest inside mural in the world inside Soledad Prison. And Dick, Dick Crispo, he spent time studying in Mexico and he was shocked that every town he went to, the mayor gave up his house.

Because the maestro was not only respected, but revered in a way that was outsized, particularly for somebody from the United States where he's scrambling to make a living.

Yeah, for sure.

So you mentioned music to Life and it's an amazing story and it is at the center of your life path right now. Why don't you tell us how that got created?

Yeah, for sure. It's been a long and winding road. So honestly, this goes back to fourth grade.

I won't take up the whole podcast, but it's beautiful to be in my 60s because I can look back at these moments and really see how they contributed. Because you're right, this is my life work now. Music's life is my. This is why I did everything I did in my previous life.

I'm convinced it was to get me to this place. May every. Hey, may everybody be that lucky.

Yeah, really.

But when we moved, when my, when dad broke up the Trio in the 70s and moved the family to Maine, I was nine years old. I had been around the world many times and there I was landing in a rural main classroom in fourth grade.

The only person that had been on an airplane in my classroom and there were several kids with no running water and who sat all the way in the back of the classroom. I have to believe that the journey kind of begins with that eye opening experience.

And I think may everybody be this lucky to have a moment in their life where their eyes get opened to their own privilege and their capacity to see the world through somebody else's eyes. So that's what happened to me in fourth grade.

And that really I rolled right into a taco stand in Blue Hill, Maine where I was like, everybody needs to learn about Mexican food. And so I had a taco stand at the Boulder Fair. And learning entrepreneurship, it all started. It was. So this was, this is now 8th grade maybe.

And then sort of fast forward. Well, I was always backstage girl too. So if you think about that is I was around artists of purpose all my life.

So watching them engage audiences, seeing the limitations of being on stage, it's a one off concert and then you're done. And then the audience has an amazing experience, but then they go home. So watching these incredible people have this moment, right?

So making the most of the moment, but then what happens next?

And then so knowing as I headed into older life that I was going to be in some kind of a strategic setting with my entrepreneurship and some kind of bridge building capacity and some kind of helping the world capacity. And so doing my graduate program in that area really helped.

Who's doing this music? And we did 10 years of a social justice songwriting contest to explore that. And each time we brought the winners to the Kerrville Folk Festival.

We had a top 10 and did a beautiful kind of journey through the history of music equipment. Because we started with cassettes, then we went to CDs, then we went to MP3s, then we went to, like, all digital online.

Over the 10 years, it also introduced us to this notion that music for change knows no genre. So we started with a folk festival Dad's folk roots.

But then it became increasingly, as the numbers grew and grew with these applications, we were like, wow, what's important about Music for Change is that it be delivered through the genre that will best speak to the people you want to activate.

So if it's an environmental artist in an urban community, rap, hip hop is probably going to send that message in a way that maybe folk music wouldn't be able to reach or whatever. So. So we started learning those lessons. And then at the end of those 10 years of that contest, I was like, so we generated this great music.

Are you doing anything else with your music? Because, got it. You're talented. And 60 to 70% of them wrote back and said, oh, yeah, I'm trying to get into the prisons with this.

I'm trying to do this kind of work on the environment. I'm trying, but I don't know what to do. I don't have the skills for this. I don't know how to get seed money for this.

But what that made us do is go, okay, well, let's get you then plugged into the environmental community, the immigration advocacy community. So we thought we had to take it on. So we spent the next decade or so thinking we had to get the artists into these environments.

And we worked with nonprofits, and we petitioned the Grammys to say, hey, you should consider a Song of Conscience category. We worked with Bloomberg Media to do this kind of multimedia Music Makes Change show. We did shows and events.

And then at the end, this artist joined our board and said, you know what? I see all the stuff you're Doing. You're working with these artists. It's great. What are you doing? For the artists themselves, it was the light bulb.

And that's when music's life was born. Because it was like, right. I mean, we pulled it. We went back now to all the artists and we're like, oh, yeah, what were you saying?

And they all were like, yeah, we are change makers. We know what we're doing, but we know we could do this better. And then the third thing was we need a network because it's lonely.

Ellen, you also grew with the time.

So true. So true, Bill.

And I could go year by year how things shift and change and people's understanding and I mean, people talk about zeitgeists, but for most of the time period you're talking about, this idea of the coupling of an artist with change in their community was conceptually very difficult for people. And that we still do have a pretty strong culture that says, write me a theme song. That's it.

I know it's true.

Make me a poster. Cause I don't know what else you do. You know, you're from Mars and we're from somewhere else. Right.

And part of this has to do with, I think, the alienation of the creative process from everyday life, from education.

There's so many kids who come into school just filled with songs and rhymes and rhythms and squirrely little acting, role playing things that they love to do. Right? And three, four, five years from that point, they've completely forgotten that was the core of their being.

And so in many ways, you're taking the survivors from that and just said, I'm not gonna give this up. I'm gonna keep making.

I'm gonna make songs, I'm gonna tell story and God bless them and thank God humans do this, because I don't think we can help it.

That is right. And I think dad. And dad would certainly say that at 88 this year, he cannot help himself. He cannot help himself. Yeah. I can't not do this. Right?

Is what some of our artists say too. I can't not do this.

Part 2 Open hearts and learning minds. So I'm going to ask you a hard question. All right?

So whether it's on a stage with lights and monitors and a sound system, or in a living room or around a ritual fire. When humans come together and this thing that we call music manifests itself. What's going on?

Well, I have to use the. This is a well worn quote that perhaps. Well, but dad and I both believe that music opens the heart so the mind can learn.

I mean, just kind of period set the stage there. And I mean we used to do studies on audience flow. There are also, there are scientific studies that show what happens when people gather.

And there is this kind of collective breath that we all start breathing. There is this collective sense of understanding. So there's that. And then, I mean, we all know this.

There is something about telling a story with a lyrical element to it that we just gonna, we're gonna hang on to that story.

And then the other piece, I'll say is who doesn't have a song from fourth grade or from whatever eighth grade that they, they're just like, like it takes their breath away when they hear it and they are suddenly ricocheted back in time right to, to that moment. I mean, these are all little pieces to what I think music is about in those moments.

So one of the things that's interesting to me as a songwriter and a musician is as a maker, as a performer, but also as an observer. That thing you're talking about, which is everybody knows, everybody has the experience.

Singing starts and there's a part of our brain that gets turned on.

But one of the things that's interesting to me is that I think one of its capacities is to transcend the small minded foolishness that gets us in trouble. And by that I mean that I think about humans as obviously my collaborators in the world that we live in, but also as a species.

And I sometimes imagine myself as a Martian watching Earth TV and the soap opera that we carry on down here. And it's that foolishness that has really made the trouble. And we have a capacity for terrible trouble.

And we have the capacity for, in the words of John Lewis, good trouble. And one of the things that a piece of music can do is take us out of the part of our brain that gets us in bad trouble.

And the other thing you mention is that whether you like it or not, and you're there with other folks, you're having a subatomic physics lesson that some people call auras that connect to your fellow humans and they may be strangers, but you look in that person's eyes after the chorus ends and you're going, holy Cow. Yeah, we've gone someplace together.

And that again, as Backstage Girl, I saw that over over and over and over again.

Yeah.

People walk in strangers, and they leave having shared an experience that is that, you know, that they are connected. Yeah.

So I'm surprised that you somehow resisted, I'm sure, the pull of becoming a part of the family business as a performer. Was that ever a thing?

The funny story there is that this is in the days of commercial TV where you were stuck. If you wanted to watch your show, it came on at 7 on Thursday. You had to sit in front of your TV and you had to endure commercials.

And one of the things my sisters and I really loved was sing and harmonize. All the airline commercials in particular, as we did the dishes. The Stooky sisters. I have twin sisters who are six years younger than me.

And so we would joke, the Stooky sisters, that we were going to do this thing. But what's interesting is we all are in helping professions. We're all in either nonprofit or some kind of healing or helping profession.

It is the family business in that sense. But I think ultimately for me, I looked at dad on stage and I saw what he could do and I.

And the way he did it, I can't even imagine trying to emulate that. So that's really interesting. That's what happened.

Part 3 Liz and the accelerators so in this journey that you've taken, we talked about what is happening with people in their relationship to music. Are there moments throughout this extended project when you were present at what you felt was a kind of pinnacle moment of.

Yeah, this is what this work is all about.

Is there a story about how you were able to see you're helping an artist or working with somebody or even an event, a performance really just said, okay, we've landed.

Yeah, well, it's fun to think about that.

And I honestly, rather than a moment in time, I think what I've done in considering this is to think about an artist over time because this artist became a poster child, honestly. And I don't mean that in a public facing way, although she's known in Austin. But this is Vanessa Lively, who. This is another one of these.

The writing was on the wall the whole time. It's like I have a pair of ruby slippers hanging from my. Within my site, here at my desk.

And I keep them there because Dorothy, she didn't know it, but she always had the capacity to go home. In the wizard of Oz.

Yes.

It was on her feet the whole time. All she had to do was click her heels and say, there's no place like home. There's no place like home.

And so Vanessa was one of these, like, she just kept showing up in my life, knocking on my door as I took this path toward music, to life, and just kept saying, I'm the example of the artist that you want to be supporting. So I was mentioning Kerrville and how we did that songwriting contest for 10 years. She went to Kerrville for years before that. So she's.

She had been at Kerrville already. We would run into each other. Oh, I meant to apply, but I didn't. We would have these conversations. Oh, I really care about the homeless issue.

Oh, these. These issues really weigh me down. We would see each other at conferences.

And then she did come into our life when we did a program in Ventura, California, that was like a week. It was like a festival of music and change. And we had a pot of money, which was great.

And our goal was to get artists from all over the country to come in. Dad and Peter were there.

And to do both a master class with these artists to come in and really listen to their music and really be thoughtful that way, but also to have this kind of. This feasibility screening. They all introduced ideas to us. And we had this review panel in addition to concerts, and there were open mics.

I mean, it was a beautiful week, but.

And at the end of the week, we were presenting an award to the artist that had the most compelling concept, that took their talent and their music and united it with just what you were saying before, Just this kind of stepping off the stage and into community. And so it was $5,000. And Vanessa won. She won. And there she. So there she was again. This is like 15 years after she and I first met.

I'm like, oh, my gosh, here you are again. Not only that, but here you are with this incredible proposal. How could I not have seen this before? So.

And at that time, we didn't have our training program, our musician changemaker accelerator, so it was me and her. I was helping her develop what is now called home street music.

So she had this idea for creating a healing, reviving, kind of dignity restoring music circle for folks who were unhoused or unable to get themselves back into society. And so I helped her facilitate and negotiate a contract with Community First Villages in Austin, which is still to this day. Working with her.

I helped her get a board.

I helped her all the things to establish this as a program, pull in a social worker, think about a curriculum, think about benchmarks, and Goals like all the things you do when you build a business.

I believe that my working with this particular group within our population is not only helping to bring more awareness of these friends of ours that live much of their life on the streets and are now trying to get off the streets, but it's also just welcoming a bunch of people in my community into this work as well. And we're forging relationships and we're expanding everyone's community connections every day.

It's about the energy in the room. It's one of the ways that I find my joy every day.

That

was Vanessa Lively and Home street participant Alcario Perez.

And. And so she was the example we turned to when we built our accelerator. I was like, oh, well, these are all the things that I did that worked.

And she was one of the first kind of to be surveyed. And so now fast forward. So Home Street Music now has existed since she founded it, whenever we actually got that paperwork done.

And she has generated $200,000 for her organization and she has a full board and she's got 500 participants over the years that have gone through her program. She's facilitated something like 230 song circles. She does these public performances and workshops.

And she's just got this whole group of believers and followers that feel like music has really transformed the lives of these folks she's worked with. So it was really fun to think about her as a spoke in the wheel of the various things that we've.

Done well and obviously a foundation for you to both nurture and to learn from, which is the epitome of education, where it's a virtuous circle, which is fantastic. That's great.

So you're involved as an educator as well, because you have created a curriculum for artists who are motivated and interested in taking their change agent impulse seriously and thriving in the world.

When you engage a young artist who goes, wow, this is cool, what do you say to them about what it is that they need to bring and what it is that they can learn as a result of becoming a part of this, this learning program?

So the Cadillac model of this program is our academy, which is six and a half months long. So it is no small commitment.

And it is six weeks of instruction and it is five months of coaching and it involves matching grants and it involves seed grants that they can use. Artists are generating 25, 30, $35,000 for their project certainly within three to six months after this.

So one of the things we started to do with this is interview artists ahead of Time. So just what you're saying, like, you may have that impulse, it may not be the right time.

And some of the hardest conversations we have is where we both mutually are like, wow, because we want. We only have 10 spots. We have. I'll tell you, Bill, this year we have 90 applications for 10 spots. Yes. As you can imagine, I'm a fundraiser too.

So I am out there hustling.

So these interviews are really, they're really important because so what you need to bring to the table is certainly this passion, certainly an interest in this cross pollination with artists across genre, across issue, across gender generation, across the country. You're going to get to cross pollinate your idea and learn from there.

And these are artists that, some of them create nonprofits and they go, what the heck? Did I just. Oh, no, save me from my own ambition, right? Because I'm a touring artist. What did I just create?

And some of them are like, I have this little seed and I'm not sure how to grow it. So lots of learn. So everybody's super excited for that part, the part that's harder.

But people have told me we've cracked the nut on this is you gotta show up every day. And so it's about five hours a week, right, for six weeks plus homework. And it's all online. You gotta show up, you gotta do the homework.

So that ends up being a really significant part of the interview is, are you really ready for this? And that's not easy. But we also pay them to participate. It's a small stipend, but we say no. Actually, you've given us an idea.

We're gonna treat you like a venture capitalist. We're like, we wanna invest in that idea. We care about you. So they feel puffed up even before they walk in the door.

They're like, wow, you're going to invest some money in me right up front.

So they come to you with an idea. And so that is one of the ways in which you pave the way between the curriculum and what they're up to.

And so you're asking, does this idea have legs?

Exactly.

And what stage are they in? And do they have the capacity to fulfill the vision?

Right, There you go. That's. Couldn't have said it better myself, thank you. That's. That boils it right down.

So in many ways, this is life changing for anybody who's devoted themselves just to the insane practice of trying to make music and make a living at it, to take on this discipline 100%. And in, as you Say, for many. It's countercultural, actually.

Yes.

And my guess is that part of the work with them is navigating the contradictory impulses that are there. I'm not on the road. I gotta do this, I gotta do that. Where's my band? So how many cohorts have you had?

6 at last count.

Wow. Okay. So that's a robust community of really motivated learners.

Yeah. I mean, the analogy I draw is you're a person who knows how to cook, and someone comes and says, you do a food truck. Right.

Here's the food truck academy. Different kinds of food, different communities, different ways of cooking.

The question that comes to mind is that after these six iterations, what are the variety of ways in which the story has unfolded? Everything from I don't think I could do this to, well, we started out with this, and then it turned into this.

And we sure didn't expect that to happen. Right. You're planting seeds, and they're all going to grow differently.

And that's a gigantic learning opportunity, which is to say, here's a path that has taken people to all these different places based on their creativity and the conditions in which they're working and their motivation and their imaginations. Right.

So true. And I think part of the learning for them is it's okay to make mistakes. In fact, mistakes are essential in entrepreneurship.

And again, what's shocking to me, the humbleness. I mean, I'm like, no, you don't understand. We've screened. You guys are top notch. You're top notch for talent. Your idea is amazing. No, really.

So again, there's building that confidence.

Yes. And there's a parallel universe here, though, Liz, and that is this. It's okay to fail. Wait a minute. That's all you do as a songwriter.

I mean, you fail a hundred times to get one goddamn. One goddamn lyric. You keep going back to it. That's the word.

That's a really good point.

Yeah. That's a technique that you have down pat.

And then you get into this other enterprise world and you think in your mind, oh, yeah, Ben and Jerry's just came about spontaneously. No, no, it's failures on top of failures. The reason I'm saying this is that a lot of what I do is translate in the other direction.

What does the human creative process bring to people who have straight jacketed themselves into the story? That mistakes are a disaster. Yeah. And then. And actually out of which, a real disaster Comes because you don't know that's not true.

And the lesson you needed to learn was right in front of you.

Right, Exactly. Oh, I just think about that with the music to life journey, we could have been 10,000 things.

And thank goodness I sat there in my discomfort, which is the thing you have to do is sit there and really think about what your original vision was, what you really want to be doing.

And you have to say no to whatever opportunity and feel like crap, or you have to be rejected by that opportunity for a minute and feel like crap, but then say, okay, if the vision is true.

This is why we talk to artists, too, about having a tribe, having a group of committed not yes people, not just nodding head, people that really deeply care and are going to push you when you need to be pushed. Pushed. Catch you when you need to be caught. Right. And the. And cheerlead when you need that. Yeah. Because you need to keep circling back.

Because that's just what you're saying. You go out, you get the ping, you come back and do. Your group is like, okay, what did you just learn? Like, what did you get out of this?

Yes.

Yeah.

Part four, the craft. So here's a question for you. I spend a lot of time working with people to embed artists in their work.

People? You mean people that would hire them or would engage them, like a planning.

Department in a city? They did that in Minneapolis and in Boston and many other places.

And at arts and Corrections in California, we had hundreds of artists working in the prison system. Okay.

Now, there at first were seen as just people who came in and ran classes, but over time, the warden and the people running the prisons really understood that they actually had problem solvers that knew things they didn't know and understood things in a way that they couldn't understand so.

Good.

So the question to me is in the other direction. So I'm a songwriter, and now you've turned me into an entrepreneur. Okay. Yeah. Where's my songs? Where's my craft in the mix?

They go away, right?

No, not at all. They're right there at the core.

You know, I think of songcraft as, yes, a way of making a song, but also a way of thinking, you know, a source of creative problem solving that can also show up in ways that extend the power of the creative process to the benefit of the community. That's what you're up to. So I guess what I'm saying is that that craft provides a unique matrix for change, making the way we approach making a song.

Right. Telling the Story, contrasting themes, arranging the parts, building tension, finding a harmony, even breaking the rules to grab attention.

These creative strategies are also social change strategies in another rapper.

That's good. I have a couple of examples as you were talking came to mind. So Beny Esqueira is from Bogota, parents were political refugees, asylum seekers.

He's in Toronto and he is a rap artist. And this gets to your question about city governments also, just how do you break through to them? Because he. So he did his own stuff at one point.

Nominated for a Juno Award. I mean, he's really an accomplished artist, also an educator, facilitator.

He was working in the schools and he created Wheelit Studios, which is a mobile recording van that he specifically designed to go through the outskirts of Toronto where you had rival gang neighborhoods where kids could not connect. And so you had violence in these areas, you had misunderstandings.

And so he would drive his van through these boundaries, collect kids along the way, find a neutral spot in which to facilitate a recording session and in the process engage kids in bonding and whatever.

My name is Benny Esguerra and I am with Wheelitt Studios and I am an instrument of change. Take a break from the work and the grinding. Wheel IT Studios is a mobile studio program that has three phases.

We run a drop in program and then we put together an album. And then the third phase is a music promotion and content creation phase.

And the purpose is to create unity amongst different neighborhoods and artists that are from different generations and artists that are also working in different styles of music.

And it got to the point where he could actually measure reductions in violence. And so he now has contracts with the city of Toronto to do his work. Right. So he's not only doing his work. I mean, this is beautiful.

They put out CD, they put out CDs, the whole schedule. He's one of our Instruments of change artists that we featured in this last spring's campaign. But yeah, that's one.

I mean, that's one very specific but very tangible example of breaking through to city government and saying, no, actually there really is some change happening here. And I've measured it so that. And here's a problem I'm solving for you.

Truth is, the other thing we talk about with artists is this can't just be about you anymore. Sorry. Like, you go on tour, you do your stuff, you stand on stage, you write your songs, that's great.

But if you're going to do community work, you can't decide. I have the solution for homelessness. I'm marching in there with my guitar. My speed, my microphone, my track. And I'm going to solve it. You don't.

That's not how community works.

No, it doesn't. And actually moving yourself out of a center of a universe that you invent for yourself every single day. Right.

And standing back and listening as a songwriter. Oh, man, what a fertile world is to listen and learn.

Yeah.

All these stories. You got a thousand songs you could write right on top of that, right?

Yeah, for sure. And I mean, but to your prison example.

So Myles Bullen is an indigenous art poet in southern Maine, and he ended up collaborating with somebody from the University of Maine, Augusta, who was going into prisons to teach of all things, Holocaust studies.

And he chose this specifically because some of the more violent criminals that he would teach would recognize themselves in some of these histories of these dictators and these crazy people that were hungry for power. And honestly, it would break their hearts open in some ways because they would see the historical kind of damage that was happening.

And the teacher had a need. This professor had a need. He was like, all these feelings and emotions come up and I don't know what to do with them.

And then he meets Myles, who his whole life is. He's had God. Just the ravages of addiction, people who have died from overdoses, suicide prevention, like this is.

He's just grown up in this world in rural Maine where he just became this poet and this healer of people. And to put those two together was like explosive self

Self hate. Feeling heavier than lead.

Everyday miracles happen that I neglected Suicidal thoughts popping up inside my head. Had to train my brain to think of other things instead.

Loving life, finding friends close to overdose.

Close to giving up.

I mean, because he would go in and they would have this. They'd have this lecture.

And then Myles would be there to catch the reverberating what's happening to them. And then the wardens got into. The warden saw what was happening with the prisoner and we're like, would be good for us too. And it was great.

It was beautiful.

Yeah.

And what you just described is so many artists are solo practitioners and there's a power of looking in the mirror and finding your story and your song. But wow, can it. You get a collaboration like the one you just described, right. Where somebody's saying, I don't know what to do with all this energy.

And you're poetry says, this is how I roll. In some ways, you're bringing back the elements that naturally occur in communities together.

The healing element of the teacher and the healer in the same space, which have been separated by institutions and expertise and all those kinds of things.

Yeah, that's good.

So the creative community often is doing that. It's like dot connecting. It's really interesting. So, yeah. So a question is this.

We live in a world that is, I'm just gonna, needless to say, turned upside down in a significant way. And you're working with people who have self identified as creative change agents. And I'm wondering how it's landing.

I feel really lucky that when dad and I started to set down the pillars of this vision, it was all about bridging divides. We felt really strongly. Now, of course, in the early days, people, they just, they thought we were just talking about quote, unquote protest music.

And dad and I emphatically, and even in our value statement were like, this is about facilitating a better world by bringing people together who might not otherwise. And that, I mean, that happens in the 10 artists that come together across geographies. It happens in the kind of mantra that ripples through.

But in order to have a program that's going to be recognized in the community as delivering value entrepreneurial, you need to think about poverty as knowing no race and no political affiliation.

And you need to think about the environment as being just, again, capital E. Like, how are we going to take these issues and address them in community while also pulling community in around them? So that as a foundation, honestly has meant that our work hasn't really changed a whole lot.

Well, the other thing you're doing, which is really basic, is that we live in a world in which there are many force fields that are turning our neighbors into two dimensional objects. And the actual act of harmonizing is a three dimensional.

Oh, that's beautiful, Bill.

Act, yes. And I learned this inside the prison system where you had the keepers and the kept. I mean, we had 25,000 students.

Amazing.

And so the sergeant or the correctional officer kept encountering someone read a poem or watching someone take on a role in a play, or just watching over the band. And at a certain point, there's a turning point where they would say, I have a survival strategy, I'm a human, they're animals.

Now you've gone and turn it back into humans. And we actually ended up having to address that and create programs for correctional officers.

Sure, sure.

Basically said, there's a culture inside a prison, just like everywhere else, it's a pretty darn strong one. And when countercultural ripples start to come through, it changes everybody.

And it's interesting, you talk about entrepreneurs who create small businesses and Institutions. Part of our mission was to change the institution in which we were working through culture.

Right.

Okay. So translations across boundaries are hard, but they're really powerful. And in many ways artists are stuck with being adapters.

Very true.

So do you have any works of art, books, movies, songs that are in your pantheon that you'd like to share with others that. That have been meaningful to you?

Well, yes, I do. And the very unlikely one is Seabiscuit. Somebody turned me onto this book and it's an extraordinary story. So for the.

And it's a classic kind of underdog and people from different walks of life crossing over to. And coincidences that are just. You can't even believe that are introducing people to each other. So it's a beautiful story.

One that is perhaps more relevant now to what we've been talking about is Braiding Sweetgrass. It was recommended to me by one of our native artists and. Yeah, no, it's a beautiful. It's a.

It is, yeah.

It's lovely.

And it's a. It's a catechism, actually.

That's a very powerful way of describing it, for sure. And then music wise, I've got music around me a lot, as you can imagine.

And my favorite playlist right now, frankly, is whenever we have a new class, we just collect all their songs and throw them onto Spotify. We've got 60 songs, 80 songs maybe. And so I turn there.

Well, I know where I'm going after we say goodbye, Spotify. Liz, thanks so much for your work, your stories and of course, all that incredible music. Adios.

Bye.

Bye. So what does it mean to use music not just to move people, but to move the needle on real change.

After this incredible conversation with Liz son to, here are three things that have risen up for me. First, my eternal soapbox. Artists are untapped architects of change.

What if we stopped treating musicians and other artists as decoration for social movements and started treating them as real change partners? That's the shift Liz and Music to Life are making.

Through training, mentoring and funding, they're helping artists harness their skills not just for performance, but for community based transformation. Next, something else you've heard here before. Yes, it's true. Music opens the heart so the mind can learn.

As Liz reminded us, songs aren't just background noise. They're bridges, healing tools and story vessels.

Whether it's a hip hop mobile studio defusing gang tensions in Toronto, or a songwriting circle restoring dignity to the unhoused in Austin, the work starts when the music unlocks connections and learning follows. Finally, when artists thrive, communities thrive.

Liz and her team are building a world where artists don't just volunteer at rallies or write occasional protest songs. They're entrepreneurs of empathy equipped to lead, sustain and scale programs that drive measurable impact.

And yes, that work should be compensated because democracy and justice require professional grade creativity. So thanks to all of you for listening. If today's episode sparked something, don't let it fade when the music ends.

Visit musictolife.org to learn more. Check out the artist profiles and all those projects. Artist Change is a production of the center for the Study of Art and Community.

Our theme and soundscape springs forth from the head, heart and hand of the maestro Judy Munson. Our text editing is by Andre Nebbe. Our effects come from freesound.org and our inspiration comes from the ever present spirit of OUC235.

So until next time, stay well, do good and smile. Spread the good word. Once again, please know this episode has been 100% human.