When everything feels like it’s unraveling, how do we know art still matters? In this episode, we explore the question:

What use is art in a world on fire?

Across movements, across generations—from Ella Baker’s quiet revolution to Beckett’s unexpected presence in a prison theater—this episode offers three simple, potent reminders of how art works in times of chaos: to notice, to connect, and to rebuild trust. Whether you’re an artist, organizer, or simply someone searching for clarity, you’ll find resonance in these stories.

• Discover how art helps us pay attention—to our world, our neighbors, and ourselves.
• Understand the power of creative trust—what happens when making becomes a shared act of listening.
• Explore how storytelling and performance can bridge divides, even behind bars or across ideologies.

Press play to be reminded that in uncertain times, art doesn’t just survive—it leads. Listen now and carry these three truths forward into your community.

Notable Mentions:

People

Bill Cleveland: Host of Art Is Change and Director of the Center for the Study of Art and Community. (Learn more)

Ella Baker: Civil rights activist whose words inspired Ella’s Song. (Learn more)

Bernice Johnson Reagon: Composer of Ella’s Song and founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock. (Learn more)

Judy Munson: Composer and sound designer for the podcast. (Learn more)

Donald Trump: Referenced in the context of political polarization. (Learn more)

Samuel Beckett: Playwright of Waiting for Godot; supported San Quentin production. (Learn more)

Jan Jönson: Swedish director who brought Beckett’s play to San Quentin. (Learn more)

Jim Carlson: Prison arts advocate involved in the San Quentin project. (Learn more)

Barney Rosset: Beckett’s U.S. publisher. (Learn more)

Donald James: Actor who played Vladimir in the San Quentin production. (Learn more)

Reginald Wilson: Actor who played Estragon in the San Quentin production. (Learn more)

Brian Boyd: Author of On the Origin of Stories. (Learn more)

Voltaire: Philosopher often linked with the quote popularized by Spider-Man. (Learn more)

Events & Projects

Waiting for Godot at San Quentin: 1988 prison arts project with lifers performing Beckett’s play. (Learn more)

Federal Theatre Project: New Deal arts program (1935–1939) employing 15,000 artists. (Learn more)

A Bright and Dangerous Spark: Ongoing inquiry into art, imagination, and story. (Learn more)

Organizations

Center for the Study of Art and Community: Research and training org focused on arts-based community development. (Learn more)

Art Is Change Podcast: Podcast chronicling activist artists and community change. (Learn more)

Sweet Honey in the Rock: A cappella group known for justice-centered performances. (Learn more)

Freesound.org: Free collaborative database of sound effects. (Learn more)

Virginia Tech Theater for Social Change: Theater degree program hosting Bill’s talk. (Learn more)

San Quentin Arts Program: Historic prison-based arts education program. (Learn more)

Publications & Media

Ella’s Song: Anthem written by Bernice Johnson Reagon inspired by Ella Baker. (Learn more)

On the Origin of Stories: Brian Boyd’s work on storytelling and evolution. (Learn more)

Waiting for Godot: Beckett’s classic existential play. (Learn more)

Spider-Man (Uncle Ben Quote): Comic/movie franchise popularizing 'with great power comes great responsibility.' (Learn more)

League of Creative Champions: Metaphor for five key 'superpowers' artists bring to social change. (Learn more)

Acknowledgements

FX From FreeSound.org

Gastly sounds by menvafaan -- https://freesound.org/s/169665/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 3.0

Music for a Podcast or Animation, or...? by Dave_Girtsman -- https://freesound.org/s/676422/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

Thinking of Driving: Gentle Piano Music for Emotional Scenes by kjartan_abel -- https://freesound.org/s/532774/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

linewin6.wav by awrecording.it -- https://freesound.org/s/547658/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

Simple Waiting BeepBox Loop by qubodup -- https://freesound.org/s/737525/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

Cash Register by kiddpark -- https://freesound.org/s/201159/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

Bosch’s Garden – Mythical Game Music for Fantasy and AI Projects by kjartan_abel -- https://freesound.org/s/647212/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

campfire medium nearby slight forest slap echo +distant people laughing.flac by kyles -- https://freesound.org/s/453783/ -- License: Creative Commons 0

Musical - Native American Day of the Dead Celebtration with Pipes, Whip Cracks, Drums.wav by jaegrover -- https://freesound.org/s/262876/ -- License: Creative Commons 0

Whoosh_Electric_01.wav by LittleRobotSoundFactory -- https://freesound.org/s/274210/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

Bosch’s Garden – Mythical Game Music for Fantasy and AI Projects by kjartan_abel -- https://freesound.org/s/647212/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

April Showers: Sweet Lo-Fi Piano Vibes by kjartan_abel -- https://freesound.org/s/608392/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

*****

Art Is CHANGE 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.

Today's question is, of what use is art in these unsettling times?

From the center for the Study of Art and Community, this is Art is Change 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.

Now, over the past few years, I've been circling through a project I call A Bright and Dangerous Spark, Imagination, Story, and the human struggle with difference.

That journey has mixed art making with anthropology, history, evolutionary psychology, social neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and a lot of other hybrid disciplines. All the while, there's been the daily drumbeat reminding us that we live in a society that sometimes seems to be losing its mind.

I hate my opponent, and I don't want the best for them. I'm sorry.

So I'll repeat, of what use is art in these unsettling times? To help answer this question, I'd like to start with a little experiment. And to do this, I need your help.

I know this is not what you expected when you decided to listen to this show, but bear with me here, because what follows will make much better sense if you play along. So take a breath. Maybe you're sitting in your kitchen, walking in your neighborhood, or even hanging out in a big, echoey cathedral.

Wherever you are, I'm asking you to join with me here for just a moment. To begin, here are some words I'd like you to reflect on for a few seconds. We who believe in freedom cannot rest.

We who believe in freedom cannot rest. Until it comes. Now, take a second to let those words sink in. What do they mean to you? We who believe in freedom cannot restore. We who believe in freedom cannot rest. Until it comes. Until it comes.

Now, here's the big challenge. Going to ask you to do it with me. Quietly, loudly, and. Doesn't matter. All right? 1, 2, 3, 4. We who believe in freedom cannot rest. We who believe in freedom cannot rest. Until it comes. Until it comes.

Okay, now let's go one more time with a little more gusto. 1, 2, 3, 4. We who believe in freedom cannot rest. We who believe in freedom cannot rest. Until it comes. Until it comes.

All right, if you sang or whispered or even just mouthed it, give yourself a hand. So what did we just do? Well, in about a minute, we tapped into three of the core human behaviors that helped our species survive and thrive.

They also happen to be three of the things that artists are particularly good at calling forth into the world. So what are they? Thing one is capturing and focusing the attention of the community. Our Little chorus wasn't new.

It's a reprise of what our ancestors were doing a hundred thousand years ago. Using song to focus the tribe's attention, to gather energy and build community. Thing two is building trust in that community.

In addition to focusing attention, our singing together also provided a very simple and direct way of connecting our heads and our hearts inside as individuals and with each other. This visceral bodily connecting is no small thing. This is because we humans need nudges like these to begin forging the bonds, the trust.

We need to join with others outside of our families, our kinship circles, to work together. There are no cultures that do not sing. Thing three is connecting stories. That lyric you just repeated now belongs to you.

It ties you to Ella Baker, whose words inspired Bernice Johnson Reagan to write Ella's song, and to Sweet Honey in the Rock, who carried it into the bloodstream of the civil rights movement. That's how stories travel, woven into song, shared in community, carried forward.

Now, Ella Baker believed deeply in bottom up community, accountable leadership. And she challenged the hierarchies of her day, saying, if leadership is not accountable, it is not democratic.

That belief is also the backbone of our work at the center for the Study of Art and Community. At the center we do two things.

We conduct research so people like you, artists, organizers, community builders, can learn from cross sector partnerships around the world. And then we help build the training and networks needed to support those partnerships.

For 35 years, we've worked with folks in government, human services, public safety, education, science, philanthropy, and of course, artisan arts organizations.

We call this field Arts based Community development, which we define as arts centered activities that advances dignity, health and equity in communities. Others refer to it as art and social change or cultural community development or cultural organizing and at least a dozen other labels.

But whatever you call it, we prefer to define it by its intentions and impacts. Sometimes it nurtures and heals, sometimes it educates and informs, sometimes it builds and improves, and sometimes it inspires and mobilizes.

Often it involves many or all of these together. And the focus is always, will this work be accountable to the people who live with the consequences of of its success or failure?

So now you know where I'm coming from. I'm an arts do gooder.

I believe art is the answer to world peace, nuclear proliferation, climate change, unemployment, crabby neighbors, and yes, even the heartbreak of psoriasis. Actually, what I really believe is this. The imagination is, is the most powerful aspect of being human.

Without imagination, and without the stories that imagination makes possible, we would not have come Close to surviving as a species. Okay, now, what was that? Well, at the start, I asked you to sing with me. Now I'd like you to do something else that you probably didn't expect.

We're going to have a little quiz. So here goes. True or false. The United States government once hired 15,000 theater artists to benefit communities across the country.

The last time I did this quiz thing in person, I was standing in a room full of students in a theater for social change degree program at Virginia Tech. I told them I was there to recruit them into a secret order of creative superheroes.

My pitch, which will take up the rest of this show, went something like this.

As change making community artists, wherever you've learned your craft, in a university, in a prison, a community center, in a church basement, at some point the cocoon of safe and formal learning will fall away and you will be faced with building your own university of the streets.

To do this, you'll have to construct your own imaginative refuge, your own studio for inquiring, and your own circle of collaborators in a world that often doesn't value or even understand what you do. But here's the kicker. If ever there was a time in human history when what you do in the world is needed, it is now. Here's the deal.

The creation and sharing of our stories is a functional necessity for healthy communities to know ourselves, our history, our identity, our values, to learn from each other, to question prevailing assumptions and give birth to new ideas. But we're living at a time when the stories that define us as a community, our story field, our story quilt, you might say, need some serious work.

Our social fabric needs caring hands and hearts to help with the restitching and patching and weaving needed to support us in the challenging journey ahead.

Now, for those of you who are getting ready to go out there, if you're of a mind, if you are a cultural adventurer, an imaginative explorer, a creative change agent, you have skills that can help with this grand quilting bee of a renaissance. This may sound daunting, but the great thing is that all the stories we need to make this shift are out there, just waiting.

The challenge for you, if you're game, is to use your skills to bring them alive, to help us all make sense and meaning in a world that is hungry for new narratives. Now, I'm not saying this to scare you. I'm saying this to.

To excite you, to enlist you, to recruit you, to take your place as a principal player back into the creation story of artists and art making in the world around us. Back into what some of us refer to as the genesis story of art and community. Now, this is a story that begins in prehistory. So let's go back.

We're gathered around the ritual fire in preparation for the year's final hunt. This is the crucial hunt that will sustain us through what we all know will be the hard times ahead.

As we all edge closer to the fire, the spirit leader spurs us on into the songs and dances that have been passed down to us from the elders. As we circle the fire, the spirit leader draws the images of our prey in the sand, beseeching the great powers on our behalf.

Now, if we move the camera back a little, get a little perspective, we can see that this spirit leader is, of course, your direct descendant. It would not be too much to say that this person was the pre art artist.

We could also refer to them as the pre medicine doctor, the pre law lawyer, the pre religion cleric, the pre psychology shrink, and the preschool educator. That's your line. Sorry, it's time for another quiz. Here we go. True or false?

Once upon a time, the legendary British playwright Samuel Beckett collaborated with five lifers at San Quentin prison to produce his play Waiting for Godot. Now take a few seconds to ponder that. Okay.

If you didn't already know this story, I'm sure you've guessed that this is another unlikely sounding factoid that is, in fact, true. Here's the story. I was privileged enough to have spent a decade running a prison art program in California.

At its height, it had a faculty of 1,000 artists and a student body of 25,000 prisoners.

Beckett believed these five men had a chance to make the play manifest as he had originally envisioned it, to make a play that escaped the limitations of modern theater.

According to Barney Rossett, Beckett's publisher, what he saw performed on a makeshift stage in the cold, harshly lighted San Quentin gym was a transcendent transfer of creative ownership into a Drama that now belonged to those five men. And in fact was no longer a bare bones play trapped behind the decrepit walls of a 19th century prison.

Nothing to be done.

I'm beginning to come around to that opinion. All my life I've tried to put it from me, saying, vladimir, be reasonable.

You haven't yet tried everything. And I resume the struggle.

So that was Donald James as Vladimir and Reginald Wilson as Estragon, musing on the state of our eternally upside down world. So I'm going to remind you of my mission here. I'm actually here to recruit you. Yes, you. Into a very secret organization.

The Ancient League of Creative Champions. Membership is so secret that most members don't know they're in it. Maybe you already are. And as with most superheroic leagues, there are superpowers.

Five of them, actually. Curiosity, creativity, imagination, cooperation and story. Let's talk about them. The first is the power of curiosity. So humans are insatiably curious.

We explore, we experiment, we meddle, we muse, we ask questions. What? When? Who? How? This curiosity is rooted in play. When we're young, play means physical testing. As we grow, it becomes mental.

Probing, experimenting, storytelling. It's interesting. The word that defines the Japanese theater practice, kabuki, comes from a Japanese verb that means to lose one's balance.

Play is practice for losing balance. Practice for confusion, for survival. When things feel out of whack, we crave clarity. That craving triggers the question machine.

And questions beget questions, fueling the cycle of imagination, learning and invention. When that cycle stops, we experience boredom.

Evolutionary psychologists say boredom evolves specifically to reignite curiosity, because curiosity is critical to surviving. So champions never stop asking questions. When curiosity fades, all your other powers fade with it.

If there ever was a time when we needed more curiosity, it is now. Next is the power of creativity. Now, evolution itself is a creative process. Generate, test, regenerate.

Over millions of years, those cycles have yielded stronger wings, longer necks, and bigger brains. But it's not just biology. It's how we learn. It's how our brains work. It's how our immune systems fight pathogens. Generate, test, apply, retest.

Evolutionary biologists call these processes Darwin machines. Now, artists know this rhythm well, right? Generate, test, modify, repeat.

Brian Boyd, in his amazing book on the Origin of Stories, calls the human art making cycle a Darwin machine that is designed to evolve creativity itself. Some even argue that art came before language and that art making drove the growth of our big brains. So, champions, creativity is not a side project.

It's the pattern of life itself. And if there Ever was a time when we needed more creativity. It is now. Next, we have the power of imagination.

As an artist, as a storyteller, I sometimes describe myself as being in the imagination business. I even had a business card that once read, no way plus imagination equals way squared.

In the imagination business, creativity is the toolkit and imagination is the engine. Ability to conjure worlds outside time and place, to test possible futures in the mind's eye before acting. Well, that is a true superpower.

Now, early in his career, Spider Man's Uncle Ben pulls him aside and tells him that with great power comes great responsibility. Actually, that was Voltaire's line.

Anyway, as a superhero in the imagination business, you have an obligation to treat all your superpowers with respect and responsibility. This is particularly true with regard to the imagination.

Before you go donning your cape and charging into the fray, you have to recognize that wielding the imagination can not only shine a bright and healing light, but also burn a deep and terrible wound. If ever there was a time when we needed more imagination, it is now. Now. The power of cooperation. So we all know humans aren't particularly fast.

We aren't stealthy, but we are wired to cooperate. Without that, we'd have been a footnote in evolutionary history.

Social neuroscience shows that cooperation is a survival trait embedded in our brains. And art making from the beginning, has been one of the principal ways humans have provoked cooperation.

When we sang earlier, I described how voices woven together create connection. In South Africa, there's a word, I am because you are. That's the heartbeat of cooperation.

If ever there was a time when we needed more cooperation, it is now. Finally, we have the power story. In the beginning, there was a word. A word. The word I don't know. Then another and another, until a story rose up.

Then a family, a tribe, and finally a continent of stories, which is so, so wonderful because, you know, stories amuse and delight and entertain, but they also deceive. Tyranny is story killing.

Sometimes the tyrant's only real skill is silencing, ignoring, controlling, romanticizing, simplifying, trivializing, buying, selling, and then just murdering the story. But stories really never die, do they?

They crawl back, just like the BlackBerry canes creeping through that old fence out there, outliving whoever made it. And democracy, well, it's a continuing story that needs to be fed. And yes, democracy, it's practice is story work. Democracy says, here's the story.

To this point, let's decide together what's next. If there ever was a time we needed new stories, it is now. Okay? Quiz number three. So ponder this.

It has recently been revealed that many of the world's top theater companies have in fact been pushing a very powerful drug cocktail that can have a lasting effect on brain chemistry. I know that seems over the top, but this, too, is a true thing. Here's the scoop. So, humans love patterns.

Our brains are particularly good at recognizing patterns that are important to our survival. Threat patterns, food related patterns.

Patterns that communicate safety, nurturing, opportunities for procreation, kinship empathy, and social bonding.

Paying attention to these patterns is so very important that our endocrine system has evolved a powerful set of rewards to focus our attention on them to the exclusion of other potential distractions. These reinforcements are a potent mix of neurochemicals with names like oxycontin, dopamine, adrenaline, neopenephrine, and serotonin.

Great art, effective art, art that moves us is succeeding in part because it concentrates and plays with the world's profusion of intersecting patterns. Art that is intriguing, entertaining and captivating. Art that teaches and transforms is art that reveals multiple layers of interrelated patterns.

The best theater, the most successful plays involve intricate yet indelible patterns of character, plot, intention, and outcome. That touches us in ways that are both familiar and surprising.

As this is happening, some aspects of the existential questions that are always vexing us. Who am I? Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? Get nudged.

And when this happens, when the work touches us in this way, our endocrine drugstore also kicks into high gear, reinforcing our sense of fear or exhilaration or connection. Amazing, right? But there's more. If you dial this number in the next five minutes.

No, actually, to me, the most important aspect of all this is that when these kinds of experiences become more common, more focused or intentional, when they start to inhabit us, when the stories you tell become infectious, like the hero's journey, Romeo and Juliet, Rosa Parks, or David and Goliath, they have the potential to modify our neural circuitry over time. That's right. You have the power to change brains. Okay, so back to the question of what use is art in these turbulent times?

Art is the set of tools humans use to materialize their stories. Untold stories become shadows. Smothered stories fester.

But shared stories sung, danced, painted, spoken, become the scaffolding democracy, the fabric of community.

That's why I'm here, to remind you of your lineage and to recruit you into the league of creative champions, to call you back into the great creation story. So, champions, once upon a time, art is Change is a production of the center for the Study of Art and Community.

Our theme and soundscape 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 ook235.

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