This episode digs into one of the trickiest—and most revealing—corners of community-based arts work: the way humility and failure shape everything we do, from a 12-line role in Richard II to a city-wide public-art firestorm.

Leni Sloan, Barbara Shaffer Bacon and Bill Cleveland tumble into stories that peel back the glossy surface of “successful” arts practice:

• the actor with decades of experience learning cadence from an 18-year-old,
• the choreographer who turned military restrictions into creative fuel,
• the prison poet who left a Broadway star speechless.

And threaded through it all is this question: how do we stay porous enough—humble enough—to learn what the work is actually teaching us?

Together they talk about the kind of failure that doesn’t end a project but opens it—cracks the thing apart so the next, truer version can breathe. And they remind us that in this art-and-community dance, no one is ever done learning, not even the masters.

Listen in as we explore why humility is not soft, and failure is not fatal—they’re simply part of the craft.

And stick around: the next episode asks the big follow-up question—what responsibility do we carry for sustaining access to creative resources once communities have experienced their transformative power?

To donate to Spoon Jackson's Fund:

Use this Venmo account @Cheryl-Cotterill or send a check to:

Cheryl Cotterill

Attorney at Law

1770 Post Street #207

San Francisco, CA 94115

NOTABLE MENTIONS

People

Leni Sloan

Actor, director, community-arts practitioner, and co-conversationalist in this episode, reflecting on humility, failure, and learning within community-engaged art. 

Barbara Schaffer Bacon

Co-director of Animating Democracy and long-time leader in arts-based community development; contributes insight into constraints, ethics, and readiness in community practice. 

Lori Woolery

Director formerly with Cornerstone Theater Company and a leader of community-based productions at The Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park. 

Liz Lerman

Choreographer, educator, and founder of the Dance Exchange, known for pioneering community-based performance projects including The Shipyard Project. 

Robert Frost

Poet quoted for the line “Freedom is riding easy in the harness,” used here to illuminate creative constraint. 

M.C. Richards

Potter, writer, and philosopher known for her disciplined practice of smashing imperfect pots—a metaphor for artistic rigor and humility. 

F. Murray Abraham

Award-winning actor involved in the Broadway production of Waiting for Godot, who visited San Quentin and sought insight from incarcerated actor Spoon Jackson. 

Spoon Jackson

Poet, educator, and long-incarcerated artist whose work in Arts-in-Corrections and performance in Waiting for Godot continues to inspire communities worldwide. Now eligible for review under California’s Racial Justice Act. 

Events & Projects

The Shipyard Project

A groundbreaking community dance and dialogue project led by Liz Lerman and the Dance Exchange in Portsmouth, NH, exploring the tensions around the naval shipyard’s potential closure. 

Sacramento “Indo Arch” Public Art Controversy (1980s)

A major debate around a celebrated new public artwork whose meaning shifted with geopolitical conflict, sparking weeks of city council deliberation. (General Sacramento public art reference: https://www.sacramento365.com/public-art/) 

San Quentin Production of Waiting for Godot

A culturally significant prison-based performance in which incarcerated actors, including Spoon Jackson, staged Beckett’s play for outside audiences and visiting artists like F. Murray Abraham. 

Creative Community Leadership Institute (CCLI) (archival)

A long-running community-arts training program in Minnesota whose curriculum underwent major revision after direct feedback from BIPOC participants. 

Organizations

Cornerstone Theater Company

A nationally recognized organization creating theater with and for communities across the U.S. 

The Public Theater

New York City’s home for Shakespeare in the Park and large-scale community productions involving hundreds of local participants. 

Dance Exchange

An interdisciplinary performance company exploring the intersection of art, community dialogue, and participatory practice. 

California Arts-in-Corrections Program

A statewide partnership providing arts education inside prisons, central to the development and visibility of artists like Spoon Jackson. 

California Racial Justice Act

Legislation allowing incarcerated individuals to seek relief when racial bias may have influenced their conviction or sentencing. 

Publications / Texts

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

The canonical absurdist play discussed in relation to San Quentin’s historic production. 

*****

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.

So tell me, why are humility and failure essential to art and social change success?

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. Now, this episode is the fifth in our special series where we're unpacking the building blocks of effective art and social change practice.

And in it, we dig into one of the trickiest and most revealing corners of community based arts work. The way humility and failure shape everything we do. From a 12 line role in Richard II to a citywide public art form, Firestorm.

Along with my colleagues Lenny Sloan and Barbara Schaefer Bacon, we tumble into stories that peel back the glossy surface of quote, successful, unquote art and social change practice. The actor with decades of experience learning cadence from an 18 year old. The choreographer who turned military restrictions into creative fuel.

And a prison poet who. Who left a Broadway star speechless. So, on with the show. Okay, you two.

How do failure and humility figure in building a successful community arts practice?

I'm tearing up because I have placed myself in an act of humility because. I wanted to learn the Lancaster theater community from the inside out.

So, Lenny, this is Lancaster, Pennsylvania, right?

Yes. So I cast myself in a very minor role in Shakespeare's Richard ii.

I wanted spear carriers because I wanted to place myself in the humility of being under someone else's direction.

The hardest rehearsals were the first where I had to give up directing under someone else's aesthetic and to say, oh, ye of the world, you have 12 lines, do them well, and it's been a journey in humility. Four acts, two hours, 12 lines. Stand in your place, be where you need to be.

Especially your whole approach to everything is to embody it completely. You produced voodoo Macbeth, so I can't even imagine.

It's the challenge I wanted to put myself through. Nobody needs to know who you are. You just need to do your 12 lines and give this man what his vision is, even if you don't agree.

With that vision, especially in an art practice, it's so easy to end up in a struggle because there's no absolute border line that says, this is it, there's no cops there, and the trust in the room is all that matters.

My whole thing was I need to believe the song I sing. I tell everybody to humble yourself and put your art before yourself. And I said, I need to go back and scrub down.

And what are you taking from it so far?

What I'm taking from it is there are no small parts. Ah. There are only small people, as they say.

Yes.

So Laurie Woolery, who was at Cornerstone Theatre and has been at the public doing the large community productions at the theater in Central park every summer for quite a few years now. And so she's got 200 people from all over the five boroughs.

So when you said that there's no small part, only small people, but for those people, that piece and their 12 lines in their two hours is everything. Their participation in this massive. Activity is huge. It's huge.

So I think you bring up humility in both the best of ways and the ways that we can fumble with humility, especially by assuming that we already know how to do it or we know what we're going to do here and, you know, who the key people will need to be and making a lot of assumptions and not paying attention to the 150 small parts in the big production.

Mosaic making.

Mosaic making.

You are part of this mosaic.

Thank you so much for this award. It is such an honor to receive an Obie, really, the dream of a lifetime.

As we were witnessing our community going through the election and post, all the decisions that were being made and how they were impacting communities, and yet how they were showing up for one another in those dark moments, they were there, finding joy, holding one another, celebrating one another, believing in each other. And we put it all in the play as yous Like. It is such a great container for this story.

Maybe we'll always need to tell the story about the power of community and how no matter what, if we all come together, we can hold and walk one another through the dark times and celebrate in the joyful times.

One of the things that came up for me was the shipyard project and Liz Lehrman and the dance exchange. Liz Lehrman had a residency in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, sponsored by the Music Hall Art center there.

And they were brought there because their government was threatening to shut down the nuclear submarine building base. And Liz's intention was to help the community talk about the fact of this, and of course there were folks that were glad to see it go.

Don't want nuclear submarines, don't want a war machine in their town, but not for those people in the many parts of their town that make a living, because the nuclear submarine base and builder is there. And so the shipyard project really sought to bring forward the conversation.

But one of the things that Liz speaks about is the constraints that the project had. People from the community couldn't all go on the base. They were restricted.

Even if she could get the military to cooperate, to participate, there were limits, there were frames, there were expectations, there were no nos.

And turning those constraints into really productive parts of the design of the project and the design of the ultimate public activities in the became very important to her. And she saw them as driving some of what made the project succeed.

We had constraints. There were certain things we could not do on the shipyard. There were certain things we could not do.

And with that artistic integrity and the help of the advisory committee and the willfulness of the whole everybody we worked with and around the constraints. And lo and behold, it constructed a whole weak one thing on the yard, one thing off the yard, because not everybody could get on the yard.

But we didn't want to deny that.

So when we think about social distancing or we think about the problem of touch, or we think about the kinds of things we have to, we are going to be addressing constraints, the healing. We can put those things together and something quite amazing will emerge.

I'm sure that was Liz Lerman from The shipyard project's 20 year reflection.

That reminded me of one of my favorite lines, Robert Frost. Freedom is riding easy in the harness. And I can think of times that communities have brought artists in and artists have not checked.

They haven't done the checking in with themselves and the checking in with community. And so they're ready to push a community perhaps further than it's able or ready to go.

This brings this whole thing back to the morality and ethics. Morality and Ethics is a consensus management project.

You have to all agree on the body of things of which you measure your morality or your ethics against.

And when that begins to change, for good or bad, it requires that all parts have to, like a kaleidoscope, have to change with that or there is resistance. And the other thing I think about is how time and circumstance impact the morality of the art. And I'm thinking particularly about temporal art.

Barb and Bill will remember this in Sacramento in the 80s, a very large, beautiful piece called the Indo Art downtown Sacramento, the Piece of art didn't change, but the politics around. Yeah, that symbol of the Arabic symbol in Sacramento changed, and the artist's intent was pure.

But the community, its values, its changes, its iconography, the world crises in the Middle east cause. Bill, am I close to saying near community unrest about the Indo arts?

Oh, yeah. They tied up the city council for three or four weeks over one piece of art.

And it was a piece of art that was considered a signature success for the city's new and innovative public art program by the arts commission and the arts community, but was being held up by some folks in town as an abomination and a monumental civic and public art failure. But that was the silver lining because that prolonged debate caused the arts commission to rethink its piecemeal public input process.

And the arts community got a real glimpse of both the volatility of public opinion and their own power as advocates. So this, to me, is an example of the important role moments of what we call failure can play in the long term success. Particularly of community work.

And by failure, I mean the distance between the expectations that everybody brings to the table. This is my movie of what's going to happen. This is my movie. And of course, one person's failure is another person's victory.

But those big gaps between what they thought was going to be and what turned out, and seeing the best laid plans not manifesting often presents an opportunity for transformational learning. Now, obviously, most of us, even after all these years, don't necessarily take advantage of that opportunity because it's hard to be bad.

And just a short story here that it still haunts.

And I still don't know if I've learned my lesson, but the Creative Community Leadership Institute in Minneapolis, we were in our 20th year, and we were just hitting it out of the park. We had people just singing our praises, right? And we convened a new class. They were great.

They were some of the hottest, coolest, youngest, most aggressive, most interesting people we'd ever had, many of whom came from north Sacramento, which is where the red line forced many black families in Sacramento and was also a place where really effective organizing and leadership had been emerging. And about two episodes into the class, the message started to become clear.

And we took it very seriously because it was straight and delivered with, I think, incredible clarity and respect. And the message was the content and delivery of this training is not speaking to us as black artists in meaningful ways.

And we would very much like some things to change. Now, as you can imagine, it got very messy. A very diverse faculty and Class, everybody with a different version of the story we were all in.

And many of our group triage conversations were like standing on the edge of a cliff or actually falling off it and trying to keep things together. And it's one thing to do that when you're 25 years old.

It's another to think that you have a few things together and all of a sudden the floor is pulled out completely. But we saw it through, and I have to say, it wasn't like a great story with a great ending. It was a funky story with a quasi okay ending.

But the upshot was gigantic because we questioned everything we've been doing, particularly confronting the reality that no matter how good or important your story or your lesson is, who is delivering it, their background, their worldview, and how that influences or determines how it's shared often matters more than the message itself. Once again, in a weird way, the medium is the message.

Let me add two strings to your kite tail there, which, all right, they're disjointed, but hopefully they make it fly. The first is this notion of failure.

And early in my life, I had the opportunity, because of studying with them Martha Graham Dance Company, to go to my mentor Paulus Berenson's farm, where MC Richards was. And MC Richards would smash her pots. And it would make my heart this beautiful thing.

And she would pick it up and she would look at it and she would smash it. She said, it's imperfect. I don't want that imperfect thing. I'm like, it's beautiful. That. Not to me. It is not my best work.

It was like a shocking lesson for a young man. The other side of that coin is residency where we went in. And the first thing the young people ask us is, how long are you going to be here?

Is this just for the grant? Because I'm not going to make a commitment to you. I'm not going to be jacked up this time if you're only here for the grant. And I just want to know.

It was a shocking question because, in fact, we were just like, we have 10 months and we're only here twice a week. And they were like, no, not going to commit myself to you.

Yeah. And for you, I'm sure Getting support for 10 months translated as a real success.

I had that same experience when we were doing some assessment work in Detroit, and a young woman that came into the thing said, I'm not interested in being here unless this is going to be here for my sister. She's younger than me and she's Coming along in a few years. Same point exactly.

That's what this Shakespeare journey. Because. The youngest actor in the company is helping me with cadence. And I'm his grandfather. I think I'm his grandfather's father, actually.

But I admit it, when I said thank you, I had something to learn from him. This was an immersion where I'm not in charge of anything.

So there's a scene at San Quentin Prison. It's the Waiting for Godot has just finished. The five performers are in. There's no dressing room.

Their parents are freaking out, you know, so happy that they've seen them and that they'd completed their play. And one of the guests was F. Murray Abrams, who was in rehearsal for the Broadway version.

And he cornered the incarcerated actor, whose name is Spoon Jackson, who is still incarcerated and is an amazing poet. And he played Lucky, the one who drags in the guy with the rope around his neck.

So he plays that character and he just, he said, spoon, how did you do that? How did you do that? What's your practice? Tell me what you're doing. And there he is.

He was pleading with him to give him some kind of insight into how he got to where he got in that play. And it was amazing thing to watch. Murray Abrams, almost like with tears in his eyes, saying, I need you to tell me what you're doing.

Murray Abrams did a one man show at the Irish Repertory center in New York City. I was lucky enough to see his performance. And in the Q and A bar, he said, I do everything. I act every day. I go and read to the blind.

I go and read in schools, I do commercials. He said, I practice my craft because there is something to learn every day. He says, oh, I'm down in the subway reading poetry.

That is the commitment to learning.

Yes.

Okay, two things. One is to tie together failure and humility. Because if you don't have humility, then failure is failure.

But humility following is to see it, to be ready to act again, to create, to correct, to try again, to take another attack, to meet those people again and say, I might have screwed up here, or this isn't working for all of you. And so that's one thing.

And the other thing, talking about these, the classics, and in some ways, some of the strongest community arts projects I feel like I've seen are when the classics get turned into a community arts project, whether that is after Michael Brown, there's so many examples.

But when you show up for that Shakespeare rehearsal and everybody sits down in a circle and they say, tell us your story about how Shakespeare ever came into your life.

Wherever they're starting, whether it's building a community of that set of players or building that piece in a community with context, some of that work I believe has incredible power.

Yeah, myself as a Lowe's common denominator, I felt I had to go back to the well in order to be able to be refreshed. I produced a dozen Shakespeare pieces, but I realized I had something to learn from this 18 year old kid.

Yes, hooray for humility and learning.

And thank you for this discussion guys, where we again, I think just scratched the surface of another complex and dense facet of the art and community dance.

For our next act in our exploration of the building blocks of effective art and social change practice, we'll be addressing the question, if art is a proven catalyst for learning, healing and human connection, what is our responsibility for sustaining access to this powerful resource in our communities?

Now, before we close, I want to again mention the poet Spoon Jackson, who played Lucky in the San Quentin production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Spoon has spent the past 47 years behind bars. During that time he's transformed himself through art, empathy and teaching.

As a published poet, mentor and peacebuilder, Spoon was also an important contributor to the Arts and Corrections program that I ran back in the day. His writings and teachings have inspired students, artists and incarcerated people worldwide.

Now, thanks to California's Racial justice act, signed by Governor Newsom, Spoon has a narrow legal window to challenge his convictions. This law allows people to seek new hearings when racial bias influenced any part of the trial or outcome.

Now, Spoon's requesting a new hearing is going to require legal assistance and funding for legal fees. So if you'd like to contribute to this effort, you'll find the relevant information in our show. Notes.

Art is Change As 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 the Maestro Judy Munson. Our text editing is by Andre Nebbi. 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%.