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Creativity

Furtherfield: The Power Of Art And Play In Imagining New Worlds

March 6, 2022 David Bollier. , , ,
Here's a fanciful but almost-real scenario: the bees, squirrels, geese, bugs, trees, and other species of your local park have decided that they've had enough of human aggression and abuse. They're not going to take it anymore, and rise up and demand equal rights with humans. Through a series of interspecies assemblies, a treaty is negotiated to ensure that every living being in the local ecosystem can flourish. This scenario is a "live action role-playing" (LARP) game devised by Furtherfield, a London-based arts collective as part of its stewardship of part of the Victorian-era Finsbury Park. Over the next three years, Furtherfield is inviting humans to don masks and play the roles of each of seven species in negotiating "The Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025" -- the name of the project.

‘Catharsis On The Mall’ Promotes Healing Through Creativity And Connection

November 17, 2017 John Zangas, dcmediagroup.us ,
By John Zangas for DC Media Group - “Catharsis on the Mall” is DC’s smaller version of the Burning Man festival, held annually at the Washington Monument. With thoughtful art or theatrical displays, the organizers offer anyone who wants to come an opportunity for purification, healing and, of course, catharsis through emotional release. The main draw was supposed to be a giant 60-foot statue of a woman’s body made of opaque curved metal near the flat white stone of the Washington Monument. But the statue was one foot too high, so the permit for the shapely structure could not be secured from the National Park Service. So in its place stood a giant scaffold with banners of a woman, her body partially covered with flora. This year’s theme for Catharsis was equality embodied by the ten principles of Burning Man for community ethos and culture through visual art, music and dancing, interactive participation, and story-telling. Many people narrated their journeys and struggles in overcoming life-changing obstacles. A variety of tents, booths and art displays encouraged creativity and connective existence with the ten principles: radical inclusion, gifting, de-commodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation and immediacy. A sage spoke inside a geodesic tent about relationships, intentional living and overcoming challenges while 50 or more people listened intently.

Reason, Creativity And Freedom: The Communalist Model

February 13, 2017 Eleanor Finley, www.roarmag.org , ,
By Eleanor Finley for ROAR Magazine - In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election, devastating images and memories of the First and Second World Wars flood our minds. Anti-rationalism, racialized violence, scapegoating, misogyny and homophobia have been unleashed from the margins of society and brought into the political mainstream. Meanwhile, humanity itself runs in a life-or-death race against time. The once-unthinkable turmoil of climate change is now becoming reality, and no serious attempts are being undertaken by powerful actors and institutions to holistically and effectively mitigate the catastrophe. As the tenuous and paradoxical era of American republicanism comes to an end, nature’s experiment in such a creative, self-conscious creature as humanity reaches a perilous brink.

How To Change The World In 3 Easy Steps

December 24, 2015 Nafeez Ahmed, www.medium.com , ,
By Nafeez Ahmed for Medium - I often get asked by people about what they can do to change things, to change the world, when each of us is just one person, in the face of so much that we cannot even hope to control or influence. What can we do? Why bother, given our powerlessness? As we look back on the key events of 2015, and the processes that led to them, it would be all too easy to succumb to despair. Despite fighting the ‘war on terror’ for 14 years since 9/11, we’ve only succeeded in seeing terrorism accelerate, metastasising into the so-called ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria.

Snowden Statue Freed, Here’s A 3D File To Print Your Own

May 8, 2015 Prachi Gupta, www.animalnewyork.com , , ,
The Edward Snowden bust that was illegally affixed to a war monument in Fort Greene Park has been recovered from the NYPD. The statue, which sat on a column in the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument for just a few hours on April 6 before park officials took it down, had been in police custody for exactly one month. “We are pleased that we could resolve this matter without litigation, and appreciate the City’s commitment to artistic expression, even though the artists failed to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’ when initially erecting their sculpture,” said Ronald L. Kuby, the civil rights lawyer representing the artists behind the sculpture. Kuby successfully argued that the artwork, while illegally placed,was not inherently contraband. The artists, who installed the piece at dawn, were fined $50 each for entering the park after hours.

The Yes Men’s Plan To Crowdfund A More Creative Revolution

April 25, 2015 Kate Aronoff, www.wagingnonviolence.org , , ,
“Kind of like Kickstarter, but for creative direct action!” So goes an explainer on a new project from The Yes Men, a troupe of political pranksters, and Beautiful Trouble, a multimedia “toolbox for revolution.” The Action Switchboard, or A/S, as it’s called, was appropriately birthed from a successful crowdfunding campaign last year by The Yes Lab, a creative actions platform founded by The Yes Men — otherwise known as Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno. Now, A/S seeks to put the informal networks among activists — of trainers, photographers artists and more — to work. Traditionally when people think of protest, the images that come to mind are of massive mobilizations: the World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle in 1999, or last year’s People’s Climate March and Millions March NYC.

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