CALL TO ARTISTS: Share your story: 3 minutes from the field

Already doing arts-based work to support free and fair elections, or about to? Record a message of about 3 minutes on your phone and answer three questions:

Record and send it HERE We'll weave as many...

Who decides

There are lots of ways to censor an artist. You can ban the book, close the exhibition, cancel the performance. We know what those look like. But there's another way: you can make the artist wonder. Wonder whether a character will cost the theater a grant. Whether a festival celebrating queer artists is still fundable. Whether a nonbinary actor can play Faust.

In this Freedom of Expression Weather Report, we follow a few sentences inserted into the federal arts funding system. We start with the three theaters and the national service organization that...

What's So Funny?

This episode's guest is Mark Kendall — comedian, filmmaker, and co-founder, alongside Bill Worley, of the Atlanta production company Cool Cool Cool Productions. Mark's path into comedy started almost by accident: a college kid at Northwestern who just wanted to hold a camera, until a summer program built by Chris Rock dropped him into the writers' rooms of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report — and he pitched a joke that Stephen Colbert said on air that night.

What he brought home from that summer wasn't just a love of the craf...

Where do poetry and democracy intersect?

In part two of our conversation with Dayton poet laureate, educator, activist, culture keeper, and Kettering Foundation Democracy and the Arts resident artist Sierra Leone, we follow the threads of memory and imagination from a gallery of story quilts in Hamilton, Ohio, to the Legacy Sites of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama.

Along the way, Sierra reads American Libation III: Weaving an Amendment for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, her response to Carolyn Crump's quilt Lovely One. She takes us inside The Belonging Project, where the...

Sierra Leone Believes Poetry

Is Essential Civic Infrastructure

In this episode we meet Sierra Leone—a poet, educator, activist, and cultural organizer who reminds us that a poem is far more than words on a page. It can become a gathering place, a healing practice, and a way for a community to remember who it is.

In this conversation, we explore three central ideas:

An outside artist does not become effective by knowing everything about a place.

Effectiveness begins with recognizing how much they do not know.

That idea has followed us from our Building Blocks episode on outside artists, through Eric Gottesman’s journey from photographer to collaborator, and into the first part of our conversation with Liz Lerman. Liz calls us toward a more horizontal practice—one in which expertise matters, but does not automatically confer authority.

In Part Two, that principle becomes even more urgent. Through her work Wicked Bodies, Liz asks why some know...

Can an artist who comes from outside a community become an effective partner in creating change?

That was the question we explored in an earlier episode of our Building Blocks of Effective Community Arts Practice series. And in our recent conversation with Eric Gottesman, we heard one compelling answer. His experiences in Ethiopia—and later with For Freedoms—taught him to stop acting as the sole author and begin making work with communities through questions, shared authority, and collective storytelling.

Our next guest, choreographer and community artist Liz Lerman, takes that conversation further. Thro...

What happens an artist realizes that they can never

be the only one with questions?

From that reckoning, artist Eric Gottesman spent the next twenty-five years rethinking what an artist with a camera, or a big idea is actually for. In this conversation with Bill Cleveland, Gottesman traces his path from documentary photographer to collaborative image-maker in Addis Ababa's AIDS-affected communities, and eventually to co-founding For Freedoms, the artist-led initiative that has turned billboards, town halls, and even a Super PAC into tools for civic discourse.

This is a conversation about authorship, collectivity...

What can happen when art carries people across

boundaries they rarely cross?

in 2019, a remarkable theater project brought together two very different communities: rural largely white Brussels, Illinois, and the predominantly Black St. Louis-area communities of Normandy and Pagedale, Missouri. Separated by the Mississippi River—and by race, geography, and very different assumptions about one another—they became collaborators in a new version of Shakespeare’s As You Like It.

Under the direction of artist/activist/educator Kathi Bentley students, teachers, residents, artists, and audiences traveled by bus and ferry between the tw...

Tricia Rose Burt spent nearly fifteen years doing everything right — director of corporate communications, a career built inside Fidelity Investments and Harvard Business School, the whole stable, predictable life she was raised to want. Then a career counselor told her she needed freedom and art, and within a year she'd quit the job, sold the car, ended the marriage, and moved to an artist's studio in Ireland for what was supposed to be six months. She stayed four. Now she's a Moth storyteller, a TEDx speaker, and the host of No Time to Be Timid — a podcast built entirely arou...

What happens when a government decides that one

of the greatest threats to its future isn't an armed force

— but a cultural institution?

On July 4th, America's 250th birthday, the White House Domestic Policy Council released a 162-page report accusing the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History of "ideological capture."

Twenty days later, the President signed a second executive order directing federal agencies to force the museum to change how it tells the country's story. Host Bill Cleveland lays out the specifics: the named exhibits, the named staff, the quiet stall in...

A while back we shared the story of how Breaking Ice, a theater company working out of an arts based social service agency called Pillsbury House and Theater in Minneapolis, joined up with a large health care system in St. Louis to provide a powerful boost to their diversity, equity and inclusion program.

That led to a and exploration of what neuroscience can contribute to understanding and dealing with the human struggle with difference. Dopamine, synapses, and the prefrontal cortex might sound like a science fair project gone wild, but trust me, they're crucial when we dive...

Can an artist from outside a community become an effective force for change

—or does arriving with good intentions risk repeating the very patterns the work is meant to challenge?

Bill Cleveland joins Alice Lovelace and Barbara Schaffer Bacon to examine one of community arts practice’s most persistent questions: when outsiders enter a community, what allows their work to take root, and what turns a promising intervention into a brief visit—or even a source of harm? Through stories from Serbia, Atlanta, Ohio, and rural Georgia, the conversation moves beyond simple answers and in...

Can the right song, painting, or museum exhibit spark real political change? What if culture is the missing strategy in today’s social movements?

If you’ve ever felt like your efforts for justice aren’t hitting deep enough, it might be because the culture hasn’t caught up with your message. In this episode, labor organizer and social change strategist Ken Grossinger shares how his journey from labor organizing to cultural advocacy revealed a truth many overlook: policy changes fade, but stories—and the art that tells them—have staying power. In this episode:

Today we continue our Building Blocks of Effective Community Arts Practice series with two longtime fellow travelers: activist poet and cultural organizer Alice Lovelace, and educator, cultural policy leader, and Animating Democracy co-founder Barbara Shaffer Bacon.

Together we wrestle with a question many artists are asking right now: Should we prioritize safety—or bravery?

Drawing on decades of experience—from the culture wars of the 1980s to today’s debates over censorship, public funding, and democracy—they explore how artists can respond with creativity rather than fear.

Three reasons to listen

• Creative c...

What makes the difference between a community where artists simply survive… and one where creativity becomes part of the living infrastructure of democracy?

Today we’re continuing our series exploring the building blocks of effective community arts practice. Joining me once again are activist poet, performer, educator, and creative change agent Alice Lovelace, along with educator, cultural strategist, and longtime arts and democracy leader Barbara Shaffer Bacon.

Together we tackle a deceptively simple question: What are the essential ingredients of a healthy and thriving art and social change ecosystem?

We Explore:

Ariel Fristoe: Theater as a Civic Commons

What happens when theater stops asking audiences simply to watch and starts inviting communities to listen, speak, and act?

In this conversation, Bill Cleveland talks with Ariel Fristoe, founder and Artistic Director of Out of Hand Theater in Atlanta, about a lifetime spent reclaiming theater’s oldest purpose—not entertainment alone, but civic life. Together they explore how storytelling, conversation, and community partnerships can become practical tools for reducing polarization, strengthening democratic participation, and helping neighbors encounter one another as fellow human beings rather than strangers.

From...

In this episode we're joined by filmmaker, organizer, novelist, visual artist, and self described conjurer of stories, Paola Mendoza. For more than two decades, Paola has used every tool she can get her hands on.

Film, theater, public art, organizing, and literature to tell stories that expand our understanding of who counts, who belongs.

The daughter of Colombian immigrants, she's dedicated her artist force of nature life to portraying America's vital immigrant communities with dignity, complexity and humanity at a time when those qualities are often under attack.

In our conversation, we'll explore:<...

Who belongs in America’s story?

As battles over immigration, public institutions, national celebrations, and freedom of expression intensify, a deeper struggle is emerging beneath the headlines: who gets represented, remembered, welcomed, and heard.

In this Arts Freedom Weather Report, Bill Cleveland connects seemingly unrelated events—from the turmoil at the Kennedy Center and preparations for America250, to the FIFA World Cup, Pride festivals, immigrant-rights cultural organizing, and the rise of creative resistance networks. What emerges is a revealing pattern: artists and cultural organizers are increasingly finding themselves at the center of a national debate over...

How do artists help communities survive violence, heal trauma, and imagine a future beyond conflict?

In this episode of Art Is Change, Bill Cleveland speaks with activist, educator, filmmaker, writer, and peacebuilding scholar Cynthia Cohen about a lifetime spent exploring the relationship between creativity, storytelling, conflict, and democratic life.

Drawing on experiences ranging from Jewish-Palestinian dialogue projects in Boston to peacebuilding initiatives in Peru, Sri Lanka, Serbia, Northern Ireland, and beyond, Cynthia reflects on the role artists play in helping communities navigate violence, hold competing truths, and create the conditions for healing and transformation.

What happens when a soldier comes

home from war and discovers that music

can heal the wounds the doctors missed?

In this episode, I sit down with musician, songwriter, veteran, and outspoken truth-teller Sean Martin. Sean’s journey takes us from the redwood coast of Northern California to the battlefields of Iraq, through the struggles of PTSD, and ultimately into a creative practice rooted in honesty, healing, and a band named the Quarintened.

Along the way, Sean shares how music became more than an art form. Through cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure th...

What does it actually take to build a

lasting cross-sector community arts partnership?

In this episode, I return to a lesson I learned more than forty years ago in one of the most unlikely classrooms imaginable: the California prison system during one of the most violent periods in its history. At the center of the story is Verne McKee, an incarcerated artist and leader whose practical wisdom about trust, power, responsibility, and human relationships became a blueprint for understanding how successful community arts partnerships are built—and why so many fail.

Drawing on Ve...

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

This episode is part of a special Art in Action series we're producing in partnership with the Charles F. Kettering Foundation’s Democracy and the Arts program. In these episodes we'll be speaking with artists, cultural organizers, and arts leaders who are navigating and challenging current efforts to limit free creative expression and free speech. Together, we'l...

What happens when Artists are embedded

inside the systems that run the world?

--- hospitals, railroads, steel mills, shipping companies, government ministries...

In this episode, we explore the the strange, funny, visionary, and unexpectedly influential story of Barbara Steveni and the Artist Placement Group — a loose coalition of British artists who, beginning in the late 1960s, attempted something radical: placing artists inside the machinery of everyday institutional life not to decorate systems… but to complicate them.

This show explores how artists embedded themselves inside mega-corporations and government agencies — often producing confusion, resist...

Are Art and Upheaval totally

incompatible or unavoidably connected?

We’re rebroadcasting this episode from 2022, in part, because the ground beneath it hasn’t settled—it’s shifted, cracked, and in some places, caught fire again. The headlines keep reminding us: conflict, repression, dislocation, the slow erosion—and sometimes the sudden collapse—of trust in our institutions and in each other.

And right there, in the middle of it, the same quiet, stubborn truth this episode points to: if you scratch the surface of upheaval, you will find artists. Not on the sidelines—on the frontli...

What happens when a society loses its grip

on grief and numbers replace names?

In this episode, social practice artist Suzanne Firstenberg turns national tragedy into human encounter, asking a simple but destabilizing question: Can art make us see each other again? From a field of more than 600,000 white flags on the National Mall to immersive installations on addiction and psychological trauma,

Firstenberg's work doesn't explain. It reveals. Each project begins with a question beneath the surface: not how people fall apart, but why. Not how many died, but who they were.

Active citizenship isn’t just a buzzword; it’s a life path that can be cultivated from a young age.

That’s exactly what Ann Cleveland, a Waldorf educator, dives into with us. In our conversation she takes a deep look at how arts-infused education transforms kids into engaged citizens.

Forget the boring lectures about democracy; here, kids are living it through music, movement, and storytelling. Ann shares how children practice collaboration and empathy every single day in the classroom, honing the skills they’ll need to navigate the complex social fabric of the world around t...

ART IS CHANGE – Art is Resistance

What happens when freedom of expression is under pressure? When speech narrows, fear rises, and the future feels smaller than it should?

In this episode, we explore how activist artists and cultural organizers have historically stepped into these moments—not as decoration or entertainment, but as essential agents of democratic life. Through vivid stories from different times and places, the episode reveals how cultural practice reshapes what people believe is possible.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

What use is art making

when freedom is under fire?

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

This episode is part of a special Art In Action series we're producing in partnership with the Charles F. Kettering Foundation Democracy and the Arts program. In these episodes, we'll be speaking with artists, cultural organizers and...

What does it actually take to build

a democracy the people own?

The Artist Proof story takes us to Johannesburg, where a print studio becomes a living laboratory for a new society. We also hear about:

• A court built as art, where law and lived experience meet in the same space

• A collective studio where artists divided by apartheid learn to work, argue, and make meaning together

• A fire, a death, and a return to the ashes—where broken pieces become the raw material for rebuilding

What e...

Is Community-Based Artmaking

at the Heart of Cultural Democracy?

In this conversation, community arts organizer, educator and theater maker Matt Schwarzman describes his mission to make collaborative art making a regular, normal, expected part of everyday life. A movement that has quietly grown for decades, but now faces a new test in a time of democratic strain.

Along the way, he traces his influences from John o' Neill and the Free Southern the to the grassroots cultural movements of the 1980s and 90s that helped shape a generation of artists who see culture...

What happens when artists step forward not just to create, but to defend the freedom to create?

In this opening episode of a new Art in Action series produced with the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, Bill Cleveland speaks with Joni Doherty, Senior Program Officer for Democracy and the Arts. Their conversation begins with a rediscovered 1964 speech by Martin Luther King Jr. in Dayton, Ohio, and unfolds into a powerful exploration of how artists today are confronting censorship, recovering buried histories, and expanding the civic imagination.

As Doherty explains, the arts are not merely...

You can feel it in the air.

Across museums, national parks, libraries, and cultural institutions, the pressure around what can be said — and what must disappear — is tightening.

But while federal policies attempt to narrow the public cultural space, artists, historians, librarians, educators, and cultural organizers are responding in real time — documenting what’s being erased, refusing complicity, and building new civic infrastructure.

In this report, Bill Cleveland surveys the emerging landscape of creative resistance and cultural restriction across the United States.

From citizen historians documenting museum censorship at the Smithsonian to artis...

Arts On Prescription: What if your doctor prescribed an arts-based treatment for what ails you and your health insurance paid for it.

YEAH RIGHT! Actually, Yeah, right, and REALLY! In this episode we learn all about it in Arts on Prescription: A Field Guide for U. S. Communities

BIO's

Dr. Tasha Golden directs research for the International Arts + Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins Medicine. As a national leader in arts + public health, Dr. Golden studies the impacts of arts & culture, music, aesthetics, and social norms on well-being, health research, and professional practice. She...

How can a play devised by enemies, performed in four locations across a peace wall in the middle of a war zone help provoke lasting peace?

In November 1999, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, a community play called The Wedding brought Protestants and Catholics together to rehearse a shared future in the fragile aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement. It wasn’t a feel-good arts project. It was risky, volatile, negotiated truth performed in living rooms and kitchen houses on both sides of the peace line.

In this episode, we revisit that moment — not as n...

In this episode I talk with Arlene Goldbard about her new book that I think takes on a quiet but consequential democratic problem: how, in unstable times, the hunger for certainty can slide into surrender—of discernment, of agency, and responsibility.

Rather than offering answers or heroes, her book The Intercessor uses story to explore how people learn to stay in relationship, inquiry, and ethical choice without handing their power over to charismatic leaders, rigid belief systems, or the promise of spiritual or political shortcuts.

In this conversation, we explore three deeply relevant themes:

What Arts-Based Tool & Tactics

are Emerging to Meeting the MAGA Storm?

This is the Arts Freedom weather report for February 11, 2026. In this episode you'll hear how

NOTABLE MENTIONS

People

Bill Cleveland

Host of...

What does it look like when artists and cultural organizers respond to authoritarian pressure—not with silence or fear, but with imagination, strategy, and collective action?

This January 2026 Arts Freedom Weather Report comes from Minneapolis, a city once again at the epicenter of grief, rage, courage, and creative resistance. In the wake of multiple killings, intensified ICE activity, and federal misinformation, communities across Minnesota are responding not only with protest—but with song, ritual, writing, mutual aid, and rapid-response cultural organizing.

In this episode, we explore three urgent realities shaping this moment:

So if democracy is under pressure, what role do stories, culture, and imagination play in defending it?

In this episode, we're joined by Alan Jenkins, civil rights lawyer, former Ford foundation program director, Harvard Law School professor, and now comic book author, for a wide ranging conversation about story making and telling as a tool for social change. From Supreme Court litigation to graphic novels, Alan Jenkins traces how law, narrative, and culture intersect when democracy is at stake.

So in our conversation, we explore three big ideas I think matter a...

When unchecked power rewrites the story of America,

who gets to live, who gets to speak,

and who quietly disappears?

In this episode of ART IS CHANGE, Bill Cleveland shares next chapter in the continuing Weather Report, (now called the Arts Freedom Weather Report) Rather than chasing single headlines or isolated outrages, this episode steps back to examine the cultural climate shaping 2026: how small policy shifts stack up, how institutions quietly recalibrate under authoritarian pressure, and how artists and cultural organizations are responding in real time.

In this show, we explore...