 Is this the only graduate program in public policy in the US? No, that's Syracuse. No, that's Syracuse. Oh, I think it's a program. An A program. An A program. It's seven. I would say every person needs a Pepsi though. I am just wondering what... I haven't got anything interesting. Oh, you're just closing ranks. Excellent. Excellent. I'm looking back. I'm just wondering what role... I'm not, this is like my friend who's on the spot. I honestly don't know. Just culture and even actual artists. Do they have any role in your training? I know the way to cultural diplomacy. The way I do it is I teach as one component of the degree class in cultural diplomacy. The public diplomacy degree is designed to provide people who want to work in this business of conducting foreign policy by engaging with the foreign public. They come to the degree because they want to do that. They already know why they want to do it and very highly motivate it. What I'm trying to do is equip them with the skills that they need. And it may be regional skills or it may be procedural skills or skills understanding broadcasting and make that available to them. And one of the things we make available within the degree is skills and understanding of cultural diplomacy. And in the course of the cultural diplomacy class, I bring in artists. So among the people I've brought in is Sabrina Ratierba, the violinist who improvises music between a Western tradition and has a Bajani tradition and is a very, very impressive performer. I've worked with a rap musician, Annas Cannon, who's based in Los Angeles. He's against the tours of the Middle East with a group called Mark McCurray. And he is a Muslim American. And so he's able to relate to young people in Tunisia or Indonesia in a different way as a Muslim. I recently worked with, brought in, spacing out his name, but he's one of the people who did the tour of, called, Make China War. The State Department took three comedians to India to perform, as Indian Americans, performing comedy in India. And what they found was that they were suddenly, their American-ness was what they were talking about. Whereas in America they were still very Indian. In India they were suddenly aware of their American-ness. And then they had a wonderful, Rajeed Syar, I think he's his name. But he was a terrific comedian, working with the State Department. So I try and get some stories from artists into the program. But it's somebody different each year, really based on who's able to come in. And also the students themselves generate projects. Some of the students are, in fact, artists, or involved in some form of performance. We've had dance systems through the program. People with musical backgrounds, people with graphic arts or photography backgrounds, filmmaking. And so this is where they sort of find a place to find a shared, find an overlap between their practice and the idea of diplomacy, or public diplomacy, or engagement, whatever you want to call it. So that works okay. But it's very different every time. As it should be. That's good to know. Time, did you want your question? The question was about the professionals with fabulous backgrounds. Well, not too, I'm not really big on vocabulary. But just, I mean, yes, kind of. Yes, kind of. But more how you also are taking artists out into conflict situations, problematic situations. So I guess, yes, kind of vocabulary and just entering the right mode and relating to people in the right and most effective way. And getting the artist to do this. I guess there's two vocabulary words that I would like to put out there because I kind of have two hats. I come from an organization that I started that helps artists in distress, and that's pretty emotional. I currently direct the mobile arts for which sends artists out into the world. And two words in this space that I would put out there are human rights defenders and shelter. And the reason I would want to bring those up is that a lot of times when you work with artists who are in danger, not more American artists, artists in places where American artists are sent, what the sort of value you can add is to let them know that there are support mechanisms that come under the human rights defender sort of nomenclature. And so that's something that an artist who does the work of an activist, earlier there was the artist activist term thrown out, often will not know about the safety nets that professional activists can rely on. So that's something we do a lot. The big difference there often is the idea of intentionality, which I have lost ideas on that. The other one is shelter. I mentioned shelter because when you think about this cultural diplomacy, one of the main vehicles for theater artists and others as well is mobility and artist residency. And so in a place like Europe, you have tools such as the Danish government used the creation of safe cities that would be the international cities of refuge network as a response to the cartoon crisis. And in the middle of the city it created six new cities of refuge. And I mentioned shelter because shelter is a very sort of policy term that a lot of artists wouldn't plug into immediately, but there is an inserted effort in Europe to universalize the shelter mechanisms. So that would have shelter for a writer in distress, which could be a theater artist, into a safe city being thought about in the same way that shelter to an LGBT activist or environmental activist would be thought of. So it's a pretty interesting move on the European stage. So we find that we can educate around sort of exclusive vernacular, like those things you need unpacking and often for people who are in dangerous situations who need them unpacked quickly. That's the three-dimensional. I'll wait and I'll turn for the bullet. That was really interesting. Let's turn to you, Joanne, and look at another kind of model from your incredible work in Afghanistan, which gives us, I think you've all agreed, that the kind of exporting of America is no longer a satisfactory model for the 21st century. You have a different model, tell us about it. We've had many models over the years working in a lot of different countries, but just working for the last 10 years in Afghanistan, first of all, I feel like I'm doing my own training program in the State Department because one thing about Afghanistan is that with these danger zones, the embassy changes very quickly, so everybody is just there for a year. So you can imagine the cultural affairs person enters. They're all scared because they're in Afghanistan now. And by the time they kind of get comfortable and know what's going on, then it's time to leave. So we're doing our training program of meeting with them, telling them what's okay, telling them what's going on out there because they don't get out much, and sort of informing them as to how culture, how white theater, and how many people don't piece in Afghanistan. And after about 2006 and 2007, things just got worse and worse and worse. So we cannot go to the places that we used to go. We can't go out to the villages. So we decided that what we would do was help the theater groups that are there. So we got a grant from the United States Institute for Peace, which is something else I should mention because USIP lives in this little conflict resolution box. And so explaining to them how theater is conflict resolution was a really, I had to knock on their door for many years to explain this. And theater is conflict resolution. You don't have to walk with it. It is conflict resolution. But the grant from the embassy to work with four different theater groups in four different provinces and build their capacity to create topical theater and bring it to the villages that we can no longer go to. And you have to remember that Afghanistan still has a hugely high illiteracy rate, about 90% for women in the villages. And for men, it's only about 60%. And you see even people in the government that can barely read or write because we care about the schools being built. But in fact, the teachers don't show up. The students are sitting there already. And maybe the math teacher shows up once a week because they don't pay them very well, but they have those schools, they look great, but there's no education. So a lot of people have made just the fourth grade education and they're sort of considered literate, but not so much. So how are you going to get information to the villages? And I mean really important information like, hey, there's a law now about violence against women. It's actually like a law. So to get information, you cannot have that flyer. Television is really kind of taboo in a lot of areas. And I'm talking about the really very conservative areas. We work in Tehran, Kabul, Jalalabad, and the next place is Kandahar. So in Jalalabad, Kandahar, that area, that Pashtun area, it's still very conservative. Television is not hooked upon favorably. And that's because they do have, you know, Bollywood dancing and people with the parts of their skin showing and everything. So they blur that out. They blur that out. And they blur out the dancing, which makes Bollywood movies very funny. But did somebody, people, not dancing? And they do different sorts of dramas on it. And I'm sorry that people missed that because it has its better reputation. So, and of course theater has no reputation. People don't have a theater at all. So we have this challenge in working with these theater companies. And the four theater companies we chose, three of them had no women. So I just want to address that. Because how can we get information to the villages with no women? Because women can always be women. And women can't perform, but they can perform just for women. So our strategy, and this was not included in any of the grant proposals. This was our annual private project here, was to create a women's team with each theater company. And to convince the Moulins, I convinced the local elders that it would be okay for the girls to perform, for the women to perform as long as there were no men in the audience. And that's totally fine. I think women performing for women is great. And we don't need a theater. We don't need a community center. We just need somebody's backyard because you know they're all living in very nice courtyards. We would just do the performance at the Women's Shura, which was in Fort Nari, for the local women. And just pull up a patch of dirt into our show. Creating the women's groups was the challenge, though. In Kabul, a little bit less so. But can you imagine that in Kabul University, over 10 years, they still had not a single girl studying acting. Not one girl would get up on the stage. It was just amazing. They had about five or six studying playwriting, which is great. I'm directing, which is very good. But not one would take the stage. So I said, let's start a women's theater company. And I had proposed that years before, but we finally did it. We finally created this team. And with the promise that they would only perform for women. But that allowed us to go to the women's prison, to go to the women's shelters, to go out to the women's insurance in the villages that people had really never seen theater. They had no idea what they were going to see. And then to follow it up with this kind of, you know, for a theater done in our own sort of way, where the women pick it up on the stage, speak their mind. What would they say to the abusive husband? Play the part. What would they say to the police men or whatever? There's very little justice for women in Afghanistan. This was their chance to get up and speak about it. Admittedly, just to other women. But to get them to act as a group, and feel like a team, and feel empowered as a group to speak out, I think, is the first word of the stat. In Jalalabad, it was a major issue because it was very typical to find girls that would be willing to do this because it's very dangerous. So again, we had to, you know, go to the families and explain what we had in mind. No photographs. No videos. They're very afraid of appearing on the internet. And you don't have four pictures that I managed to take of the girls. And I just want to show you the four pictures. If you could just show those. Because, you know, we worked with the girls that were studying through the leadership training program. And there they are, my picture, the girls in the leadership training program with their certificates and father names. But that's how they would take their picture. It's okay. There they are, proud to present themselves like this. Here we are at the Women's Shura, out in Cirque Road, a very small village. This is, you know, somebody's house. There's a room inside there, and the chickens are over there, and the kitchen is somewhere to the left. Usually we just pull up the mat, do the performance. Here's another Women's Shura. These are both Women's Shuras. You can see the women's faces. They looked at the pictures afterwards until they knew which ones to delete. And then things are all about. Again, women are from the back. This is the performance at the girls' orphanage. Most of the girls are quite young, so it's okay. If you took them from the back, I had to Photoshop out one of the girls' faces when I was showing. You can see they're sort of like covering their faces because they see the camera. This is the only way to do it, but I had to have some proof for the funders that I actually didn't know where they are. One of the formats that we use is very much advising these days. The model that we use is we're asking these companies what do they need, and of course they only need money, first of all, but they need the opportunity to perform, and to meet with NGOs that might hire them, and UN organizations that might hire them in the future. One of the formulas we use is the narrators, so that we have the dramatic story, but the two women in the workplace are kind of like the town gossipers. But they're actually narrating the story because they're saying what the issues are. They're gossiping about what the issues are, and they're listening to the story. It was a young girl, 13, who was going to be married off to an older man for a very good price, but it was going to save the family. They were very, very poor, and this is very often what happens and they're going to be $20,000 wide to sell your daughter. Then when we go to a university, and the backliners talk about what's going to happen to the girl, if she goes to the university, or why it wouldn't be a very good idea for the girl to get married, we should wish she didn't have that sacrifice to sacrifice herself for the sake of the family. This model of asking the company what do they need. They didn't really say, I need to remiss the energy as part of it, but you know what, they're really glad that they have it. In fact, they will be hired more by local NGOs that really need a women's theater company to take this information about whatever it's polio vaccinations, women's health or family planning, or the fact that there is a law against violence against women now, and it's against Islamic law, and they address both sides of these issues, both the law, both the civil law and Islamic law in all of the countries. This is just so important, and now they realize how important it is. I'm not a camera, so I'm really not going to let this find us anywhere near them. And because they were told they're going to present it, I'm not going to let that man go but we're going to try to really frame this in questions and not just presentations. I think we can all benefit though from beginning with you, Cindy, and hearing about what you have done because you really have done a pioneering work in making this curricular and also making it accessible through video and through the book, which I have used, by the way I was teaching recently policy and culture in Dubrovnik and the new private international university there and I have to honestly say in my first day I've kind of tried to introduce this subject I don't think I did very well they all were with me, I mean completely blank close. On the second day I used your film and used it with an application with the Bosnian example, the Serbian example of the theater, and they all came to life and they all started talking and they literally came up and said oh now we understand what you're talking about so I'm going to start in the future so it's a good place for us to start here, but what we'd like to do is after each person presents, invite your questions then and even in the middle if something's going on you have a question about let's just keep the conversation going great thank you Cindy I'd like to hear about this work and you because there were definitely days and weeks in front of the computer screen that was the world and it's the most satisfying thing to know that it creates something and thank you all for organizing this conference and for allowing us the opportunity to think together about this really important thing to do myself the first thing I would say this is about partnerships right and models and I'm just saying one of the most important things you could do if you could to have a successful partnership would be to Colon River to Leviteau and Daniel Banks and the other folks because they are the most phenomenal partners and I just feel that I've been so enriched and nourished by the partnership between Randas and people about boardings this was an inquiry that there was a collaboration between Randas University and the Co-Distance Program there and theater about boarders the inquiry was into the contributions of performance of various kinds to the transformation of conflict all the words that were very carefully chosen after six or so years of meetings and working on police studies last year we actually published a two volume anthology of the second one here that has Daniel Banks' chapter in it and a documentary film and a toolkit and I think just because we've been listening and listening to talk for quite a while now we want to just play you a short clip from the documentary it's a scene from Kedav and so Randas started something about five minutes ago another one I remember that we presented it in a square of a town of height of the war zone where there was a conflict in my country and there was a moment when a rocket was blown that's what they said a exact rocket the rocket was blown up in the middle of all the people were there in the square of arms looking and people remembered what was just happening the war moments and they started to retire so much effort to go and not go the people who spoke of the show have to come they don't go they haven't finished the show and less people went back together and however it didn't stop reflecting on how dangerous and important it is to approach those life situations that are so difficult well the show ends and people don't go and I think about a board and I say friends the show is about to retire and people don't go so I said what do I do? and look at the flowers that are around a tomb of a missing person and I took out a flower and I approached the first person who was in front and I gave a flower to the lady as I said it was over people started to form a line children men women when the flowers were over I was sharing the candles and when the candles were over I saw that there were some dry leaves and the people with the same reception with the same warmth we took that as a symbol and we hugged those are things that we can rationalize I think we were reconciling I think we were also cleaning we were not taking care of each other I think that a commission really uses its own tools of approaching people of investigation our people go on the sensitive side our people go on the human side we would like there to always be a relationship with these thoughts about art and about the politics of the situation we found this to be true of the artists who were in this project from conflict regions is that they had much to say about performance but they also had a lot to say about the situations in which they were working but most of them almost all of them had not had any education and the opportunities for education were still so people had never heard of transitional justice they had never thought about how to analyze a conflict so one of the learnings from this project is that somehow as a field we have to find ways if we expect artists to do this work and if artists are finding their way to the work even if it's not being supported we have to find ways of giving them tools to and they can be as effective and as powerful as possible and also to minimize the risk of doing harm as we've been saying here I never described to the do no harm because I think we all do harm all the time it's inevitable and we remember doing good but we can minimize the risks of doing the most if we just turn to ourselves into the communities where we work so I wanted to just say to share with you a few of the findings of this project so we were seeking a kind of rigor in our inquiry that would be credible in academic settings and would also speak to policymakers and we did analyze the stories and come up with seven actual I think or eight maybe concrete lessons so I'm going to share those with you and then I will talk a little bit about our collaboration and what we learned what was positive about it and what the challenges were so that's and I'm going to do it very so these are the learnings peace-building performances bear witness to the human cause of war and oppression and particularly to its gendered nature we didn't invite stories about sexual violence but they were present in almost every region that's one of their purposes is to reflect back to the human community what it is doing to itself we also discovered that performances are powerful that they embody a kind of power that can be crafted to transform conflict they don't always transform conflict but they can be crafted and we discovered by reflecting across this body of 14 case studies what the sources of that power are I think this is really important performances have the potential to help communities navigate to store painful issues and to navigate through very complex ethical territory about memory and imagination and justice and mercy about integrity of the group and interdependence and these were the things that emerged through a thematic analysis of the case studies we discovered that performances do have the risk of doing great harm and in our toolkit that's in this documentary and also in the second volume we have some guidelines for minimizing the risks of doing harm based on the kind of harms that emerged in the stories we also discovered that aesthetic and socio-political effectiveness do not have to compete with each other they're often strong aesthetics and strong effectiveness and the life of the community can be mutually reinforcing and another important thing is that artists based work community based work and rituals that emerge from communities all have the the potential to be very effective and one of the values of our project is that we provided space for practitioners of these different modalities to inquire into each other's practice and to open up the stereotypes that they had of each other or the judgments that they had of each other we discovered that the truly deep transformative power of the arts depends on respect for the integrity of the artistic process and also another really important I think finding for and I think the U.S. County case is a really good example that the most powerfully impactful performances took place when there were collaborations between arts and cultural organizations and non-arts organizations and that's I think a challenge for diplomats for human rights organizations for intergovernmental organizations they can't expect the arts organization to do everything it's when we can value as I said the other day the aesthetic power of the art work and the strategic thinking of the peace building can you give an example of one of those partnerships well here this was U.S. County with the TRC with the TRC there was an example in Israel with the Arab Hebrew theater that actually interested the traditional TRC with some actors and some citizens but in collaboration with the public committee against torture in Israel human rights organizations in in Australia the indigenous rituals of reconciliation were made obviously so much more powerful when they actually led in certain ways to the Prime Minister's apology for the stolen generations so when something transformative is happening in the society and there's uptake when it's taken up by those who have other kinds of power then we're I think it's a field we're able to advance and we're able to have a greater impact on the world so it occurs to me that in this context you're talking about situations where there is a need and that the people on the policy human rights end of that need we have to in some way recognize that they need something more or they could use help in some way that they're not succeeding totally on their own in what they're trying to do and there's a kind of opening in Argentina the grandowners of the Plaza de Mayo wanted to find ways of reconnecting the grand children who have been taken from the generation who disappeared and to communicate with their grandparents their two grandparents and they work with artists all around the country who every year, one Monday they perform with theater all over the country with an enemy of about 70 grand children who connect with their grandparents because of the conversations that are initiated by those players I'm not cutting off on just wondering if anyone here will continue or there as other examples seems to be this useful example there's the cultural component and there was a real need and there was a partnership Just to go on a minute we were saying about the specific group of the PRC so what was great about that and what I'm really struggling about is the example that we showed a little after is that you have the conflict 83, 88, 83 to 93 then you have the Truth Reconciliation Commission 2000 in Peru and one of the things that was interesting about that was yes the sort of political you know the political change had been turned already in some ways but the PRC was actually quite controversial as I'm sure you know because arguments about numbers of casualties so the figure that had been more or less assumed wasn't up 30,000s then most of them being the kinds of people that the artist was describing as in the towns visited in the young budas and so on but the PRC came up with a figure of 70 something thousand so what that meant was is it raised the problem of the Truth Reconciliation Commission revealed that there is still unresolved Truth Reconciliation because there are massive discrepancies and so what was great about that is those different non-president voices were precisely the folks in these communities in places like the region of Ayacucho which is where most of that happened that never had an opportunity to participate in the formal institutional process of Truth Reconciliation No they did you have honey to testify and they did because Dr. Solomon Lerner the president of PRC invited you actually to accompany them to prepare people to testify and I just want to mention this it's a really very powerful example I think and Dr. Lerner came to Brandeis this past year and there's a speech on our website that he gave which makes the strongest case I've ever heard of why theater in particular is critical to justice seeking because of what is being violated is our meaning-making capacity and it's theater, theatrical work we embody work that restores that capacity so it's online in Spanish and English so let me say I'm thinking about our collaboration and then so Roberta and I sat down yesterday for the first time to reflect on our collaboration so thank you for giving us that space and there are positive things and challenges and then some unique things about it first of all we engage in this as theater thought boarders and Brandeis and Roberta and me and our teams with an enormous sense of respect initially and that I think persisted through our entire project with all these ups and downs I mean a seven year project with ups and downs and we did discover that we needed that we had different languages and that we needed to find a common language or ways of embracing the differences of our language but we did have a unified desire which was to document and strengthen and add credibility to this field of work and that was really important to share common goals and in fact as the project began long before the book was published or the documentary came out we found ourselves having more credibility because of our partnership so I could say we're collaborating with theater without boarders doors open this was a collaboration between an academic program and a loose network of very committed theater artists that didn't have an organizational structure and was very close to a lot of people working on the ground in very difficult places so one of the challenges was the pace of the inquiry like Roberta was getting like we need help, we need help and I'm saying okay but we have to do the analysis and we have to revise this one more time one more time and one more time that was one thing I mean there's so many things I love about how artists make meaning in the world and one of them is not necessarily writing a critical essay and so the fact that we were committed to writing serious accessible essays that really brought serious ideas from people and maintained the voice of the individual artist and author took a lot of revisions a lot of revisions and at the same time I would say as an educator it's the most thrilling work I've ever done because you could just see people like grabbing these ideas and incorporating them more and more deeply into how they were described and thought about their own practice another tension that we experienced was that I and some of the other people were actually getting paid to do this work as part of our job even though we were working like a few zillion hours a week but there were other people who were doing this totally as a volunteer effort and no matter what if you have that kind of discrepancy this shows up in uncomfortable ways sometimes in all parts and we also were accountable to different constituencies so that created a challenge and it also was a very sprawling project that even though it did have some support it didn't have nearly the support that it needed so managing communications across this very sprawling group of people all over the world who couldn't really be in face to face or did so in awkward and unusual combinations for other reasons usually was a huge challenge and we asked ourselves what we would do differently as we were going to do it over this is the first time we did talk about this history of money one is that we would try to get more money up front another one that I would say is that we would we started out with the first body of case studies there was some diversity but there was an imbalance there were too many American artists for the kind of collection that we wanted so we did not cut back we just expanded so we ended up with what was going to be a book turning into two books and in fact that was just hugely difficult I mean it was producing two books is a lot more work than one book analyzing 14 case studies is a lot more work than nine case studies and all that so I think moving forward if I were to do a project like this again I would not be happy with any person that's here and I think this book is fantastic but I would be more rigorous about the process up front and we also had three co-editors one of them is in Australia and that would be the answer so those are some things about our collaboration I think that is so helpful I don't want to recommend anyone who hasn't used this book I find it fantastic to use for teaching I know Derek is used to it yeah I'll just quickly say even in terms of this question of what is needed and the idea of a seven year project as most theatre people and many academics that the scale of that this resource I wish I'd had it as a student even teaching and I feel like I just scratched the surface because the second book came out right before the course started it is so the range of work, the comprehensiveness you get a sense of the care there's nothing, truly nothing like it the work that's gone into the support materials the web thing the documentary assembly so it's changed my sense of hope about how one thing can actually you could just do a whole year long course with these as your resources so anyway another possibility in terms of curriculum I could imagine also collaborating with foreign policy people with certain regional expertise people who work in South Latin America or they work with people who really lose this as a key part of the course so I think it's immensely valuable I'll just say one thing it started out being a three year project you didn't mention it so yeah, well we're all familiar but I think let's go to Roberta now and I would be I don't know if this works for you just ignore it if it doesn't but it would be useful to hear from you because you do so much just on sheer energy of pulling people together and getting things done I'd like to hear from you on what is needed and what would help you reach that mythical policy community we're talking about here or what are the steps in between to have them be more knowledgeable about the work that all the people in theater are doing well I hope I've heard some useful ideas I know that there were steps along the way that were extremely useful and maybe are analogous in this situation this peaceful community is one portion of the work of other houses so one thing that Cynthia did was she introduced us to people she would bring us to dinner literally there would be a meeting day where the coexistence program was meeting about their own issues and the three artists would be sitting there all day long and then have dinner I forget the name of the guy who was doing the in Iraq when they were first established Robert Cigley on it so he was sitting next to me at dinner and what have you and he said well I just got back and I was there to help try to create this community government and I said do you work with artists? and he said the local artist and he said why? and I said they might be your allies in what you're trying to accomplish and he said why? and I said well like in Greek plays there's some one and Tigny who has one idea and then Creon who has another idea and in the play they debate the idea and the chorus responds to those ideas and then so the audience is watching two ideas and he said in my own language but now I have to learn his language and you were really good and I think all of us would agree we learned it was like going through law school when I was going through coexistence school I learned an entirely new way of an event happens how do I analyze it, how do I speak about it what are these vocabulary words I didn't lose my language I hope, I don't think so but I learned a new language and I feel now confident that again I could speak in his language and I think that's so important I just want to bring back in something that Dean Lai Hester said that Carol said that this culture is the way you get to know other countries and peoples but that is just not the way foreign service people or foreign policy people are it's just not in the horizon that's not an impossible thing to change I mean you change it through curriculum to school there is the Foreign Service Institute which everybody goes through and this inspires me to try to do harder something I've been trying to do which is to get there's no cultural element whatsoever in the basic training every person who enters the State Department goes through the A100 class and there's nothing cultural in it and actually I'm happy to say there's a wonderful guy coming back I got an email yesterday named Justin Sibarro who's very interested he's coming back to Washington very interested in getting this into the A100 class so there are actually some concrete steps that we can try to take I think working with Cynthia made me confident and proud to be a thoughtful practitioner that there was a value in learning how to articulate about my work I think artists have our own prides one of our prides often is I do it we do have to explain it especially in this new world and one of the things I constantly ask myself is what is an artist doing in this 21st century where there is so much going on in this world it can't be the same it is an opportunity to look at what's the role of the artist in the 21st century and it might indeed be completely different than what it has been previously so this notion of ethical reflection I think I think an analogous beginning of getting to know each other and sharing moments of interaction we had opportunities at the IFRA conference where we were trained in how to present she was like no that isn't going to communicate no that isn't going to communicate no that isn't going to yes and so we actually had to learn how to explain ourselves and now we deal with it we can do that so I think training us providing training opportunities we talk about boot camps for artists and these are things that mature artists want to learn we want to learn because we have to learn to be out there and have all of that on your shoulders and know that you're dealing with people who are traumatized and places where a single move that you make could tumble things in directions that you have no ability to re-pull together so it's actually frightening for artists IFRA and so there is a need just a couple of connections there in the what is the role of the artist in the 21st century the Aspen Institutes are component and under Damien Woodson he wasn't able to be here today but he is a former principal dancer with the ABT and he's running their arts program now and his big project here is going to be the citizen artist so there's a great thing because that's basically what you're talking about I wanted to just ask Sharon and actually Nick on this subject that we were talking about not being prepared, not having the language and everything you feel free to jump in on this if you've had these problems or how you've overcome them Sharon in the British Foreign Service is it like the French in France you move around you're not in Rome so you could be the cultural attaché the United States is a hugely coveted position and you could have previously been a political officer in the Sarajevo and then you might go on and be the political officer in South Africa or something and they totally move around what happens with the British and I know it's not the same as you and what happens with your training of people in the British Council you encounter artists we have a very wide variety of people we have a lot of people who are working professionally in the arts but the Foreign the Foreign Office doesn't have any cultural people because culture is not managed by the Foreign Office culture is led by the British Council and you do have it so they're low level work if you like the Foreign Office they all want to do political stuff and they don't want to do consular trade in the British Council we are all working if you like I'm somebody who is if you like sort of classical cultural relations person and I work across the disciplines but we have the way we work in the arts for example is in the UK we have an arts team an arts group where we have people who are specialists who have come from a professional artistic background so if I want to know something about music or theatre I contact Kathy Graham who was in the London Symphonyetta or if I want visual arts I contact Andrea Rhodes who is actually a specialist and who is a renowned curator of Confederate arts so I have those that expertise the director of our arts group who sits on the executive board and therefore is looking at things from HR to everything I have to say I think Graham is adjusting to it but is Graham Sheffield who used to be the Bargain who you know very well so coming very much from a strong arts background and then learning about administration if you like and getting used to it so it's some from Afghan and Iraq wars and I was approached last November by a choreographer who had been a marine in Fallujah and he had actually never been in combat but combat was always around the corner and he was fully trained as a marine and was carrying weapons and he was given a grant from the Mission Continues and came to Battery Dance Company one of the most institutional ideas that returning veterans should get involved in community organizations and thereby re-engaging at home so he came to us and we sat down and immediately figured out that working in New York City Public Schools with the tools of dancing to connect would be a fantastic opportunity for him so we trained him in our techniques and then he worked in New York City Public School and even before we got to that point I said to him, would you be interested in going back to Iraq and his eyes lit up and he was immediately drawn to that idea so we then approached Washington and it took a lot of arm twisting the idea of bringing dance to Iraq somehow didn't resonate except with one person who was the public diplomacy officer in Kirkirk and she was all for it a group of young people, teenagers who were training in English language and she thought this would be the greatest perk for them to give them this dance workshop but then there were several episodes in Kirkirk that made her wary of having the project there because it wouldn't be an easy flow back and forth between the Americans and the students and she thought the security issues would be great so she appealed to her colleague in Erbil and said can we move the program there and he agreed on the basis that he could have 20 students of his own involved so we had a mixed group of students from Kirkirk, Erbil and they went through this dancing to connect program there were young men and young women in the same group and when Roman and Robin came back they commented on the passion of none of these young people that ever danced before there was never any no dance training obviously but not even dance socially and yet they were so powerful on stage they actually did a full performance and one of the characteristics that really surprised them was the sense of humor of these young people despite the trauma that they had been through they still had or maybe through the whole experience because of the sense of humor and all coupled with a passion in their movement so we hope that we're going to be able to have the opportunity to go back to Iraq and do more programs like that anyway this website will be constantly updated so it's not going to be something that is runs out and we're just really excited to be able to share what we've learned with others Thank you Johnson and it's really useful maybe one of the things we can think about tomorrow and everybody think about what tomorrow is is there is this it or are there additional ways where to amplify this some kind of web presence just super fact and everybody gets crisp and asked is there a resource page on the web that Allie's done that's actually got links to a lot of what John has done but all these organizations I'm sure your feeling is flooded with all of the things that are here and so Allie's done an amazing job collecting that and it's just named that for the making of this but Nick also mentioned some way for all of this group to stay connected that's the same I think that's the same stuff so we can talk about that tomorrow anyway we'll talk about that something but also just I've heard that you connected with somebody I'm sorry but you didn't know each other you didn't know me both and the convo doing this work and how many people have done this I'm sure more than you do but that's the main so we need to figure that out too go ahead just talking about dance and the Allie of Iran I just wanted to share a small story give some hope a few years back we went for a festival in Iran and we thought that dancing was prohibited by women and we saw women dancing about on the streets theater and on stage so I asked one of the young ladies that how come we thought that women are not allowed to dance in public she said oh no we don't call it dance we call it nice movements then she showed me the dance I thought it was a nice movement for you Raheem if you need my so and so so sometimes you all rose on us very kind of this is one of our visiting artists from Iraq who is an actor Raheem I am actor and I don't speak English very well can we have a translator? please you know the circle from Iraq because Iraq is very dangerous but you can you go to Erbil because it's easy but I think I live in Baghdad and find my family my children in school in Baghdad yeah I think they are bombed in Baghdad but Baghdad not dangerous you can ask that from you can say that more people American come to Baghdad more actor in London come to Baghdad I am young man with my with the group with me to work drama dance the drama dance is in you from Iraq but every time to work from drama dance and Egyptian and take the first actor in the drama dance the young man the group young man to work theater he like he wish to come to Baghdad and to work in Baghdad I tell you everybody come so what is your name what is your name Hesar come to cut this in Baghdad if any in Baghdad politics but you are not politics you are actor you are you are an artist you come to cut that because you need that please help me to get people to Baghdad I honestly don't know we have a proposal pending with the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to do this program in Baghdad one of the things that needs to happen is in America you come to come to Baghdad you come to take visa I know that it is very different it is very this comes very very very different but if you need that come to turn that with the ministry or culture to make I am sorry I like making this project or a project between institute institute four years making this project and theater and plays four years I am the advisor for the institute of peace department department department department they come to Baghdad I will follow up on that that would be really useful I want to now turn to Chris Jennings and ask you to speak in your capacity with international theater institute do you want to ask us a question to Chris? the work of ITI and TCG which is the one of four hats that Chris is working with now I think many of us have worked with it is such an important umbrella in terms of a range of this activity that we discussed so Chris has heard a lot and I think you can pick up where you want to pick up one we alluded to it is just even convening in this group you find the immense amount of work out there immense amount of companies working globally and when you are coming into it it is how do we start to build the infrastructure and the support to navigate those waters so what I am talking about is not necessarily models but hopefully models that we can start to build as a field so that is something that is very important to me with Sharon here I always sing the praises of the British council because they were a great asset to us in building bridges and connecting companies and I wish that here in the U.S. I was not finding that resource I found it very ironic that I was having to look to the British council to actually build bridges from theater companies and I hope that we whether it is U.S. I.T.C.G. and certainly we need to find a way to do a globally find a way to connect companies because I think the most exciting work is once you connect artists and the point to it is right now our skate department and again it is a big shift to turn so I am not saying that they are not trying but it is very much been a top down policy and I think this work has to happen at a grassroots level and what has been wonderful about the British council is they connect the artists they connect the companies they let the conversations happen they see what bubbles to the top and they try to help get things over the finish line and we need more of that we need a lot more of that the other part is the path to the work and I alluded to this the other day that within the work of the director circle there has been an evolution both of institutional to greater collective companies there has been an evolution of presenting companies now producing and producing companies now presenting and the ecology is changing and it is turning and it is changing very very very quickly and what is great about it is that now we have a time we have an opportunity to question how these companies operate and work with one another one of the real interesting conversations we are having is how does devised work evolve a lot of times this work has been commissioned in presenting houses and developed in presenting houses but producing companies actually have a lot of assets in developing devised work both in providing a home for it in the rehearsal space dramaturgy and just a lot more development time and so I think we are finding that the companies can talk to one another and work together and a lot of the work that the presenting companies have been supporting may actually start to find a home in producing companies and then find its path for it's life in crossing paths between producing and presenting houses so this is something that again I'm finding very interesting in the evolution and part of the conversations that we are having the final thing and this is going to be my little political stand which is I think the most within government is actively being put down right now whether you talk about it in America through the Tea Party or whether you go to the Netherlands and talk about it with the Freedom Party every country is going through the same thing and the artist voice is being put down and it's all over the world and it's global and what there is an opportunity because I think we in America used to admire the kind of subsidy program that would exist in the Netherlands or the UK but as those systems are diminishing they're looking to America but we've always known the faults of the American system which takes much more administration and less focus on the art and I think there's now a time for a global conversation about what is the funding infrastructure to support the artist and the artist voice that finds the right balance that used to exist within the subsidy program but also is protected in a much more stable environment within the US because it's more diversified and neither one is the ideal so I think there is a way globally to talk about funding for the arts and artists so this is just my little gauntlet of the three things that I would love for us to support the artist and global work and to create the model so I'm not presenting any models these are the models that I want to see evolve over the next few years Thank you for your volunteering That is just the brilliant global statement and that's what needs, you need to evangelize for us for all of us in the world for everyone to say precisely that in the end it comes down to money, it comes down to not devaluing artists and it comes down to putting us at the top of the agenda and in all our countries we are being put down to the bottom of the agenda and artists can make a difference and we have to fight our corner and lobby I think that university is a really good place to try to make that happen I think of Georgetown global performance institute something like that would be an energy to start that type of discussion and create a center for that to happen This has started in today not connect only companies and artists but also connect universities Absolutely because they are the ones that can bring the artists and the companies in Can you just I know a bunch of other people I'm sorry to interrupt this video Can you let folks know who is in the director's circle and the kind of people that are connected through that network There are people from Australian festivals from the Lyft Festival that have producing companies like the Abbey Theater the Public Theater so you've got producing theaters then you've got the Walker Arts Center so you've got presenting houses you've got St. Anne's Warehouse so it's a wide array and it truly is global so you've got Europe you've got Australia and you've got America and it's both presenting and producing and Emerson is right because there's a little university isn't there because some of the presenting houses are tied to universities and some of the theaters are tied to universities yeah I love all of this conversation it's fabulous however I also wanted to point out that I don't think that we should think that it's own to the western world that's helping everybody else we need help too and some of the experiments that work on experiments but the projects that I hear they're happening in other countries oh my god we need them here not only our own companies but why not some of the international companies come and work in our troubled communities in communities where people are out of work and they don't have any help they're not victims of a war specifically but they're victims of poverty and illness and racism and sexism so that when we say global it should be an exchange that goes in both ways not just us sending stuff to the third world but that we also are saying yes bring your work to us because it's healing in our communities also and then get it to the communities that need the healing so that yes we can see it at the Shakespeare theater but that they can also see it in communities that are suffering just like to respond to that and I would say that the Blue Waters Corp would get nowhere in these countries where it works if it did not first acknowledge that it's coming from a country that itself has not reconciled many historical moments slavery the Native American it's truly only by talking about that that we're able to get to a point and say helping a South African company come together that anything comes from it and I wanted to say that when that company came to the U.S. and to Detroit that was I'm told that wasn't around that was the hardest talk back to work through because it evoked a lot of emotion with relates to Jonathan's excellent point about humility to you know form a good relationship with the foreign interlocking or begin by emitting your own faults I was going to bring up another you told me that it might be a good voice for artists and that's the United Nations I didn't hear it mentioned at all but we are an NGO in association with the United Nations and there is a Department of Public Information DPI you can be an NGO in association with the UN DPI and they don't have enough artists joining because artists don't join and really it is another form for artists voices to be heard on a global level and every once in a while they get together and have these big sessions where people speak out and you know we call ourselves sometimes artistic humanitarian organization because we do both but it's I don't know if any other organizations here are part of the UN or associated with the UN seeing I think we should also be pointed out that the new Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy is the former executive like second in charge of the Institute of Peace so that could be could signal an opportunity she's very open to this terrorism it's happening it's rousing conclusion to this day truly I mean so we're about to share some tight news about dinner and the amazing theater we're about to see that's a short show but a brilliant show and then a reception and drinking right on the heels of it so we're moving quickly to the next thing but it's all ending in like rousing conversation with field by alcohol so so if you are getting a shuttle over to studio we're leaving at 6.45 so it doesn't give you a ton of time for dinner it's hot and piping and waiting for you outside for those of you who are leaving from the hotel tomorrow morning the shuttle is leaving at 9.30 and you're welcome to either leave your bags there and we'll have a shuttle back there at the end in the session tomorrow or you can bring them here and leave straight from here so it's totally up to you thank you everyone for being here we got up to a late start this morning and so your flexibility with time and you know the payoff was that things really got going in such a beautiful way so thank you all thanks for the