Jennifer Mcgee:	Good afternoon everyone, my name is Jennifer Magee, I'm the associate director for student programs and training at the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility.
	It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you our speaker Sharon Friedler. Sharon is professor and director of the Dance Program, and faculty advisor for off-campus study at the college. She was also the first Stephen Lang Professor of the Performing Arts. Her areas of interest include dance composition, history and theory of dance, with special interests in cross-cultural study, gender and dance as a social change agent, modern dance technique, and traditional and contemporary dances of Ghana.
	Sharon is co-editor of the book Dancing Female: Lives and Issues of Women in Contemporary Dance and she serves as chief examiner for dance for the International Baccalaureate Organization.
	At Swarthmore, Sharon's courses currently include dance composition, various history and theory offerings, especially courses on Africa, gender, identity and dance on film, modern dance, dance and drama ensemble, and a seminar focused on the arts and social change.
	To quote Sharon, "I dance and teach, choreograph and write about dance in part because dance is a direct, and yet complex, way of communicating and developing meaningful conversations between diverse individuals and communities. My path has allowed me to research and practice ways to apply dance as a tool for communication in many arenas: educational, political, religious and social. The identifying markers we each carry, which are often sources of both convergence and conflict between individuals and groups, such as age, gender, race, class, religious beliefs, profession and place of origin among them. These can be put into different perspectives when we are dancing or viewing the dances of others. It is not that the markers fall away when we dance but that, engaged in dancing, we grasp them differently."
	Please join me in welcoming Professor Sharon Friedler.
Sharon Friedler:	Good afternoon. Thanks so much for coming in from this very lovely day to spend some time inside thinking about some issues together that I hope will give you a slightly different turn on what you think about the arts as a social change medium.
	I want first to do the usual thing that happens in performance events and that ...
	Please come in, come down front, there's plenty of room.
	... and that is, could you please turn off your cell phones and close your laptops. I'm a real person and I'm about to give, along with some of my wonderful students and former students, a real opportunity to you. It's that engagement that on the ground be present mentality that is most important to us in the arts, and it's critical when we're trying to make social change. I really appreciate you powering down for the next 59 minutes. Okay? Thank you.
	Welcome everybody, I'm really happy that the alumni office gave me this chance, along with students and alum, to share some ideas with you today. When someone asks who you are, where you are from and what you do. What are your answers? I find that mine often vary based on context.
	Yes, I am Sharon ...
	Please come in. Please come in. There are lots of spaces to sit.
	... I am Sharon: a dancer, a dance professor, a choreographer, a writer, a teacher, a student, a wife, a mother, a human being from the United States. And I've lived in a variety of places within this country, but I have also lived and worked, and been confused, and tried hard to make art and to make change in Ghana, Italy, Northern Ireland, Poland, Canada, and Wales. Each of these places, and my life in them, shapes my who, my what, and certainly my why as an artivist.
	Increasingly, I describe the work I do, whether it is done in the dance studio, in a classroom, on the page, on a stage, or via media-based formats as work for peace. Each year, each day, the need for peaceful actions and images increases in our world.
	Today our core question then is: what can art do to help?
	In my experience art is a compelling vehicle for self-declaration and awareness, for conceptual learning, for reaching those who weld power, for building bridges across divides. A few moments ago I used the word artivist. The term was brought to my attention by Cortnie Belzer. Some of you saw a digital story of hers when you were coming in. Cortnie is a Swarthmore student and I'll talk a little more about her work later.
	This term, artivist, was coined in the book It's Bigger than Hip Hop written by MK Asante Jr. He writes of the artivist, "The artivist, artist plus activist, uses her artistic talents to fight and struggle against injustice and oppression by any medium necessary. The artivist merges commitment to freedom and justice with the pen, the lens, the brush, the voice, the body and the imagination. The artivist knows that to make an observation is to have an obligation."
	Today's presentation focuses on those who are learning to be artivists and understanding the obligation. First I'll offer a perspective on the course I created and continue to teach at Swarthmore entitled The Arts as Social Change. Discussion about the work in that course, and a similar course I taught in Siena, Italy last spring while I was on sabbatical will also be included.
	I have the great pleasure of sharing with my presentation today with two current students and one alumni, who are young artivists. They will each share their ideas and examples of their work with you as well. As you may have guessed from the sheets of paper up on the board and the designations we are also hoping to do a little work together, a little hands-on exercise here today with you. It's a lot for an hour so we have to get started.
	Let's begin, very briefly, with the course as it's taught at Swarthmore. In it, what I seek to do, is bring together students with an interest in investigating and investing in arts and social change. These students, in my experience, have come from all across the curriculum, so they are not necessarily art students. I want to make that clear right from the get-go. The course began as part of a sabbatical project, I was fortunate enough to receive funding from a Mellon Foundation New Directions grant in 2004 - 2005.
	I've got ... Excuse me? I have a cough drop because I've got a cold too.
Students:	Thank you.
Sharon Friedler:	Maybe that will help.
	I had a grant from the Mellon Foundation to develop a faculty seminar on community-engaged learning and then a course involving the arts and social change grew out of that. The faculty seminar was first held in 2006 and 2007, and the course was first taught in 2010. It has been taught three times since and will be offered again this coming spring 2014.
	How does the course work? The most direct answer to that is it works as a community. We build a community.
	What does our community do? It engages in discussion of readings and video. It hosts and visits leaders from the local arts and social change scene, and there are many, we're fortunate in Philadelphia and the surrounding area. Everyone participates in volunteer internship placements as a required part of the course. And finally, I encourage every student to create a practice that they can build upon when they leave the course. That practice might involves their major, it might not. It might involve their time only at Swarthmore, who knows? It might blossom into something that they carry through their life. I hope so.
	What are the goals of our community then? First, I like to try to see that we have an orientation to the history and theory in this field. Yes, it's a field, the arts and social change. Young but growing. We read what people have written: people from the U.S., from Canada, from Europe, from Asia, from Africa. We really try to get the various perspectives that are critical to this conversation. We provide opportunities for students to observe and visit artivists who are working in our community. They come to class, we got to them, we attend various performances, lectures, etc. Finally, we try through placements that the students are invested in for them to spend time every week in the community.
	Are they doing their own projects? No. They are sometimes typing, walking people to a meeting, getting coffee. Not the glamorous things, not the big idea things, yet. They are serving those people with the big ideas from whom they really need to learn. Occasionally they get thrown into the deep end of the pool and they have to manage something and it's great, because why? They can come back the next week and say to their community, yikes, this is what happened, this is where we were, this is how I handled it. And they can get help and courage to go back out again. These things are networking opportunities.
	We examine historical examples ...
	Please, come in and take a seat. There's plenty of room.
	... we experience current local effort in and around Philadelphia. We learn about the international scene.
	How has the course been working? For me, one very important measurement can be found in the students it's impacting so today it's my really great pleasure to share with you the voices of three current students and one alum. Now, three of those people are here. And one, Cortnie, is currently studying abroad in London where she hopes to be working with refugee children as part of her work in London.
	I'm going to talk just a little bit about Cortnie and I'm going to read a statement from her. Cortnie Belzer, class of '15, is a Lang Opportunity scholar. Since high school she has been working in, and coordinating, various projects to forward opportunities in an education in the arts for underserved minority youth in her hometown, which is Baltimore, Maryland. Cortnie reflected on her digital story, in which some of you saw, after she took the course and made the story in spring 2012.
	These are her words, "I must admit, I did not believe I had a story worth telling inside of me. My life isn't glamorous and my past isn't filled with beautiful memories. I didn't have a story until I realized that many of us feel the same way about our own lives. Writing my digital story consisted of me pacing around my dorm room, frenziedly talking to myself while scribbling the random thoughts that came to head on a piece of paper taped to my wall. There was no structure to my process. I went freely. Hoping a theme would shine though. Finally, it did. I titled my story The Thrill in You because being a young person is what it's all about for me. Living and learning and [listening 00:14:38] are the things I desired as a youth, and now try to help produce in the young people I mentor today. While I am not much older than those who that I mentor, I am able to find the thrill in me through youth. My only hope is that my story stimulates the desire for just one person to seek and find the thrill in them."
	Okay, next we're going to turn to Leanna Brown. Leanna, class of '15, was also a member of the 2012 arts and social change class. She is majoring in psychology and minoring in dance, and black studied. Leanna will be talking to us about her own history with the arts and social change. And now we need to do just a little quick change here while Leanna puts on the mic and I give her the [inaudible 00:15:41] and then she talks to you.
Leanna Brown:	All right, thank you Sharon.
	What exactly is meant by the arts for social change? The first time I learned and heard of this term was through Penumbra Theatre Company, the oldest African American theater company based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. More specifically, it was in their summer institute, a four-week intensive program for teens to create work and a final performance to provoke thought, highlight social issues and create social change. It sounds like a pretty lofty idea, right?
	But in having danced in various spheres, such as praise dancing at my church, dancing once a week recreationally at my local dance studio and competing with my high school dance team, this idea of using the arts for social change brought a richer purpose to my dancing.
	I think that the arts for social change, now that I reflect on it, I think dance has always been a passion of mine, an outlet, a source of empowerment and a form of expression. To me, this is an example of the arts for social change existing on a micro-level, but also I think that the arts for social change can exist on a macro-level. For example, when dance brings people together and helps build community this shows the arts for social change. Likewise, when marginalized issues are told though dance before an audience to provoke thought, this can also be a form of arts for social change.
	After I too leaned that I was an activist artist, or artivist, this journey has continued upon my arrival at Swarthmore. This past summer I interned at “Life Lines” Community Arts Project summer camp though the Center for Family Life, a social services agency based in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. And this experience has furthered my passion in using the arts for social change.
	A brief excerpt from my final report following my internship: "I learned that it is possible to weave social work and the arts in such a way that makes in accessible for all. I love how Center for Family Life operates from a strength-based approach where the strengths of the young and families of the Sunset Park neighborhood are valued and utilized in the work that CFL does. When using this approach I feel that all have something to contribute and all can gain something from the opportunities offered. I think that this point of valuing what all have to offer is an integral part of the arts for social change. At the end of the day it is about making a positive impact in the community through which appreciating what people bring to the table is vital."
	And now, I'll hand it over to Molly.
Sharon Friedler:	While Molly and Leanne are doing the switch I just want to tell you that Molly also [crosstalk 00:18:58] was another member of the 2012 arts for social change class community. Molly is a double major in math and community science. She will focus on the importance of community in arts and social change work, as she sees it. Thanks, Molly.
Molly:	Thank you, Sharon.
	I see the arts as social change as a fundamental way that we can give back to our larger community. I stand up here today as a scientist, a mathematician, an artivist and ultimately a member of the planet, and I think the planet is a better place when we have art on it.
	My first experience with the arts as social change occurred five years ago this month, which is a little scary to think about. As part of my high school graduation requirements I had to complete 40 hours of service work in the Providence, Rhode Island community. At that point my sophomore year in high school 40 hours seemed like a daunting amount of time but by graduation I had stopped counting, I think around hour 200 maybe. I had begun to see my work as a fundamental component of my life.
	The project that I was lucky enough to work with is called Community MusicWorks. It's an after school arts initiative, someone knows it, to teach classical string music to inner cities. Its founder was a recipient of a 2010 MacArthur 'genius grant'. My work with Community MusicWorks was to aid in private and group lessons. This experience allowed me to see, and participate in, education and social change in action.
	What I learned from my experience at Community MusicWorks is the value of arts education in at-risk communities. For me, as a child, I believe my ability to be exposed to music and art really shaped me as a student, but also as a person. I learned the value of hard work, the importance of practice, how to be an individual but in a larger group, and to love the performing arts. However, the students with I worked with rely on Community MusicWorks to extend their view of music and arts, but for them Community MusicWorks also creates a safe and stable community for them. These are children from volatile family structures, they live below the poverty line, etc. I think creating a safe, stable and enjoyable community is one of the best things that social change work has to offer.
	When I came to Swarthmore I was looking for another way to participate in artistic outreach, however I wasn't exactly sure how to find it. But I was able to take Sharon's class, which taught me the fundamental theory of arts as social change work and connected me to work with music professor Tom Whitman who is an alum of the class of 1982, and his program Chester Children's Gamelan, which I still work with now. We bring music to students whose school system, from kindergarten to twelfth grade, has no arts program whatsoever. My role is to now bring art education to children in Chester, just as I did in Providence.
	How does all of this apply to you, members of the Swarthmore community? One of the things that I love about people at Swarthmore is that each person truly sees themselves as part of a greater community. And I believe everyone feels a responsibility to take care of that community. Some of us engage through environmental preservation, some through political campaigns, some through tutoring initiatives. We choose what we see as a need in our community and we strive to fulfill it.
	What I want to challenge you to think about is identify a need in your own community and think about how you can satisfy it. It doesn't have to be a big commitment, or a time suck. I go to Chester for a single hour every week. But something I truly believe in is that if we were all to contribute to our greater society the world would be a better place.
	Thanks.
Sharon Friedler:	Thanks Molly.
	Next ... Jalisa. Jalisa Roberts is the class of '13. She was a special major in dance and black studies. Jalisa established her nonprofit, which is called The Cocoon, during her sophomore year at Swarthmore. Last year, with financial assistance from the Swarthmore Foundation, and by winning the first SwatTank competition for young entrepreneurs, she launch this dance-based youth empowerment program in her hometown, which is New Orleans. Jalisa will give us a brief glimpse of what she is learning and her plans for her next steps.
Jalisa Roberts:	Sorry, I'm just briefly pulling up some pictures from our first ever final showcase.
	But I'm Jalisa, I'm a very recent graduate. It feels really weird to be back not as a student after so few months. But I, like Sharon said, am the founder of The Cocoon Youth Empowerment Program. I've been dancing for about 17 years now but it wasn't until I arrived at Swarthmore that I started to consider myself as both a dancer, a choreographer and now an artivist. And this place has cultivated that fire and passion in me.
	I have grown up in New Orleans for most of my life and have always wanted to offer an opportunity for students to access dance regardless of financial means. The only reason I was able to dance was because classes were about $35 a month, which his really inexpensive. But thought that I would only be able to do that after I had acquired some mythical amount of wealth in my 40s or 50s and could then donate it.
	But I arrived to Swarthmore after having gone through Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In 2009, I arrived at Swarthmore and was encouraged after that first year to start something now. To apply for funding through the college to start a program because it was needed. I'm from New Orleans East in a community where there's nothing for youth to do, at all. The park and library has just reopened in the past two years, and the hospital is just now being rebuilt. And so what I thought I could bring to my community was dance. The only reason I was able to process Hurricane Katrina was through dance.
	And so for the past three year I've been building The Cocoon and was able to win our first ever business plan competition, and run our first summer program this past summer. And the program is a danced-based youth empowerment program. The students came, they learned dance techniques, both western and non-western, I was able to teach them what I learned in my time in Ghana. And the second half of their way was spent cultivating them as leaders, both in their artistic endeavors and outside, so they spent time making their own pieces. From the very beginning they were creating their own pieces and engaging in round table discussions and leaderships sessions and skill building.
	And they were able to produce this first final showcase, which had 11 performances and a brass band. All just through their hard work they created their own solos and duets. One girl made a piece about her parent's divorce in which she'd gone through a years worth of depression, and this is a 13-year-old girl who's just about to go into high school, made a piece that made me bawl for about an hour. And it was at that moment, outside of everything that I'd been through, that I've seen how transformative dance can be, and what I can do to offer that to my community. And that's something that's been really powerful for me, and that I will continue.
	Right now we are working on our Saturday program. We're working on getting funding for a property for a permanent space in my community to have a Saturday program. And I, outside of that, am teaching dance in elementary schools through Community Works of New Orleans, and substitute teaching. I try to take what I've learned here everywhere I go.
	Thank you.
Sharon Friedler:	Thank you.
	Okay, so you've heard quite a lot from us at this point and I'm going to ask the three ladies here to come over to the board. We're going to do a little hands-on with you.
	Ashley how to I get the screen to go up? Can you do that?
Ashley:	Yep.
Sharon Friedler:	Thank you.
	Whoops, caught.
	Okay. I wanted to model for you, and my original idea was that we would break up into small groups and do a little work together, but there's not enough time for that so we're going to work in one big small group. All right? I'm going to try to work with you the green sheets, which I hope you all have. Where are the extras, Molly?
Molly:	In the back.
Sharon Friedler:	In the back, okay.
	John, could you do me a favor and grab the green ones that are in the back?
	If you didn't get a green sheet when you came in can you raise your hand? And you'll get one in just a couple minutes.
	On the green sheet, on one side, ever the teacher, are resources for you to take away with you. On the green sheet, on the other side, is an outline for a hands-on exercise, which we're going to do right now. This, I hope, will help you get a sense of the kinds of things that we do in the class. As well as why that might be important.
	You see it's a long list. We're not going to get through the whole list. We're going to take the first four things on the list.
	The first prompt for you on the list is: identify a need that can be addressed though the arts.
	Anybody got any ideas? Because the ladies are going to start to write these down on the sheets.
	Yes?
Students:	Belonging.
Sharon Friedler:	Belonging.
	What's a need that can be satisfied though the arts? Anybody else? You were brave, thank you so much.
	Yeah?
Students:	Creativity.
Sharon Friedler:	Creativity.
	Yep?
Students:	Inclusion.
Sharon Friedler:	Inclusion. Okay. These are great.
	I missed the next one.
Students:	Leadership.
Sharon Friedler:	Leadership. There we go.
	Are you up with them, you're good?
	Yeah, another one over here?
Students:	Self-expression.
Sharon Friedler:	Self-expression. Keep them coming.
Students:	Bridge building.
Sharon Friedler:	Bridge building. Great.
Students:	Disability slash abilities.
Sharon Friedler:	Disability ability. Right? Recognition of that.
Students:	Understanding.
Sharon Friedler:	Understanding. Terrific. Anymore?
	Yeah?
Students:	Teamwork
Sharon Friedler:	Teamwork. Absolutely. How are we doing? We're still up to it? Okay, great, almost. We're almost there.
Students:	Motivation.
Sharon Friedler:	Motivation. Good.
Students:	Wellness.
Sharon Friedler:	Wellness. Excellent. I see another hand but let's wait just a second.
	You see this is how it is. You can be up here writing but it felt like it was going to be too intrusive so we didn't do it.
	I though I saw another hand here. Yes?
Students:	Discipline.
Sharon Friedler:	Discipline. Yes, you heard that, right? You heard these ladies say, the discipline I got from my arts life.
Students:	Public education.
Sharon Friedler:	Public education. Right. Over here I called that quality education. We're concerned with quality. Okay.
	Anything else? We've got a pretty big list there.
	One more.
Students:	Hope for one's future.
Sharon Friedler:	Hope for one's future. Fair enough. The arts can do all this. We turn to the arts for all of these things.
	Ladies, do you want to add anything? What's missing, anything missing up there you want to make sure is on it?
Jalisa Roberts:	Mental health.
Sharon Friedler:	Mental health. Okay.
Molly:	Self-esteem
Sharon Friedler:	Self-esteem. Good.
	We have these things and we could apply them to a hundred different actions, different ways of doing those actions, but how can we link these things, or some of these things, to some of these things? Issues in our world. I just picked a couple.
	Which ones of these, or are there others, that really speak to you?
	We have this one, I talked about ... I didn't talk about healthcare, yeah I did. It's on here somewhere, isn't it? Affordable healthcare. But something that came up in ours, maybe you can add this Molly, is ability disability and mental health, are linked to that, aren't they?
	Anybody else got some ideas about other words that are on here that go here somewhere?
Students:	Can you tell us what ... Some of us have old eyes.
Sharon Friedler:	Some of us have old eyes. Okay, sorry, I have old eyes. I thought this was big enough but it's probably not.
	This says creative aging advocacy, immigration ... So popular and appropriate. This one says immigration rights. This one says affordable housing, refugee assistance, quality education, affordable healthcare, sustainable farming, roading rights, marriage equality. I could go on and on and on and on. So could you. That's the whole point.
	Yes?
Students:	Understanding would go into voting rights.
Sharon Friedler:	Understanding could go into voting rights. Great.
	Who else has a link they want to make? Yes?
Students:	I might put inclusion for marriage equality.
Sharon Friedler:	Inclusion for marriage equality.
	I saw a hand over here somewhere.
Students:	It was me. I was going to put inclusion with the creative aging.
Sharon Friedler:	Inclusion with creative again. These things don't go just in one place but it's what you're thinking, what's driving your idea about what next steps will happen. Yeah? How we doing?
	Yes, I see another one.
Students:	Bridge building with immigration rights.
Sharon Friedler:	Bridge building with immigration rights.
Students:	A sense of belonging with immigration rights.
Sharon Friedler:	Belonging with immigration rights. Absolutely.
Students:	Inclusion goes with affordable healthcare.
Sharon Friedler:	Inclusion goes with affordable healthcare. What else?
Students:	Leadership and learning how to write a grant goes with all of them.
Sharon Friedler:	Goes of all of them. Learning how to write a grant, we do that in the class. We learn how to write a grant, yes we do. And you know what? We have been successful. Yay us! All right, you get the point.
	I'm going to move on to point three, which is, what will be the focus of your group's proposed art action? Where do we want to focus? Now we've really got tough task because we have to say of all these wonderful possibilities up here, what are we going to focus on.
	We're just going to go with the fact that the first person who says something is going to be what our focus is, since we could go anywhere.
	Yes?
Students:	Affordable healthcare.
Sharon Friedler:	Affordable healthcare, okay, so we're writing that right up here.
	Okay, now, affordable healthcare for whom?
Students:	[crosstalk 00:38:20]
Sharon Friedler:	Everyone. Yay!
	All right, how are we going to do that though an art action? How are we going to do that? What's a vehicle? You've got an idea here for a vehicle.
Students:	One thing you said, which I think is a small piece, that we don't think of, it made me think of as art, which is journalism, which is the pen as well.
Sharon Friedler:	Right.
Students:	[inaudible 00:38:53]
Sharon Friedler:	You're thinking that whatever it is that we're doing might include the pen. Okay.
	What else might our action include?
Students:	Creating Haiku poems about how the Affordable Care Act works and using social media to post the Haikus.
Sharon Friedler:	All right. You hear that one? That's a whole like ...
Students:	Sorry.
Sharon Friedler:	Jen, she can't help it. This is what she does. There she goes. It's great to have a colleague so ready to jump in.
	Haikus on social media. Easy.
	Now if this were the real class, you would already have had the assignment. You would have walked in the door one day and I would of had, on the board, Molly and Leanna can attest to this, Haiku 5-7-5, use the word peace and ... We start the class every day with a five minute exercise. One day we did Haiku poems. Those poems then had to be submitted to the Mural Arts Project in Philadelphia that was doing a mural called Peace is a Haiku Song. Okay? That's a very simple but very direct action. Students begin to see their work, little work, out in the world. They wrote the most beautiful things. Especially the ones that said, but I'm not a poet. No, you are. We all are.
	We could take that five minutes right now. I could say 5-7-5 Haiku. Go. Affordable healthcare. Do you want to do that? Or should we go on?
Students:	Let's do it.
Sharon Friedler:	Do it. All right. You've al got a piece of paper in front of you.
Molly:	Who needs a-
Sharon Friedler:	A Haiku is 5-7-5. Five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables.
	What's the deal? It's affordable healthcare.
	What are some of the things that we're concerned about? Ability disability, mental health, inclusion.
	What are some of the words that might help drive you? Belonging, leadership, bridge building, affordable healthcare.
	How convenient. We've got it. If you're stuck talk to someone, that's how this works. You don't have to write by yourself.
Students:	Close enough.
Sharon Friedler:	How we doing people, zeroing in on things? Yeah? Maybe, two minutes ready to share?
Students:	What you got?
	[inaudible 00:43:40]
Sharon Friedler:	Okay, folks. Now we've got two pages here. We're going to write some Haikus on them. We're got more pages if we need it. We've got a whole board, we don't need ... Yeah, I think we can move ...
Ashley:	Yep.
Sharon Friedler:	There we go.
	Who wants to speak one? Who wants to share? Yes? Nice and loud.
Students:	This is about mental health.
	No stigma attached.
	To fellow souls affected,
	Compassionate care.
Sharon Friedler:	One more time.
	No stigma attached.
Students:	To fellow souls affected ...
Sharon Friedler:	To fellow souls affected,
	Compassionate care.
	Thank you. I see another hand here.
Students:	Healthcare for all, wow.
	Revolutionary though,
	Now it is for real.
Sharon Friedler:	Did you get that one, Jalisa? Do you need him to say-
Jalisa Roberts:	I need him to say-
Sharon Friedler:	Healthcare for all, wow ...
Students:	... wow.
	Revolutionary though,
	Now it is for real.
Sharon Friedler:	Leanna, do you want to come over here and use the ...
	Leanna's going to take the next one, which is?
Students:	Justice, hope, healing.
	Affordable healthcare, yes.
	All in, all drive, yes.
Sharon Friedler:	Did you hear? Can you say it again a little louder?
Students:	I'm sorry.
	Justice, hope, healing.
	Affordable healthcare, yes.
Sharon Friedler:	Affordable healthcare, yes.
Students:	All win, all drive, yes.
Sharon Friedler:	Okay, another one. Yes? Jen.
Students:	Impossibly priced,
	Insurance is assurance,
	Of health dissolved.
Sharon Friedler:	One more time.
Students:	Impossibly priced,
	Insurance is assurance,
	Of health dissolved.
	Of health dissolved.
Sharon Friedler:	Dissolved.
	Two more. Yes? In the back. I see you. Nice and loud.
Students:	Sometimes we get sick,
	Nobody deserves to die,
	Because they can't pay.
Sharon Friedler:	Sometimes we get sick,
	Nobody deserves to die,
	Because they can't pay.
	Last one. Yes?
Students:	Do not shut the door.
	Respond morally to all.
	Care to change the world.
Sharon Friedler:	Do not shut the door.
	Respond morally to all.
Students:	Care to change the world.
Sharon Friedler:	Care to change the world.
	Okay. You're on the road. Artivists. This is a little thing. Then what would we do next? We might go to social media to post these. We might see if we could get a grant to do a mural in our community, in some other community. We might do a flash mob. We might write letters to the editor. We might go to various places in the community that would welcome the opportunity for senior citizens, children in the hospital, to do similar work to write about their experiences. Just some possibilities.
	This is the work we do. We make it small and we build it bigger. This is why I teach at Swarthmore College because I want to connect, and these ladies want to connect, the things that they are passionate about in the arts with their responsibilities as human beings, and I think it's the best of what this college has to offer. Not that the arts need to be the subject, not at all. I don't care about that, I care that people link their passion and their responsibility.
	Okay. Thank you, ladies. Thank you very much, I hope that you will take these with you. Yes?
	Now, what happens when you take this who on the road, internationally? I'm going to talk very briefly about what happened last spring. I went to teach at the invitation of the Siena Art Institute.
	Only, Ashley, if you can bring it up for me, the ... I'll give you the ... There's the site.
Ashley:	[inaudible 00:49:44]
Sharon Friedler:	Whoops.
	I went to teach in Siena. I went to work with visual arts students from February through May. I was working in a course called art and society. It wasn't necessarily the case that it would have been art and social change, it was just about linking yourself to the work you live in. I spoke a little Italian but I studied really hard before I left and I continued to study while I was there. I had the advantage of having colleagues who lived in Siena: painters, sculptors, art historians. My students were from all over the world. Their common language was English, some better, some not so good. Their common experience was the visual arts.
	I hoped we would make a project to help all of us to know Siena better and to allow us to offer something to the community. The anchors for our work where our own bodies and the stories we lived and told and heard. Through participating in a number of movement exercises the students began to develop outlines of themselves. Okay? Their colleagues ... if this were my shape, Jalisa would come and trace it for me on a piece of paper, and I would step out of it and there would be an outline of me at one moment in my life. I would take that outline and into it I would put the stories of my coming to Siena. Layer one.
	Layer two: I would have to interview you, who I don't know but who has lived in Siena your whole life, and I would ask if you wold share with me a story about your experience of this place. Either my written version of that story or some abstraction of that story or some image from that story would go into the outline.
	Third: I would spend some time in the city and see what was comfortable for me, what was uncomfortable, what seemed chaotic, what drew me, and I'd find out more about that. What did students find out more about? Affordable housing, refugee issues, there is a huge sustainable agriculture movement in and around Siena so some students concentrated on that. That would be a layer in the outline in the story.
	This went on for six different outlines. Six different layers of the story. Finally, the students and the stories had an opening. Actually two. One in a refugee and community center in Sienna.
	Who came? Other people we worked with. Other people we heard storied from.
	How were the stories told? In seven different languages. Sometimes you understood a story and sometimes you didn't. Always, you could refer to the outline and what was going on inside the outline, and what your reactions were to that.
	We heard feedback. What did we do with that feedback? We turned it into a booklet.
	Where did we take that booklet? We took that booklet to the next exhibit, which was held at a museum called Stanze della Memoria, which is a museum in Siena to the resistance movement during the Second World War.
	Why that museum? Because that museum is about stories.
	Why came? High school students, people from the resistance.
	And what happened? A conversation about all of that.
	What ultimately happened for the students? More information, a closer sense of this place they were living in, a closer sense of why they should be responsible for it as well as to it.
	What do I hear from them now? Two from Eastern Europe are collaborating on ways to motivate their student art colleague to engage in art actions in their communities. What are they speaking about? Civil discourse, which they find to be lacking. Economic challenges, which they find to be pervasive. Environmental devastation, which affect them and will continue to affect them the rest of their lives. 
	Another student, is right now, in the midst of writing a proposal for a Watson. A Watson allows you to have a year of travel post undergraduate study. It insists that you go to several countries. What does she want to? She want to go to several countries and study with artivists who can teach her what works in Cambodia, what works in Australia and why, what works in Brazil.
	Third student, a mom, an older student, back to California with her three kids. What's she doing? Her school, like so many schools, doesn't have an art program. She's a visual artist. She started an after-school club for the kids, for them to use the artwork to say, how do I want to change this, my school community? This elementary school that I go to, how can it be better because we create art in it?
	Those are just a few examples. For me, language is a challenge but I never accept it as a barrier. That's probably because my home language is dance. But it is so true, we can find one another, we can find common concerns, and we must.
	I am so delighted that you were willing to take a little taste at our table today and I hope that you will welcome others to your tables around this work. Thank you so much. They were great. They did great.