Innovation requires a moral imagination for creating and realizing a better world. Art provides the roadmap and reflects our progress. Yet organizations that imagine and create our collective future are often underfunded or inadequately represented.
How do we honor, support, and nourish the natural relationship between art and social change? Five artists and innovators came together at the 2024 Skoll World Forum to share the profound impact of their work. Some artists are painting walls in Afghanistan to protest corruption and reclaim symbols of division. Kigali’s Ubumuntu Arts Festival convenes global leaders to build community using the common language of creativity. Across the globe, “artivists” and arts organizations are painting visions of possibility and advancing social change.
Watch the session and read the transcript to dive into this powerful conversation moderated by Adama Sanneh, co-founder and CEO of the Moleskine Foundation. Sanneh was joined by Omaid Sharifi from Afghanistan, co-founder and president of ArtLords; the Dutch-Filipina video artist Martha Atienza; Hope Azeda, founder of Ubumuntu Arts Festival in Rwanda, and Venezuelan artivist Daniel Arzola.
Transcript from “Mapping the Future: The Role of Art in Social Change,” filmed on April 11, 2024 at the Skoll World Forum:
Adama Sanneh: I have something to share with you. “When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concerns, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth, which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.”
This is an excerpt of the last speech that President Kennedy made in 1964 before being assassinated. He was honoring Robert Frost. And in his speech, I think that it clarifies the role that arts and creativity plays in social change. Art and creativity is not just something cute, but it’s something relevant to build our collective future. Because there are some people, and today we’re gonna meet four, that work at the crossroad between culture, the arts and social change.
And these are the people, those faithful translators that are able to forge new language, that are able to create spaces where criticality and imagination can happen, that are able to share the language that we need in order to build our collective future in a different way. Since the beginning of the Forum, I think one of the key word that came out, it is a word of imagination. We need to reimagine democracy. We need to reimagine philanthropy. We need to reimagine ourselves.
The interesting thing is that even though there is a strong understanding that creativity and imagination are really at the center of our collective future, yet those organization are grossly underfunded. The sector is completely overlooked, and yet there is still this idea, again, that art stays within a space of cuteness and not of relevance.
To fight this and to try to work around this, we created the Moleskine Foundation and we pursue a mission of creativity for social change. And we dedicate our effort to support creativity pioneers around the world. And I think today we’re gonna have the chance to see what creativity for social change look like in practice.
And I’m very excited to have here today with me four incredible people, Omaid Sharifi from Afghanistan, Co-Founder and President of ArtLords. Then we have Daniel Arzola. And the reason why we laughing is because so far, all these days I use my strong Italian accent to call them that it sounds slightly different. So I’m trying to behave now.
Then we have Daniel Arzola, Visual Artist and Artivist from Venezuela. Martha Atienza from the Philippines, Artist and Founder of GOODLand Philippines. And then Hope Azeda, Founder of Ubumuntu Arts Festival in Rwanda.
So we’re gonna start with Omaid. You’re from Afghanistan, a country that unfortunately is well known for the troubles in the past few decades, and most recently in 2021, the resurgent of the Taliban and the power. And a simple question that I have that is not that simple, is how do you restore a sense of self in a country that has been decades under the siege of war?
Omaid Sharifi: Thank you, Adama. I will stand up. Makes me feel good when I talk. So thank you for coming here. Good morning, everyone. Today, I want to talk about ArtLords. And I will start with the name, why we decided with the ArtLords, because we wanted to be the compassionate lords, the positive lords.
Whenever you hear about Afghanistan, as Adama stated, it’s all about war, it’s all about violence. You hear drug lords, you hear warlords, you hear corrupt lords. At this time, we want to be the kind lords, the positive, constructive lords. So the fight was not only in the name, but actual fight against these warlords, these corrupt lords.
Because we started ArtLords exactly 10 years ago. And this is the time that people were very hopeless. They were losing hope in the international community. They were losing hope in their politicians because they were so corrupt. And they were losing hope in a beautiful future for themselves and for their kids.
And this is the time we said, okay, ArtLords is coming in. We will take responsibility. This is an Afghan-led, Afghan initiative. And we are here to do something, do our part. In Farsi, in our own language, we have something that you have to take responsibility. So we try to find solutions in the heart of the problem.
So that’s how ArtLords came to be. And that it came at a time that I felt there was a challenge that I had to solve. And that challenge was these big security walls that they were putting around the city, and these are called blast walls.
Imagine eight meters tall concrete walls surrounding the Said Business School, Oxford University, everything that you see in the city is covered by these blast walls. And these blast walls were a symbol of oppression for me, a symbol of a divide between the rich and politicians and the ordinary people of Afghanistan.
So what I did, not just me, but a good group of people and my friends who started ArtLords, and we started this tent that everybody could come in, we wanted to bring down the walls. We couldn’t do it because these are security walls and people with the guns are guarding them.
So we started painting them. And the moment we started painting them, they disappeared. And that is the moment I thought, oh, this is an open canvas, you know? It’s not just that we paint them and this is an open canvas, why not we use it for issues which is very important, like issues of social change.
And the first campaign we did was against corruption. It was famous “I See You.” And there was a pair of eyes looking right at the presidential palace saying, I see you, I know you’re corrupt. If I cannot take you to justice today… but God is watching you, because Afghanistan is a Muslim country… God is watching you, and one day we will take you to justice.
So that’s how we started it. Okay, let me see if this goes anywhere. Yes. And the good thing is that we invited everybody to paint with us. So imagine one day in Kabul with my long hair, it was longer than this, and my friends who have long hairs as well, we are standing and painting a wall.
And then suddenly people come in and start speaking in English with me. They thought, this is, maybe Americans are here to do some wall paintings for us. And then I respond back by saying in Pashto and Farsi saying, “No, I have lived all my life in here. I’ve born, raised, educated in Afghanistan, and I’m here to paint. Do you want to join me?”
I give them a brush. Anybody from a kid who was like selling cookies and cigarettes on the streets, which I resonate with because I grew up like that, to the president of the country, they all joined in and painted murals with us. And these murals were against corruption, against violent extremism, against the– Public health, education, woman’s right, artistic freedom, all of that.
So it is a movement of art for social change, run and sustained by artivists. We have some artivists here today. And it is a platform. The most important thing that happens is when you bring all these people together to paint this mural.
This is the moment that I put questions on their minds. This is the moment I asked them to question why your neighbor, which you knew him all your life is suddenly so rich, he has a house in Dubai and Istanbul, where did he get the money? So simple questions, because in my part of the world, we are not taught critical thinking.
So these murals were a way for me to encourage critical thinking, and also foster empowerment and responsibility because the moment you give them the ownership, the moment you give the communities that this is your own idea.
What is your problem? Corruption, yes, let’s talk about it. Let’s create a mural about it. Ownership and engagement were very important because they were taking responsibility and the ownership of it. So that’s how we started. And you can see anybody, if you wanted to have a message on the mural, welcome.
But what we did was we were sketching the murals one night before. So it’s paint by numbers. Anybody come in, I gave them the brush. “Okay, you can do the blue part.” And then after five hours, they will have a beautiful mural.
We used it for countering violent extremism because there’s crazy things happening in my part of the world where religious extremism is very, very dangerous. So we would be creating content to counter the content which was developed by the Taliban. They were creating songs without music, promoting suicide attacks.
And then we would become producing content, which is about love, empathy, compassion and kindness. We would be targeting that kid in that village that they were targeting. So that’s how we use some of the art. We did the street theater.
These people have never been to a gallery, they have never seen a museum, they have never seen a theater show. So we would go to them, we would bring them to the play. And this is like in the border area of Afghanistan and Iran. And this is about illegal immigration. So this is how we went to all the corners of the country.
Art therapy in my part of the world, there’s none, there’s no help. You know, the only help available to treat your anxieties, traumas and all of that, is the painted meditation and all therapy sessions we were doing in schools, in universities, and all over the country.
And what happened, 2021 Taliban came over. First thing they did, I always say, Taliban are very scared of women of Afghanistan and art. Any expression of art is banned. They destroyed 2,200 murals that I had painted two weeks in their stay in Kabul. They wanted to kill me, my colleagues and all of that.
So forced me out of my country. But this is what they did. So the murals I had, for example, this is a mural which says, “We are the future of Afghanistan,” and this is what had happened to it. Now it’s their logo there made in Taliban. This is how I promoted women’s rights in Afghanistan. And now this is the message Taliban has for the woman and instead of the murals that we had done.
But this did not stop us. This is what is happening today in Kabul. They suppressed us, but we continue our work. This is the mentorship program for female artists I have in Kabul right now. And we went from Kabul to all over the world. So now I come to your city and I paint with you. We paint in the communities, I paint in Pakistan, in Istanbul. I paint in Middle East, anywhere you are. Next time I’ll be in your city and we’ll be painting together. Thank you.
Adama Sanneh: Nice. Thank you, Omaid. Martha, when we chat in these days, you’re painting a picture that I tried to summarize very quickly. You’re from the Philippines, from the coastal area, and the Philippines is one of the most affected countries by climate change.
And you worked with the fish folks from the coastal area that on one side are a key community for the food security of the country. At the same time, they are completely disenfranchised from the discourse around climate change internationally and nationally.
And on top of that, there is a plot twist also that you added that there are also some forces in the Philippines that now paradoxically are using climate change as an excuse to move fish folks from the coastal area to the center, because obviously this is still primetime real estate. And these communities that are not only disenfranchised, but they are the center of a crazy paradox.
So the question is how do you reconcile of this? How do you go about bringing about change in such a complex context?
Martha Atienza: Thank you, Adama. I’m so nervous by the way. And then my great presentation and I actually have a text. But I’m gonna try to share how I work in the Philippines and I’m gonna start with an image of the work I make together with my friends and neighbors. Let me remember how.
Yes. So I moved back to Bantayan in 2010, really thinking about how high I as an artist could make myself useful. And so this question has always been reoccurring of thinking, how can art, you know, tackle social, economic and environmental issues.
So the image that you see is Nontonio Turid. And this is a work we made together. He’s standing on his boat and I’m filming this together with kids that I taught how to film years ago, and they’re now my crew.
They’re more technical than me. They’re better than me. Tonio’s going around his island where he was born and raised, and where today he’s raising his own family. And I’ve been working with Nontonio and his community for a few years now. Their island is really, really beautiful. And just like Adama said, they’re facing many issues. I’m gonna talk about those issues again. Climate change, yes, the raising of the seas, also raising of sea temperatures.
Martha Atienza: And the raising of the sea temperatures, which is affecting their livelihood and their way of living. But the other issue that, the plot twist that you were talking about is that, you know, like this beautiful island, they want to turn it into a tourist destination.
And so they’re being slowly asked to move the housing projects. And this is a problem not just for Nontonio and his community, but also in Bantayan for coastal communities, but also the rest of the Philippines, and I know also neighboring countries. And this is happening everywhere in the world. Similar issues.
The name of the series is ‘Tigpanalipod’, which means ‘The protectors’. And, you know, what we’re really asking is who owns the land and who owns the sea? Because we really shouldn’t be owning any of it. We should be protecting it.
These are government and NGO housing projects where coastal communities have been moved to since Super Typhoon Haiyan, if you remember in 2013. And you know, we’re facing extreme weather and people are being moved for safety.
But, you know, we also see a direct link between the moving of coastal communities far in land, just because Bantayan is becoming a major tourist destination. So, you know, these are actually protected lands that are now becoming privatized because of commercial interests. And this is really destroying a way of living. It’s destroying a culture as well.
So as talking to Daniel, this is my coconut tree methodology. And after working in Bantayan since 2010, we formed an organization called GOODLand as we’ve become more organized.
You know, I’ve realized that the process of making art together is a methodology to not only understand who we are, but as a way to identify and understand the issues we face together. It’s really about a way of thinking and a way to dream about our future together. Not only about this, but we can put our dreams into action.
I use the video camera, that’s how I document time, but that’s also how I create dialogues at home. But I’ve also taught my friends and neighbors how to use the camera themselves so that they can tell their own stories.
Now, the documentation of ourselves is really the base of the tree. It’s the archive that we are building together. The image you see is one of our youth, she’s rehabilitating, she’s working with her reefs.
That’s us filming Nontonio. These are inland kids that have created their own workshops to educate other coastal area youth and sharing really their knowledge and building an archive together. This lady, she lives in the watershed and she’s sharing her seed bank that actually goes back generations. This is Lola Siding. She’s still farming her parents’ farm. And the kids are interviewing and filming her. Those are her neighbors.
The images that are gathered make up an archive and allow us to see ourselves in a place through another perspective. They’re sharing sessions, a lot of dialogues, gatherings, and you know, that’s how we create a community. We are creating a voice, a way of thinking that is inclusive and enables us to find our own solutions, and it’s really dreaming about the future.
We share knowledge and experiences and this creates a support system and forms collaborations. Lang Landin here, she shares to us that, you know, when she was younger, fish was abundant and it was so cheap that when fishermen would come home, their baskets would be filled with fish and they would put it on the beaches so that it could be shared with everyone. But today there’s so little fish and prices are so high that the fish goes straight to the market.
With our archive, we’re showing that our culture is alive and complex, and that’s the cultural output, that’s the evidence of that. And that can be a way for us to claim our rights to sea and land. And we were able to establish a marine protected area together with local government unit just because of a film of young people that they have made.
It’s also led us to platforms such as these where we can create conversations and connect really beyond our own islands. And the dreams and action is where we make things happen. Most dreams are simply live off on our lands and sea to be healthy, happy and together. And this image is an example of a rechargeable battery project that we did, that we worked on with fishermen and local engineers.
We also have savings clubs where neighbors and friends basically put money in every week. And there they have a loan system and there they buy food products at lower prices that they sell in their own group. And here they are busy collaborating with university and local government, working on their lands. Like they’re here, they’re busy with the nursery for their watershed area.
And I want to end with an image. This is the first Fisherfolks Day that we were able to establish in 2022. Fisherfolks Day is my tangible output that starts to define empowerment for me. It’s a day that recognizes the importance of a marginalized part of our community. It’s not just a celebration of that community, but it is an institutionalized avenue for them to be heard by the public, civil and private sectors.
And it’s because it’s institutionalized and funded, it’s repeated every year. So, you know, just like you were saying, you know, art is not just pretty pictures. It’s a complex process of creativity.
And I have chosen to make a functional and participatory process that values community, cultural knowledge and giving everyone a venue to dream and express themselves. It’s really a tool not only to express my own artistic vision and values, but it creates a movement of local change makers. Thank you.
Omaid Sharifi: I’m so proud of you.
Martha Atienza: Thank you.
Adama Sanneh: Thank you, Martha. Daniel, you were born in Venezuela and Venezuela is not living like an easy moment. There is an oppressive regime, military regime. You were describing it also as a moment where there is a new religious extremism.
And on top of that, you mix it with organized criminality, local gangs. And you were telling me, and you grew up in one of the toughest neighborhoods, you know, in Marakai. And you know, you grew up as a young queer artist. And this normally is the target of all that we said before. So the question for you is very simple, how do you survive?
Daniel Arzola: Hello everybody. I’m gonna respond to that question saying that my art saved my life, my work changed my reality. And not only saved my life, but also help me to save the life of my family. I’m an artivist, I do artivism, and I’m going to talk to you about that.
To talk to you about my work, I have to first talk about my story because as an artist, my work is sort of the response to the things I live to the society that I survive. I believe artivism is not only about making social art when art is not accessible, even is social. I think it’s more institutional than social when it’s not accessible.
So for me, activism is emotive communication of a social message in an accessible format because art can influence culture and can serve as a symbol to recognize each other and to raise awareness, in this case, awareness about a reality on an idea. In other works, I think artivism is to intervene the dynamics that art used to communicate, because art can transcend the life of the artist, but also can transcend the society where art created.
If we pay attention to the history of art, we can understand also the history of humanity because to me, art is like the world of spirits. We can have access to so many knowledge from people that existed before us, but you cannot imprison art because art is knowledge and art born from ideas.
So I think art is this place where ideas live and it’s essential for freedom because they cannot be imprisoned. Even if you fight against any of my artworks, there are going to survive beyond your life and even beyond mine. We can understand the reality or realities just through the power of a song, a movie or an artwork.
So I think that’s the importance. But what happened when you cannot feel represented in your own culture? Your identity just changes. And that was my case because I grew up in a place where I was set up for failure.
And I think when you grew up being queer and openly queer in machista and male chauvinist societies, sometimes you have to resist until you have the power to fight back. And that was my case. I grew up seeing my name written alongside homophobic slurs in my neighborhood.
And I grew up trying to ignore that. But there is a point in life when ignoring violence is not enough, and sometimes you can face violence face to face. That happened to me when I was 15 years old when I grew up neighbors tied me to an electrical pole and they burnt me with cigarettes and fireworks. They destroyed all my drawings during that time.
And I realized that sometimes someone can destroy in a minute what took you months to create. And in that moment, not only my body was vulnerable, but also my art. But I stopped drawing for around six years. And I seek refugee in poetry that for me is drawing with words.
But when you grow up being queer in Venezuela, you just face another level of difficulty. If you pay attention to the history of Venezuela, you will know that we were facing, or at least in my case, I saw democracy crumbling slowly. When Chavez took the power in Venezuela, I was around nine years old so I grew up watching how people use democracy to dismantle democracy.
And now we are living in the authoritarian regime. But when you are queer, surviving to that add this extra layer of difficulty because you’re not only surviving a dictatorship, you’re also fighting for your own dignity and identity in a place where you cannot see yourself represented with respect.
Right now, Venezuela have the biggest force migration in the world. Even when the official numbers talk about around 7.7 million people, I can assure you that we are more than that and that every year that number is increasing. Right now, we’re even talking about 8 million of Venezuelans, and I just one of them.
People leave their country walking. I say my work changed and saved my life because I have the chance to escape from Venezuela, thanks, because my work. Growing up in a society where I wasn’t able to feel identified or respected, it was very difficult.
But it was thanks to the work of artists that I knew that my existence had dignity and that I was someone that also deserve respect. Because if I learn something from artists and from art, it’s like a big conflict. It’s just the beginning of a great story. If you survive that conflict, you can find a way to tell a great story.
And I think it’s important to inspire others because when I was alone and I was set up in a homophobic environment, I found myself living on the streets when I was 15 years old. Because when you grow up being queer in a machista society, even your own family will put you away and will attack your identity day by day. It took me, and it was thanks to my work that I was able to heal my identity.
When I was in our school in the last year, I decided to create illustrations that people could not destroy. And I have this idea to create a graphic campaign to talk about the reality of queer people in Venezuela.
That’s how I created “No Soy tu Chiste” or “I’m Not A Joke.” “I’m Not A Joke,” had a series of 50 illustrations that I mixed between using digital illustration and poetry to tackle back homophobia and queer phobia in Venezuela. I posted this in social media and it became viral in 2013 and 2014.
Just using Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, my work became viral all around the world and make like this person living in a small town without cinemas, without museums, without galleries to become a known artist. I think as artists also we have the power to share our platform. And sharing that platform sometimes can change the life of someone.
That happened to me in 2014 when someone saw my work in the internet and decided to share it and say, “This is not a joke, this is art.” And that person was Madonna. Thank you. Because when you have a platform, you can use it also to share the stories of others.
And I think that’s why artists are important. We can change the world because we can tell not only the story of one person. We can share thousands of stories just through one creation. And I also believe in the cycle of inspiration because we can inspire people by artists, but then we get inspired by artists and then artists can inspire also. I believe in the cycle of inspiration.
Since then, I have been creating artivism around the world. People cannot destroy my work anymore because it’s digital. So the spirit of my work is indestructible. They try to do it every time. This is a permanent exhibition that I have in the subway in Buenos Aires. They try to vandalize this all the time. But we can replace this because my work is indestructible. It’s artivism. My name is Daniel Arzola. I’m an artivist. Thank you for your attention.
Adama Sanneh: Hope, last week actually, 7th of April, was the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, or the starting of the genocide in Rwanda. How do you restore a sense of community after so much pain, and how do you intervene in the generational trauma that affected your country and your community for so long?
Hope Azeda: Yeah, thank you so very much. It’s very hard to like say anything after all these people. I don’t know whether you feel the same. I feel like a deep hole and you’re trying to speak from that space. And that has been my life for the last, I don’t know, 23 years I’ve lived in Rwanda as an artist. I have found that art is an encounter, so is life.
Every minute of your life you come across this story and you have an encounter with this story, it throws you in this deep hole. And you’re looking for, how do I come out of this? How do I be the light that strikes this darkness? How do I be the light that, you know, carves some peace to restore– How do I start? Where do I–
There’s no specific way of restoring these things other than addressing the truth, which is very painful to face. But the pain comes with growth. So it’s a process, it’s a process from individual to individual.
My name is Hope, because I was born and raised as a refugee in Uganda. And a lot of children born around my time were given these things that refugees never had, like hope. My father named me Hope because I was hopeless. So you have friends who are Peace, Joy.
I remember when we were children and we are playing, we are calling each other this thing, I was just playing for this my friends yesterday. You know, you’re playing netball, “Oh, Peace, send me that ball. Hope, oh, Happiness, wait, Patience. Hey, Faith, Faith, Faith, Faith, Ooh, Hope!”
You know? And we’re playing, but the whole environment is the opposite. And that made me address the power of words. And that everything that comes out of your mouth, shapes who you become.
So if somebody, all they have to do is throw words of hate, words of pain at you, you don’t let that take legal residence in your heart. So you have to like, you know, deport that energy. Like look at it as a person. And I remember growing up, my mother built words of love around us without even telling us we are refugees ’till you go to school and they tell you, “When are you going back to your home?” We’re like, “Which home?” “So you don’t belong here.” I’m like, “You don’t belong here?”
Then you go to your mother, and she’s struggling to speak the truth. And that’s what I’m seeing in Rwanda today, addressing the truth with the young generation that has nothing to do with our history, that has nothing to do with the or Germans that came and, you know, created all these social classes ’till there was a genocide.
But a generation that is being told to remember things they didn’t see. But a generation that is experiencing emotion or emotions that come with the past. But how do these emotions come to them? If you did not see anything bad in 1995, you were born after, how come you get traumatized?
And then I realized that the love and pain I have today has been passed on to me over generations. My mother passed love to me because she was a selfless woman and she constantly reminded us that we are here on earth to plant seeds of love, peace and comfort. And that’s my business. So I’ve grown up giving love even if I’m given hate.
Then that was the– But she’s passed on now. She passed on 2018. So I realized that the energy passing to the young around us has an effect on them. So in restoring them, but they also need to be told the truth. So how do you tell the truth? So this is the poem I’ve written in the voice of a mother. Just to warn you that I lost my glasses in the bus that brought me, but I’ll try to read.
“How do I tell my children the truth? How do I take their innocence, stand their eyes from the light they have known to the darkness I’ve seen? How? They ask and ask and ask, but how do I start? We argue and argue, but how do I begin? They don’t see me. I don’t see them. My truth is hidden in my pain. I want to tell them, but I have to protect them. And the only way through this is my story.
So how do I start? How do I tell them that I’m still putting my pieces together? How? I am me, but I’m someone else. They ask and ask and ask. How do I tell them that I am someone else, but also I’m me? I am the child who grew up with no home. My childhood taken for I was seeking a home. My home did not want me. My home did not claim me.
Born with no birth date, my name a means to an end. But how will they understand? I can’t hide the truth forever. Should I tell them that I have stared death in the eye? I have dodged it countless times only to learn that death, death is part of life, death is a fact of life?
From dust to dust, from crumbling soils, from falling leaves, from earth, we are born and to earth we return. How do I tell them that this life is fleeing like a shooting star? How?”
So how do we address the truth? So the culture of truth telling is what is what I’m really finding eye-opening in just engaging with the young people born after the genocide. In 2019, I managed to call out an audition of about 200 young people born after genocide, because in 2019, a generation was born 25 years of age.
And I was like, I want to hear what is in there, what is it, what are the questions they’re trying to address? And then I realized that the biggest problem, the one common problem was that they were never told the truth. They’re told half-truths. And they now need to deal with the whole truth.
One of the artists I met at that point was like, “For these 25 years I’ve lived, I was told I was a victim and that my dad died in Congo. But I just realized that actually my dad is on the run. So who am I? Am I a child of a killer?”
How do you address that? Because for a long time we addressing victims, but we also have perpetrator kids. And this is a generation that has nothing to do with the past, but we have to pass on the past to them. So what is it we’re transmitting to them?
So when we remember on the 7th of April, 1 million people that were killed in 1994 for a hundred days, what is it we have to remember? So I’m going to play this short video just to show the, just a short clip from the production we did called “Generation 25.”
Performer 1: Ma, I never got to say goodbye.
Singer: ♪ Help me ♪ ♪ No, no, not me but help my child ♪ ♪ Take her with you ♪ ♪ He will survive ♪ ♪ She will survive ♪ ♪ She will survive ♪
Performer 2: So I ask, who am I? Am I a child of a killer?
Performer 3: No!
Performer 2: And I refuse to be defined by that. Run!
Performer 4: The genocide against the Tutsis had been progressing at the fearsome rate for more than a month. By the time it would finished, up to 1 million people would have been dead. What kind of man would kill an innocent child?
Performer 3: Genocide is likely to occur again.
Performer 2: And learning about it is the first step to understanding it. Understanding it is the first step to responding.
Performer 3: Responding is essential to saving lives.
Everybody: Otherwise, never again will remain, again.
Adame Sanneh: Thank you. Maybe we need a collective breath. There will be so much to talk about, but unfortunately, we are under Chronos and Kiros. It would be nice to be under the time of creativity, and not the time, you know, that force us to move to another topic.
But I would like to ask you all, the incredible experiences that you share with us, they’re all somehow rooted in the local, into something very specific. And I’m wondering whether you see a connection between the local and the global, how the methodologies that you have implemented and used at the local level, even an individual level can inform the global context and can inform a higher and collective framework.
Hope Azeda: Okay, I can take that. Genocide is not a random story, it’s a global ideology. It’s a global evil. When it happened with the Holocaust, 50 years later it happened in Rwanda. And at that time the world saw never again, but we saw it happen again in Rwanda. And signs are there.
So there is a pathway to violence that we ignore. There are about 10 stages to violence. And I think number nine is dehumanization. So if you can detect, and discern and read dehumanization in your community, it’s not a random thing, it’s everywhere. It’s a global story. So like “Generation 25” could be specific to Rwanda, but it’s an open script to the world.
Adama Sanneh: Yeah.
Omaid Sharifi: Also, the methodologies are local, yes. For example, we started painting with people. This is something we started in Kabul, in Afghanistan. But then the issues are global. For example, we are facing the climate change, we are facing corruption.
Corruption is everywhere in all parts of the world. And then how we can use this method, which is bringing people, communities together to come up with their own message, with their own voice and how we can all together paint this message. This could be replicated anywhere in any community.
Since the last 10 years I’ve had requests from all over the world, people who have invited us, that they’re facing some issues in their community and they’ve asked us to come up and then create a concept with the community and paint with the community. So it is somehow we are on one corner, but we’re all connected. And then these issues as mentioned by Hope. So we can certainly use any of these merits and then replicate it all over the world.
Daniel Arzola: I think in my case, when I created the “I’m Not A Joke” campaign or “No Soy tu Chiste,” I was talking about the issues in my society, but when I got the response from people in other countries telling me, “I want this in my language,” I realized that we were facing the same issues in other parts in the world.
And I think I also learned that as an artist, it’s important to portray these realities because even if we have a thousand of different ideas and we speak like so many different languages, everybody feel in the same language, everybody get excited about a movie or a piece of art in the same way. So I think I realized that it was universal because art has no borders.
Adama Sanneh: Thank you.
Martha Atienza: Yeah, I mean, just like Omaid said, like we’re all dealing with same issues at the end of the day actually. And the way that we are working locally is definitely something that can be used in, even just the word community, I mean, we have to create community, we have to create voices. Like what Omaid said like in a country where people are not used to be critical or to voice out, these methodologies are a way to get that out, you know? Yeah.
Adama Sanneh: There’s something strange sometimes that happen when people deal with art. And there is a, almost like a different part of their brain that connects, you know, and that we see it in the impact that your work can happen. But there is a dark side of it, you know?
And the dark side of it is that what we talk about to many funders then they don’t know how to, you know, necessarily fund the arts. And there is this idea that all of these experiences often can be considered as exceptional. Exceptional, not in the sense of excellence, but exceptional in the sense of, well, it’s an outlier, you know?
Oh, Martha’s an outlier. Hope is an outlier. Daniel is an outlier. Omaid is an outlier. So it’s hard to, you know, to consider it as a space and a sector to support. And I kind of wondering, you spend some time together in these four days, you saw what each other do, do you see some similarities in your approach? Is there something that underpin your posture, the way you try to solve problems?
Omaid Sharifi: Well, the underlying challenge we all face is nobody pays for art. Especially if you’re an art organization, you’re really struggling. We have been struggling for last 10 years and everyone here from Rwanda to Venezuela to Kabul, we’re struggling.
But at the same time, I think a lot of, not only the donors but the people, they really do not see this approach as critical as it is. Because look, the example of ArtLords, I think what we did with art for the people who have experienced war for 50 years.
So we had to create the visual alphabets for them to understand and then they came up with their own Indigenous solutions for the problems which were very big. So you give them a very simple tool with a brush and then invite them to bring up their own solutions and engagement.
I think I saw how much hope it brought to the lives of the people. I saw their engagement and ownership just with painting one mural in their community, felt them that they’re part of this country, and they can have a voice, they can amplify their voices.
I remember when we were painting and the kids were on the streets selling cigarettes and stuff, they would bring their family members showing that this is the part I painted. And they were protected. Like in Afghanistan, when we were painting for 10 years, only three murals were defaced from 2,200 murals in a country that you imagine anybody could do anything with your art, but the community was protecting these murals.
So it’s so important for the communities when they have that ownership. And then at the same time as we were facing a lot of challenges to buy a brush, a bucket of paint and all of that. So I think for all of our friends here, we are all in this Skoll tent right now, and we all have noble intentions and we are all doing good actions to follow that.
It’s so important that we all connect our islands. And those islands, once they’re connected, they can make a bigger wave of change, positive change, which we all have to do at this crazy times in the world.
So if you, in your programming, you have money, your foundations, you’re supporting civil society and the good work, consider art as an important and essential solution. Not something cute or beautiful, as Adama was saying. It really is changing attitudes and behaviors. It really changes opinions.
And my friend, one of our friends here, you remember the Renaissance in Europe, it really changed Europe. And I think that Renaissance, if we need it today, will come through art and especially public art.
Hope Azeda: Every time a conversation comes about money and art, I don’t even have a language anymore, ’cause I was born in a family of 11 kids, 10 scientists and I’m the only artist. And to always constantly prove to my father that this thing is good, it was a big war.
And I still face that same thing. ‘Cause my dad asked me, “So how much bread is this going to–” But like, “Dad, art is not just about a loaf of bread. It’s a medicine you find in a pharmacy.” It’s not the medicine you find in a pharmacy, although my mother had a pharmacy, but it is that medicine for soul and spirit.
It’s about behavior. You can’t touch behavior change, you can’t touch soul. It exists in different dimensions that many funders cannot, because funders want numbers one thing. Like, sometimes I don’t know how to count. How do I count change?
Adama Sanneh: How do I count change?
Hope Azeda: Yeah, how many kilograms is change? You know, for me there’s that bit of abstract something that it exists in a different dimension, yet it really operates in our lives, yeah. So that’s my challenge. How many loaves of bread is one song?
Adama Sanneh: Good point. Yeah, yeah.
Daniel Arzola: Something that I found in common talking with my colleagues, my friends now, is that we believe in art as a tool to build memory. And I think it’s important to create memory and to represent the realities that we are facing because we need to communicate to the people from the future, the things we’re living now only paying attention to history we can avoid to repeat the same mistakes. And I think I found that same sense of using our work to build memory. The storytelling aspect of art I think is also meaningful.
Adama Sanneh: Thank you.
Martha Atienza: I don’t know what to add to that. But, you know, like remembering is an act of resistance by itself already. And that’s something that during these years of work of people creating their own stories, and when you get young people to remember that is the resistance and that’s so powerful.
But yeah, it’s true, how do you measure that and how do you explain that even in words? I mean even that’s why I have such a hard time standing here and speak, you know, because how do you say in words what you’re doing?
That’s why I came up with the coconut diagram, you know? But you know, like how do you, how do you make it clear to other people or how do– The importance, you know?
Unknown Speaker 5: You’re doing just fine.
Adama Sanneh: I think with that, we can open up for questions.
Unknown Speaker 6: Oh wow. Okay.
Adama Sanneh: All right. Where we start? You can start there and we got there. Go ahead.
Unknown Speaker 7: Thank you all so much. I think for so many of us in this room, this session has been really nurturing and healing, and that’s what art does. Yeah, I can say art changed my life as well. It’s made me more politically aware, more connected to each other, you know, builds empathy, all these things.
And all these things you’re talking about too that aren’t measurable. And being at Skoll is an interesting experience coming from the arts, when we’re talking about social change, social impact, these things that we cannot measure.
I’m so curious as to what your experience has been at Skoll, talking about your work and seeing how people respond and what you feel maybe art could shift at Skoll and you know, forums like this that are about changing the world and systems change, but art is still relegated in some ways to the side. So I’d like to hear about that. Thanks.
Adama Sanneh: Anyone?
Omaid Sharifi: Do you want to take question or-
Adama Sanneh: We take three questions and then we go, okay. Kumi, we got got it here.
Unknown Speaker 8: So Adama thank you so much for being… So I just want to say big thank you to Adama for pulling together this amazing panel. My only regret is this panel should have been on a plenary at this point. So I just wanted to say that I’ve been an activist since 15.
I was the head of Greenpeace, Amnesty International and so on, and I’ve realized the biggest mistake I made, because my son two years ago told me, “You’re really bad at your job.”
And he said, “Because everything you’ve been working on from the age of 15, everything’s getting worse, gender equity, democracy, human rights, and so on.” And I asked him, “So why do you think I’m so bad at the job?” Because I agreed with him and I’d already arrived at it.
And then he said, “The problem with you all in mainstream activism is that you’ll aim all your narratives at the brain, so facts, figures, science, policies and so on. And you’ll completely ignore the art.”
And if you look at heart with the hitch in it. and if you look today at who’s being successful in the world, it’s the Donald Trumps and the Bolsonaros and the Modis of the world who completely ignore the brain and go straight for the art. And then I said, “You’re asking me to lie like these guys do?” He said, “No, you don’t have to lie, but you can be much more creative about reaching people with the facts.”
So I just want to say that in September this year, a range of organizations are coming together in South Africa to organize an inaugural Global Artivism Conference to try to unite this field. We wanted to be Global South-led and I’d like to invite everybody here to participate. And I just want to thank everybody in the panel. Thank you.
Adama Sanneh: Take another question. Right there. Right there.
Unknown Speaker 9: Thank you. Thank you very much. Congratulations, and thank you for the panel. I just want to make a reflection and a question about measuring the impact. Because I work for an organization, we promote local art in conflict zones with victims for memory, for healing, for truth seeking.
I want to challenge the idea that this is not measurable. I think it is. And I want to ask you, because you explain it very well, Omaid, about the impact on the community. So I think we failed if we measured thinking on quantity and numbers instead of quality. There are ways of collecting people’s reactions, people’s opinions, people’s change of behaviors.
And I think that, I think it’s difficult for artists when you become social changers and then you have to institutionalize your art to create some mechanisms to collect that information and to create, you know, perceptions, surveys, testimonies that really show the impact that you guys have. I think numbers or virality, respectfully, is not that important.
It’s more like the, how you change the people’s mind, not how many minds you change. And I think there’s opportunities there that we need to find the money for you to have the support in order to you do the art, but you collect that information that can give more funding. It’s how we are trying to do it, just to collect the money, so.
Adama Sanneh: Maybe if there’s some initial reaction to these three questions, then we move on.
Omaid Sharifi: Yes. Yeah.
Omaid Sharifi: If I can go.
Adama Sanneh: Go ahead.
Omaid Sharifi: Well, being here, this is my first time in the UK, so responding to what this meaning for me, it was powerful because as a Venezuelan person, it’s very difficult to get a visa. Like the borders are being closed to Venezuelans around the world.
And Skoll helped me to get a visa in five days, which was mission impossible to someone with a expired passport and without access to a passport because the dictatorship in Venezuela use passports to control people. So in the last five years, I have no access to a new passport. And the Skoll helped me to get here.
And another thing I want to say is that I believe in artivism because as you were saying, I think activism needs the activist to be there, needs the word, needs the reason, but artivism is about the emotion and there is knowledge in the emotion. My art will be here when I’m not here anymore and will transcend. So I think it’s important to use that power.
Omaid Sharifi: Go ahead, please.
Hope Azeda: I was just gonna talk about my experience being at Skoll. This beautiful family, amazing people doing amazing things. I think one of– I had a very interesting experience in the donor and doers station. I found myself on the middle line there and I just ended up getting a seat in the middle line ’cause I found myself, I am a donor sometimes ’cause I’m giving all my all.
That’s not in terms of money, but in terms of me, myself and my experience and my talent and how I’m just sharing everything. I’m sharing me all the time. We are putting ourselves there 150% and you can’t put a price tag on that. So I’m a donor that, but I’m also on the doer. So I was like, wow. So I’m both. So I felt like I was also a donor and I was also a doer, and I felt just nice.
Martha Atienza: That’s true. That’s true, actually.
Omaid Sharifi: The experience at Skoll, this is my first time at Skoll. We all go to many conferences, all of us. And then most of the time I feel that I am there to do a job, have a loud speaker, speak about my work, speak about artist address, speak about artistic freedom and all of that.
But what I feel at Skoll is that I feel people are present. I feel they’re very genuine. They care. Every person I’ve met, they’ve hugged me, they’ve embraced me, they’ve heard me. And I think a Skoll is for me. Everywhere else, I was going to raise awareness about my work. But this, here, it’s for me as a person who is, all of you are at the front line of this work, and it takes a toll on you. It’s very tough work.
And you’re alone there. I am alone there because a lot of things come to me. I have to take care of it as an activist, as an artist. And it becomes lonely, it becomes difficult. And I think at Skoll, it is somehow healing, as you mentioned. There’s solidarity, there’s empathy, although there could be more. But I think still this is by far a great experience.
And I said it the other night, I think it’s something else. There’s an energy that I didn’t understand it, but it’s good, it’s really good. And Kumi, you have inspired the generation of activists and a lot of us have followed your path. And I’m so grateful that you’re doing the artivism conference and hopefully this room and a lot of us will be there.
And then I think there’s a Skoll tent and then there will be an artivism tent that all of us can come together. And on the impact, yes, we can measure the impact of this work. Look, I did the “I See You” mural, which was one of the first murals, and one of the murals was at the presidential palace and on the other side of the road is the Ministry of Finance.
And then there’s an image of me pointing my finger at the room that Minister of Finance was seating. So Minister of Finance, which he was no longer there, he was telling me he had blocked the whole window of the Ministry of Finance because every time he was looking up, there was an image of me like pointing, I know you’re corrupt. You can Google it. So it’s all in Google and all of that.
So this image is like, I know you’re corrupt. And then there’s another one of, the vice president told me when he was no longer the vice president, he said every time he was crossing the mural, “I See You,” he would think with himself name of the one hundred people he would meet that this is corrupt, this is corrupt, this is corrupt.
And then he ordered the mural to be erased during the republic. And then there was a huge outcry, it went viral. And then they paid me back to pay the same mural at the same time. So people have told me that when they’re sitting on their dinner time, they speak about this.
I mentioned about like, ask your neighbor where did they find the money to get all of this armored car and became millionaires in the night. People were speaking about all of this, the heart. Like I think we touch those hearts, we encourage people to ask questions. And that’s impact for me, that’s change for me. So I think, and there’s more if we can find some ways to really measure it and methodologies that would be for our donors to see those numbers.
Adama Sanneh: We’re running out of time. We got a couple of questions we can do quickly and we can do there three, but very quickly then we can try to go.
Unknown Speaker 10: Hello. I think we’ve spoken a lot today about, you know, how art isn’t being adequately financed and artists aren’t being supported, but we’re also at a time when the very definition of art is being redefined with technology.
So my question is around the livelihood of, you know, being an artist, it’s ’cause it’s currently being threatened by things like AI where now people have the tools to create art pieces work with just a few words. And similarly, these tools are also in the hands of people who are trying to create a negative kind of change, right?
And we are banking on the goodwill of these technologies and these platforms to put the guardrails on these technologies on like what kinds of art that people can create with these tools with just a few prompts. And when, you know, art isn’t being bought, because we’re still struggling to get people to see art as a commodity.
And artists aren’t being supported because people see your work and they go, “Oh, that’s cute. That’s very, you know? Oh wow.” But then their wallets stay in their pockets, right? And then there’s these technologies that are coming to, you know, threaten your very job. How do you deal with that? I’m curious to know.
Adama Sanneh: Quickly, like a question, third question. You could try quick. I don’t know if you’re gonna be able to answer them all, but you know, question can make us think.
Unknown Speaker 11: No, I’m gonna be very quick. This is more a reflection. I think trying to contribute to your question of what’s common in the four of them. I think I see that the process that you have created to create change, I think that’s what is common on you, like the process, and because for you, the end product is not important, it’s the process that you go through.
And we’re an organization that we fund art for social change and we fund art for behavior change. So we put our money where our mouth is, so. And I invite all other donors in the room to do the same because, and we don’t see this as a nice to have, we see this as a key part of the success of a project, so.
Adama Sanneh: Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 12: Thank you so much for what you’re doing. And I work in intergenerational and collective trauma and one of the things that I see that is so valuable that you’re bringing is being able to address these very challenging things in a way that is safe. Because, you know, turning towards trauma can be re-traumatizing.
And art with the beauty, with the engagement, really provides a safe space for that. And the other thing that I feel is really important that you guys have a very important role to play in is how can we as humans re-own perpetratorship as a wound, and to be able to look at that part that has, you know, so much shame and so much guilt requires that there is a certain distance and that there is a context for that. And I see that, you know, in what you were asking, “Am I the child of a killer?”
Like being able to look at that part and, you know, each one of us own our little piece of perpetratorship. It obviously might not be that I killed somebody, but I might have dehumanized someone else. Like how do we actually re-own that in a way that empowers us? I think you guys have something so powerful to contribute. Thank you.
Omaid Sharifi: Thank you.
Daniel Arzola: Thank you.
Martha Atienza: Thank you.
Adama Sanneh: Yeah. Quickly. Go ahead. See if we can.
Unknown Speaker 12: Thanks again for everything that you’re doing. I run an organization called Super Being Labs and one of the parts is Super Being Arts. And we were talking about recreating the Renaissance. One of the projects we’re working on right now is an experiment called “Stop Thinking Start Feeling.”
And it’s actually using art, our experiment is “Could we get Trump to start feeling?” So it’s how can we use art to get the worst people in the world to start being children again? And I’d love, I understand there’s no time for an answer, but let’s talk about it later or tonight is have you got a time where you’ve made someone who doesn’t feel, feel?
Because I’d love to learn from you and I’d love to collaborate with you on this because I think there’s only a finite number of bad people in the world, and if we can reach them, reach their hearts, big changes can happen and we don’t need funders.
Adama Sanneh: A few maybe, but later. Thank you. I think we need to, ’cause we almost there, a few reactions and then we go for the closing.
Hope Azeda: On the issue of technology, working in the space of humanity because art is humanity, I think humanity is, art is still needed to keep the balance between robots and humans, you know?
So like in our festival around, ’cause our festival is, you know, arts and humanity, we have created spaces or days that we have called art meeting technology and bringing stories of home to life. And this is, we are including like coding schools. Like guys, where is your life and where’s your art?
And it’s really just nice to see artists and scientists having a conversation and creating things ’cause we need to keep that humanity element in us, otherwise we become robots. So art is still needed in its authenticity existence, I think.
Yeah, and I think also about feeling comes first, ’cause art needs to be that tool or that vehicle that curate spaces of empathy. If you don’t feel my story, then I’ll not feel your story. If you don’t come to the life that my pain today can be a pain tomorrow.
We need to come to that understanding that humans are humans. You know, even if you put a knife on Trump’s neck right now, the pain he will feel is the same pain I feel on my neck. Yeah, so we need to realize that, you know, art is there as a key to also opening spaces of empathy.
Adama Sanneh: Unfortunately, chronos is upon us, so we arriving at the end of it. I feel on one side, I’m a little bit, I have a lot of emotions, but I won’t lie, part of this emotion is frustration and anger because it’s not a case that I started with a quote of JFK in 1964 and we’re still thinking about, oh, art is this new thing of doing things, is a new way of like try to solve problems.
It’s been there forever. And we keep hiding ourself against this fade of deficiency and we keep hiding ourselves behind the research of a KPI. You know, but now we do live in the era of creativity and it is really time to be courageous and act the shift that is need to be happening in order to really recognize these incredible people, not as outliers, not as once-off, not as a nice to have, but as a new group of change makers.
Creativity pioneers, creative change makers is a new cluster, is an old new cluster in which we need to invest so we can really go about changing the world in a new and different ways. Engineers has already tried to save the world; they didn’t make it. Maybe it’s time that we start investing in creativity.
And the question of being courageous, it’s important and it’s important in its etymological terms. Being courageous, it means to act the heart. We start to really act the heart. And if we do that, I really do believe that we have a chance to build a new collective future for all. So thank you, everybody.
