How We Will Forum

August 26, 2017July 10, 2018 How We Will Forum Featured

Contributor Series: Daniel Evaeus

On our blog, in our “Contributor Series”, we will be featuring our speakers and contributors at the Forum, so you can get to know the individual, their work, and their passion, before you arrive at the end of August.

This is a special Contributor Series, for this contributor is not traveling to Los Angeles to attend the forum, but lives in the Elderberries Threefold community and is one of the core team co-workers and hosts of How We Will. We warmly introduce to you Daniel Evaeus.

DANIEL EVAEUS

Co-Founder of Have Seeds Threefold House

& Urban First Aid: Art is Medicine

“I have never before bumped up so strongly against the boundaries set by my ego. But through the learning, some boundaries dissolve. And that nourishes and inspires me a lot to say the least. I used to fear the mundanity of practical work. I am now learning how intention can illumine, uplift and give it meaning.”

– Daniel, illuminating the transformative work of Elderberries 3Fold Cafe

Daniel

As manager of Elderberries 3Fold Cafe

“It all comes to life in the cafe environment between the practical work and the social aspect of co-working and caring for customers. Still, pursuing truth asks the utmost courage and vulnerability of me…

I feel my heart slowly opening in compassion but still I wonder – what more can I do? The world is in such a needy state. How can I really come to be touched by the pain and beauty around me everywhere, every day, in a way that lights a pure fire of inspiration within to create beauty and give love selflessly, infinitely and always? It seems my pain must be healed by answering the question of “what ails thee”?

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I live in Los Angeles where I’ve dedicated my life to healing in the social realm through the work of Elderberries Threefold Cafe and it’s related endeavors. Born to Swedish-American parents, I grew up multilingual and in different countries and continents. Cultural experiences have sensitized my perception and understanding of all human beings. I’ve always radically followed my heart but only more recently fallen in love with life as I grow conscious of my creative forces. A training in violin making marked an important developmental step during which I learned through my experience that what we practice shapes our being. 4 years of crafting instruments in a Bavarian mountain village, unexpectedly turned out to be my preparation for mediation, facilitation and community building for the world. Now, how can I be of service to someone else’s destiny unfolding?’

The Cafe

Elderberries 3Fold Cafe is striving to build healthy, vital individuals and communities. The last few years of the cafe in Hollywood have seen tremendous personal transformations and a vibrant will to take action. Whether it be fostering sober and safe spaces for reflection and grounding, feeding and empowering the homeless and mentally challenged, or striving to find more beautiful and compassionate ways to engage in social activism, Elderberries 3Fold Cafe is humbly and relentlessly sowing the seeds for a more beautiful future.

THE MICHAEL GRAILROAD

The cafe believes that in order for the young people of the world to be able to bring their healing gifts to fruition, they are going to need safe and socially inspired spaces that invite creativity and ask us to be bold. The vision has always been for there to be 7 cafes across the country, beacons of light, for international collaboration. Elderberries calls it the “Michael Grailroad”, connecting and empowering the young people across the continent.

The second cafe’s seeds have emerged in Chicago! Co-workers, Frank, Kait, Destiny, and many others you’ll meet at the forum, created this video to kick off a crowdfunding campaign to establish the second Elderberries Cafe in the Midwest. Check out the video below featuring Daniel and friends, to get a sense of the community who is hosting How We Will Forum.

MNI WICONI / WATER IS LIFE

Daniel

as water protector

Daniel went twice to support the resistance against the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock Reservation, ND. Many co-workers from the Elderberries community went to protect the water and stand in solidarity with the indigenous communities fighting for their sovereignty.

After returning from Standing Rock, Daniel, Caleb, and Gésaël spoke of their experience as contributors to Initiative Forum in Järna, Sweden.

Besides his daily work with running Elderberries Threefold Cafe, Daniel co-founded and holds the Have Seeds Threefold House, an intentional co-living space and the cultural hub Urban First Aid ~ Art Is Medicine. A global community of light bearers connected to The Youth Initiative Program in Sweden and The Anthroposophical Society help keep his fire burning. His main focus is around transformational processes of becoming, facilitation and mediation, to which he brings great empathy and sensitivity.

Ready to co-create with Daniel, join our cultural collective, and come envision a more compassionate future? Join us in LA at our forum, from August 31st- September 4th, 2017.

August 22, 2017July 10, 2018 How We Will Forum Uncategorized

Contributor Series: Yuval Ron

Yuval Ron

Internationally renowned World Music artist, composer, educator, peace activist and record producer

“We are trying to create light, We are trying to create hope.”

– Yuval Ron, on his ensemble

Creating Light and Hope – 2015

“During the late 1990s, Ron’s growing awareness of the violence
between Israelis and Palestinians prompted him to become involved in
social activism. In 2000, he formed the Yuval Ron Ensemble to promote
harmony across borders and national divides. Members of the ensemble
include a Palestinian, an Armenian Christian, Sufis from Pakistan and
Turkey, a Jewish Moroccan dancer, and Israeli singer Maya Haddi ’99.
Having grown up in the part of the world where Judaism, Christianity
and Islam all began, his ensemble represents his belief that the power
of music can create peace and unity.

Led by Ron on the oud, the ensemble has enjoyed success internationally and in the United States. The group was invited by the
king of Morocco to appear at the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music in 2009 and had the honor of headlining a benefit concert for the Dalai
Lama’s initiative “Seeds of Compassion” promoting compassion in education, business, and community. They were also featured four times at the Festival of World Sacred Music in Los Angeles and performed at
the 2005 International Peace Festival in South Korea.

For Ron, music is the vehicle to bring people together, emphasize the
beauty in each culture, and build bridges between people of various
faiths and ethnic backgrounds.”

Cross Cultural Catalyst

“Rabbi David Zaslow says, “Yuval Ron’s music arises from deep within
the soul of the Middle East: the Arab soul, the Jewish soul, the soul
of Druze, Sufi, and Christian alike. In his compositions all
differences disappear, even for just a moment, to let the real soul of
peace, shalom, saalam enter the heart.” – from Om Times

Yuval Ron is an internationally renowned World Music artist, composer, educator, peace activist and record producer. Graduating Cum Laude as a Film Scoring Major at Berklee College of Music in Boston, he has continuously researched various ethnic musical traditions and spiritual paths worldwide. Among his many honors, he composed the songs and score for the Oscar winning film West Bank Story in 2007, was the featured artist in the Gala Concert for the Dalai Lama’s initiative Seeds of Compassion in the Seattle Opera Hall in 2008, and has collaborated with the Sufi leader Pir Zia Inayat Khan since 2006. His awards include the Los Angeles Treasures Award in 2004 and prestigious grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, American Composers Forum, California Council for the Humanities and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Under his leadership, the internationally renowned music and dance group, The Yuval Ron Ensemble, has been actively involved in creating musical bridges between people of the Jewish, Muslim and Christian faiths and has been featured on CNN, National Geographic, and in the international press and media. Yuval Ron has produced field recordings in the Sinai Desert with the Bedouins, archival preservation recordings of the sacred Yemenite, Moroccan and Andalusian Jewish traditions, and the album of master musician Omar Faruk Tekbilek titled, One Truth – A Window into the Divine Passion and Poetry of Sufism.

His TV and films scores includes the PBS/Nova special, Breaking the Maya Code, Proteus, Oliver Twist, The Spiral Staircase, Golda’s Balcony and Road to Victory and he has collaborated with numerous film directors including, Jeremy Kagan, Ari Sandel, David Lebrun. He received commissions from various international choreographers including Daniel Ezralow (American Repertory Ballet), Ashley Roland (ISO dance company), Oguri (Renzoku Dance Company) and Zen priest and visual artist Hirokazu Kosaka. His original scores for theater productions include Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Yeats’ Amer’s Jealousy and Becket’s Casscando.

Yuval Ron has also collaborated with neuroscientists Mark Waldman, Andrew Newburg and others to explore the connection between sound and the brain and has received commissions from Metta Mindfulness Music to create music for medical and healing use in clinics and treatments centers.

Yuval is a noted lecturer and has been invited to speak at numerous schools including: Yale, John Hopkins University, UCLA, Middlebury College, Brandeis University, MIT, Berklee College of Music, University of Chicago, Pittsburgh University, Texas University in Austin, UCSD, Jerusalem Sam Spiegel Film School and many others. Yuval Ron has been on the faculty of Esalen Institute since 2009, is an affiliated artist with the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity, and a “Guiding Voice” for Seven Pillars – House of Wisdom.

Yuval’s book Divine Attunement: Music as a path to Wisdom, won the Gold Medal Award for Best Spirituality Book at the Indie Book Awards 2015.

Education: 1989 – Berklee College of Music, graduate Cum-Laude.

Ready to join our cultural collective and come envision a more compassionate, creative, and spiritual future? Join us in LA at our forum, from August 31st- September 4th, 2017.

August 11, 2017July 10, 2018 How We Will Forum Uncategorized

Contributor Series: Joan Jaeckel

Joan:

“My #1 wish in life is for the creative education approach to be SEEN, HEARD, UNDERSTOOD and ACCEPTED. I want the creative education approach to become an accessible, abundant, free, and non-discriminatory counterbalance to what we generally think of as “school”. A more creative conception of what we think of as “teacher” and “teaching”.

How Will We ever move creative forms of education into the mainstream so more children will be able to learn creatively and more teachers teach creatively?

For example – Waldorf education is a global creative education movement initiated by Rudolf Steiner in 1919 to foster free thinkers, open hearts, and the practical changemakers sorely needed then as now.”

“Alternative Schools, a History – 1919: The first Waldorf school opens in Stuttgart, Germany. Based on the ideas of philosopher Rudolf Steiner, it encourages self-motivated learning. Today, there are more than 3,000 Waldorf schools in 60 countries.” – Genius is everywhere – How to unleash the great minds of tomorrow. NOV 2013 | WIRED

“Advocates and practitioners of personalized and holistic education … [share] a passion for forming education around how children learn and of what they need to form themselves….The Steiner approach is built around the individual needs of the whole of each child – academic, physical, emotional and spiritual.” – Ken Robinson, Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education in which he expands on his world-famous TED Talk “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” – the most watched in TED history.

Joan:

“Where does one start a mission like that – to develop understanding for creative education and conversation in the cultural sector to the point where schooling for free thinkers becomes the natural and obvious thing for every child? How Will We take creative education to the tipping point?

HOW WILL WE? WE DO COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

I have sought to further the mission of understanding and conversation around creative schooling and the U.S. educational system through various community development projects.

ShadeTree Community Schooling Initiative of Watts/South Los Angeles.

Today, I am part of a working group of the ShadeTree Multicultural Foundation invited by Orland Bishop to work on the ShadeTree Community Schooling Initiative of Watts in South Los Angeles. We plan to open a K-8 publicly chartered demonstration model of urban, multicultural Public Waldorf Education beginning with K-2nd grade fall 2019, the Waldorf centennial year.

In designing the school, we will not just plop another “choice” into the community. We will learn from and with the community about its needs. Using “systemic technology” we engage the community in two questions: “What is the purpose of education?” and “What is possible in Watts?”

Watts-Oakland Public Waldorf Education Mutual Learning Experience 2016 Building community between ShadeTree Community Schooling Initiative, South LA and Community School for Creative Education, Oakland.

Art of the Deal Building community between ShadeTree Community Schooling Initiative, Ocean Charter School, and Alliance for Public Waldorf Education.

The Waldorf Promise: Children Who Love to Learn Become Students Who Achieve.

Joan: “I worked as Consulting Producer with Eric Stacey on this CINE Golden Eagle Award winning documentary focuses on eight teachers in Waldorf-inspired public schools.

“Dear Joan: Thank you for the advanced copy of the promotional video retarding the Waldorf education approach. As you know, I am supportive of your efforts to “spread the word” about this unique and successful approach to education … Now, more than ever a Waldorf education can play a very central role in establishing a foundation for future success. People are looking for an environment where children feel enthusiastic and inspired. The skills and the attributes that laid the foundation for me at the Waldorf school are even more relevant today than they were thirty years ago.” – Kenneth I. Chenault. President and CEO American Express Company

“Investing in Socially Responsible Education”, an invitational event in San Francisco involving 50 leaders from the fields of holistic and creative education, progressive-social justice, ecology and green business, socially responsible investing and philanthropy, mindfulness and systems thinking (organized in collaboration with Ron Miller, editor, Holistic Education Review)

Harold Jordan, ACLU of Pennsylvania, at Investing in Socially Responsible Education.

“Reimagine Growing Up”, a five-CD set of

interviews with compelling voices from creative education and social and ecological wellness (with New Dimensions Media). Three samples:

“Holistic Education for the Cultural Creative Generation” with Eric Utne, Dee Dickinson, and Ron Miller
“Children at Play – Changing the World” with Rosario Villasana
“Teaching Ecological Imagination” with David Orr

GREEN MONEY JOURNAL As guest editors of Green Money Journal’s special issue devoted to “Whole Mind Education” Eric Utne and I forecast that understanding of the creative education approach will grow side by side with four cultural trends:

HOLISM and COMPLEXITY THINKING
MINDFULNESS and EMOTIONAL IQ
CIVIL SOCIETY and CULTURAL POWER
THE LEARNING ORGANIZATION

Here’s one of the articles by Linda Lantieri, author of Building Emotional Intelligence with “Emotional IQ” inventor Daniel Goleman: “Building Emotional Intelligence” by Linda Lantieri

Launched into life as an international citizen, Joan Jaeckel was born in Austria into a family of artists, architects and scientists and raised in Detroit, where she was active in community theater and folksinging. Attracted to Waldorf education through her parents who served as founding Board members of the Detroit Waldorf School, she moves to Los Angeles, graduates from the Waldorf Teacher Training Center at Highland Hall Waldorf School , teaches German there, starts a family, and serves as its Community Development Director. Her interest in the social justice potential for Waldorf education piqued at the dawn of public Waldorf-inspired schools in the U.S., she serves as Director of Development at the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America (AWSNA). From a life mission to further more understanding of and acceptance for the creative schooling mission, Joan launches projects that spread the word and bring like-minded allies together: Consulting Producer of Eric Stacey’s CINE Golden Eagle Award winning documentary, The Waldorf Promise, focusing on U.S. Public Waldorf programs; organizes a 3-day invitational conference, “Investing in Socially Responsible Education,” in collaboration with leading figures in Holistic Education, Social-Emotional Learning, Green Business, Contemplative Practice, Social Justice, and Whole Systems Thinking; coordinates the charter petition writing process for LAUSD’s Ocean Charter School, the first Public Waldorf program in Los Angeles. Today Joan is active with the ShadeTree Community Schooling Initiative of Watts/South Los Angeles and a working group of the Shade Tree Multicultural Foundation. Joan is mother to a blended family of 6 children and 7 grandchildren and lives in Studio City with artist, poet, Emerson College graduate, and general contractor, Roman Janczak.

http://shadetreecs.org/

Ready to join our cultural collective, meet Joan, and co-create an emerging, holistic path to new forms of education? Join us in LA at our forum, from August 31st- September 4th, 2017.

August 7, 2017August 7, 2017 How We Will Forum Featured

Contributor Series: Nancy Poer

Nancy Jewel Poer

Internationally Recognized Waldorf Educator, Author, Artist & Activist

“Can we address how to ‘make it human’ in the face of the powerful take over of human life by our soul-less technology, for we are the ones who must ever more vigilantly make it human? .. We are the ones that need to have our hearts open to the intervention of the spirit. As things intensify in world affairs, let us also recognize the miracles. For example, the huge, peaceful, totally non violent, Women’s March, the largest mobilization in the nation’s history on January 21, 2017! Or the great offering of prayer and courage at Standing Rock as the most powerful, capitalistic, materialistic, destructive forces in the world are being faced,- or the deeply ‘human’ compassionate responses to the plight of refugees? Spirit intervention is alive – ever inspiring us to make it more alive and real and recognize it in this world… to make it human!”

– Nancy Poer, from “Make it human, people”

Nancy Poer, Director of award-winning documentary on conscious dying

The Most Excellent Dying of Theodore Jack Heckleman

“Science can diagnose illnesses and even cure them, but it cannot teach us to die well. That comes from a deep spiritual choice..This is the story of a man who did it.”

The Most Excellent Dying of Theodore Jack Heckleman a film by Nancy Jewel Poer and documentary on conscious dying.

Order Now

“I have seldom seen a film that captures so sensitively, and with such honesty and hope, the death of someone so loved and loving.”

-Johnathan Stedall, Internationally known BBC film maker, producing documentaries of the lives of Ghandi, Carl Jung, and many more.

nancy card.jpg

Nancy is a versatile artist, creating paintings, directing film, writing articles and books. nancy book.png

Check out some of her inspiring work here.

Nancy Jewel Poer was born and raised in California. As a child she loved horses and outdoor life and graduated from the University of Arizona with hopes of becoming a veterinarian. But her large family of six children, three sons and three daughters, became the creative center of her work, along with teaching in the International Waldorf schools.

Nancy is known across the United States, for her lively lectures on Waldorf education, parenting, child development, the spiritual feminine, the mission of the spiritual America, and threshold work. She felt called to threshold work, first assisting with home births, and then pioneering support for home deaths in the community, which she has done for over thirty five years. Nancy is considered a grandmother of the national home death movement and has helped in the founding of threshold groups across the United States. She has written a book considered a classic in the home death movement, Living Into Dying, Spiritual and Practical Deathcare for Family and Community, which has empowered people throughout the country to care for their loved ones at death.

Nancy has served as consumer advocate on the CARE committee for creating end of life policy for the state of California. She is the producer of an award winning, full length documentary on conscious dying, “The Most Excellent Dying of Theodore Jack Heckelman”. and she appears in the PBS documentary A Family Undertaking. An artist as well as a writer, she has published A Child’s First Book, Mia’s Apple Tree, and in 2011 The Tear, A Children’s Story of Hope and Transformation When a Loved One Dies as well as art prints and cards for children and adults.

She is a co-founder of Rudolf Steiner College, a Waldorf teachers’ college near Sacramento, and taught there for forty years. Her courses have included the Spiritual Mission of America. She was co-editor of special America edition forLillipoh magazine and lectured in the national conference on The Inner America, 2009. She has taught children at all grade levels, K-12, and began three Waldorf kindergartens, the last as the founding teacher for the Cedar Springs Waldorf School in Placerville, California.

Nancy and her husband, Gordon are both pilots and built their own airplane. They live in the Sierra foothills on White Feather ranch where they raise cattle, have a bio-dynamic garden, host school classes, and Nancy gives women’s retreats and conferences to help pass the work on to others. The ranch serves in many capacities to bring people together for sustainable organic agriculture, supporting spiritual education for teachers and children and building sustainable communities for the future.

Ready to join our cultural collective and come envision a more compassionate, creative, and spiritual future? Join us in LA at our forum, from August 31st- September 4th, 2017.

July 31, 2017July 31, 2017 How We Will Forum Featured

Contributor Series: Bart Eddy

Bart Eddy

Educator, Social Entrepreneur & Community Development Advocate

“You have to live out your dreams, whatever they might be, as frail as they are. Take it on, do it, live it, and something will happen.”

– Bart Eddy, in an interview by Roadtrip Nation

Brightmoor Maker Space: Water Cycler Trikes Featured

Water Cycler trikes created by Detroit Community High School teacher Bart Eddy and high school students at the Brightmoor Maker Space are featured in an article on Getting Smart.

Place-based learning engages students in solving problems in their communities. In the Brightmoor neighborhood of northwest Detroit, one of the biggest problems is lack of water–ironic in a state surrounded by it. The issue resulted from a 2015 decision by the city to shut off water service to 23,300 Detroit homes in a crackdown on delinquent accounts. Brightmoor residents were left to collect water from their roofs using rain barrels, but the water was not safe for drinking. How’s that for a challenge for students to take on?

Enter teacher Bart Eddy and the high school students from Detroit Community High School at the Brightmoor Maker-Space, an afterschool and summer program that is focused on entrepreneurship, sustainability and social justice. Rather than let his students feel defeated by this situation, Bart wanted to help them find a solution. Using industrial tricycles donated by UAW Ford and the Ford Motor Company, Bart and his students applied science curriculum items to the real-world to develop mobile, solar-powered water purification units. The ‘Water Cycler’ trikes feature solar recharge capability and battery-powered pumps. Throughout the project, students collaborated with The Ross School of Business and The Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan, and also gained support from local foundations and community activists.

Place-Based Education Empowers Students to Make Change | Getting Smart

Bart Eddy is an educator, social entrepreneur and community development advocate who has worked in Detroit for more than 30 years. During that time, he has Co-Founded the Barnabas Youth Opportunities Center (1983), Detroit Community Schools (1997) and the Sunbridge International Collaborative (2012). He currently directs the “Brightmoor Makers” program for youth employment and advocacy and is passionately committed to helping young people find their sense of vision, mission and purpose in the global community. Bart was a class teacher at the Detroit Waldorf School from 1988-1996.

Ready to join our cultural collective and come co-create with Bart and the Brightmoor Makers youth? Join us in LA at our forum, from August 31st- September 4th, 2017.

July 24, 2017July 24, 2017 How We Will Forum Featured

Contributor Series: Matre

Matre

Hip-Hop Artist & Educator

“Inner and outer change is possible when we know our creative power. When we recognize ourselves as creators, we can shape ourselves and our world beyond definition or limitation.

Hip Hop is a science for knowing ourselves this way. From head-spins to beat-juggling to 3D paint portals, we get in touch with our limitless genius and build with the inspiration it brings.

In virtually every place on the planet folks are cultivating and building with this science. With tens of millions practicing Hip Hop arts, culture and philosophy it’s one of the most influential impulses on earth. From schools to war zones, galleries to back alleys, grass roots organizing to presidential politics, countless people are inspired, healed and educated through Hip Hop.

If we look (and make sure to look beyond mass-media’s skewed and severely limited portrayal) we can see Hip Hop’s impact. As lovers and livers of the culture we can also see there are next levels to be reached.”

– Matre, from “Hip Hop & Healing Change”

PROJECTS

New Son Projects
Working with all elements of Hip Hop culture, New Son Projects focuses on Hip Hop’s power as a tool for social change as well as personal and community healing. Founded in 2010, this organization works with a diverse range of approaches, from music to mentoring, community building, education and social entrepreneurship.

(Matre Live in Järna, Sweden 2010)

ShadeTree
Combining new ideas with traditional ways of knowledge, ShadeTree serves as an intentional community of mentors, elders, teachers, artists, healers and advocates for the healthy development of youth and community. Working with the practice of Indaba or ‘deep talk,’ ShadeTree provides spaces for healing, inspiration and connection by witnessing, acknowledging and welcoming each other’s unique gifts, and supporting one another to follow the paths these gifts call us towards.

From classrooms to prisons, conferences to community rituals, ShadeTree works with a diverse community internationally with an emphasis on mentoring, rites of passage and collaborative economics.

Click here to read / hear more about ShadeTree and co-founder / co-director, Orland Bishop:http://www.globalonenessproject.org/interviewee/
orland-bishop

(ShadeTree Community and Extended International Family
@ Economics of Peace Gathering, Watts Art Gallery,
Watts CA, July 2010)

Street Poets
Street Poets Inc. is a non-profit poetry-based peace-making organization dedicated to the creative process as a force for individual and community transformation. Street Poets works with at-risk youth in the juvenile detention facilities, schools and streets of Los Angeles County with the mission of inspiring them to discover and develop their voices, to support their healing, growth and development, and to connect them with diverse and supportive communities.
http://www.streetpoetsinc.com

(Street Poets Staff @ Ecological Art Gallery, LA 2008)

2012: The New Game
Inspired by the idea that everyone wants to and can transform the world, and working with the highly impactful Oasis Game strategy that social change can be fast, fun and free, 2012: The New Game is an invitation to play, connect and change the world. With an organizing network spanning six continents, the game is bringing together an international community from a vast spectrum of backgrounds, ages and fields to co-create a next level game for global change.

(Oasis Games and New Game co-founder
Edgard Gouvéia playing with children in Brazil)

Matre is a hip-hop artist and educator inspired by the empowering spirit of hip-hop culture and the arts. With a focus on cultural transformation, healing and economic justice, he works with Los Angeles based non-profits, ShadeTree Multicultural Foundation, Street Poets Inc., and Rhythm Arts Alliance, and is a founding member of hip-hop collectives Top2Bottom and LA2theBay. His recent projects include “Listen” – a youth justice initiative in collaboration with the #studentsnotsuspects coalition and the ACLU of Southern California – and “Mars Today” – a musical call for the advancement of moral technology, together with award-winning Finnish rapper Paleface and Tanzanian singer Ashimba.

Ready to join our cultural collective and see creativity in action with Matre? Join us in LA at our forum, from August 31st- September 4th, 2017.

July 17, 2017July 20, 2017 How We Will Forum Featured

Contributor Series: Laura Summer

Laura Summer

Painter & Co-Founder of Free Columbia

“Though culture is often marginalized, the health of society is actually completely dependent upon it. Culture is the wellspring from which all economic and political forms and reforms are born.

We can understand it as the realm of creativity – the domain where individual capacities are nurtured and given expression through education, art, science, religion and spirituality. ” – In discussing “Free Culture”, from Free Columbia

Free Columbia

Mission:

To provide an artistic course of study out of the inspiration of Anthroposophy which seeks to promote and ignite freedom.

The Story:

Free Columbia is about change – change in ourselves, change in the world. It is about learning to perceive through color, form, movement, creative process and thinking. Learning to perceive what is needed, what is being asked for from the world. It is about new social forms of interacting, of understanding, of financing.

The Free Columbia Art Courses are intensive explorations into art. Currently ongoing painting blocks are available, as are week-long intensives in the summer and winter, after school classes for children, once a week practical arts classes, evening lectures, a study group, music performances and artist residencies.

Free Columbia is based on an understanding of the importance of creating independent and accessible educational and artistic opportunities. There are no set tuitions. Suggested donation amounts based on what it costs to run courses are provided. It is possible to make a monthly pledge to support Free Columbia as well.

Free Columbia takes place in rural Columbia County, New York, 2 hours north of NYC. It is supported by people all over the country.

Books

Free Columbia has 5 books available here.

Laura Summer is a painter and co-founder of Free Columbia, an arts initiative that is financially accessible to everyone. She has been working with questions of color and contemporary art for 25 years. Her work, to be found in private collections in the US and Europe, has been exhibited at the National Museum of Catholic Art and History in New York City and at the Sekem Community in Egypt. She founded two temporary alternative exhibition spaces in Hudson NY, 345 Collaborative Gallery and Raising Matter-this is not a gallery and initiated ART DISPERSAL 2012-17 where 450 pieces of art by professional artists have been dispersed to the public without set prices.

Ready to join our cultural collective and see free culture in action with Laura Summer? Join us in LA at our forum, from August 31st-September 4th, 2017.