CREATIVE ACTIVISM QUOTES

“Inspiration revises our self-image, from seeing ourselves as passive victims to being active agents of transformation. This is the single most important factor in changing the human condition.”
–Philip Rubinov-Jacobson

"Because the "art" of eliminating life has become so stunningly effective and prolific, our survival may depend on embracing those activities which create life, on the utilization of the transformative process inherent in creative expression in all parts of living, in every vocation." –Connie Smith Siegal

"Nothing really holds us back from solutions to our world dilemas, except the lid we have put on our own creativity. Opening ourselves to the creative force within allows us to envision the possible. Envisioning the possible excites our will and determination to create it." - Natalie Rogers

"The arts- a term we use to incorporated a broad spectrum of creative expression, visual and verbal, written and performed, "no-tech" and mass media- are territory where many of the cultural codes, symbols, and myths we share are both created and reinforced. The images of ourselves the arts reveal serve as a filter through which society defines itself, and against which we, its individual members, measure the need for, and possibility of, action. In this sense, the work of socially conscious artists in the United States is vitally important."
-Mark O'Brien (Re-imagining America- the arts of social change p9)

"In Nicaragua, the brigades of writers, dancers, musicians, artists and theatre people who systematically go to the war zones are as important as the fuel lines, and the food lines, and the ammunition lines. It is considered absolutely essential that people’s spirits be met, and art is very much considered a spiritual need. " –Margaret Randell (Reimagining America-the arts of social change p97-98)

"The artist creates a map. It is our obligation to make this map useful to the spectators, to find a way to seduce, delight, and inspire the community to sustain the visions and actions that we enact. In this way we are both dependent on and responsible to the community." -Judith Malina

"Human consciousness is given shape by images, rythyms, sounds, words: the tools of the artist. The potential power of art as a force for change has long been known to censors and dictators. It is a potential that can be fulfilled once we rediscover and proclaim the rightful and natural place of art and artists in the life of our people."-Ricardo Levins Morales

:If we are to build a healthy sustainable culture without alienation and violence, we are going to have to rebalance our brains. To do this, we need to become fluent in the "languages" of our now underdeveloped and suppressed brain parts. These languages express through images, sounds, color, touch and movement." -In Context Spring 84-inro

"As we change our consciousness, so will we change the world. Fully engaging in the creative process of self expression awakens spontaneity and gives us fresh perspectives on personal problems and world issues." –Natalie Rogers

"Vanguard artists and their public now recognize that the strict limitation of an artwork to two dimensions, canvas, paint, and frame is only an illusion, a fantasy, a lie. Context, frame of reference, gender, cultural differences, and political realities have been revealed as part of every artwork, just as they are part of every commercial image, every educational strategy, and every human decision." –Linda Frye Burnham (Reimaging America p163)

"Art is ritual and as a form of magical activism it can be used consciously as a way to send out prayers and visions to manifest in the world." -Raven LeFay

"The privitazation of public space by the corporate media is an unacceptable and unathorized enforcement of our slavery to the industrial capitalist machine. I believe it is not only my right but also my moral duty to counteract the corporate marketing media, to subvert and oppose their intent to control our collective mindspace by placing messages of truth alongside theirs." -Raven LeFay

"The struggle is not to smash "bad guys" or to fight for short-term gains for one group or even one class but to effect system change that will yield a better life for all people, all our partners in nature, and all the generations that may follow us." -Spretnak & Capra, Green Politics, p 218

"The wild landscapes of artistic freedom and intact ecosystems have always represented a kind of danger zone to those who profit from a world of cultural and corporate control. The wild is refuge form the western paradigm. The wild is where freedom lives." –Andrew Rodman(from article "art and environmentalism" Talking Leaves 98))

"It is something to able to paint a particular picture...but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look". - Henry David Thoreau

"In our modern world the artist is tempted simply to do stunts in order to attract attention. But the true task of the artist is to discover her or his relationship to a community, a community often in desperate need of the artist's power to see the world anew."
- Historian Page Smith, from the forward to Art in Other Places: Artists at Work in America's Community & Social Institutions

"You don’t see something until you have the right metaphor to let you perceive it."
—Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolution

"For some, a creative response might be to extend what we already do well, into some new form. This would involve taking the knowledge, professions, and skills that we already have and imagining a new way to utilize them in healing the earth."–Fritz Hull (p177 Earth & Spirit)

"No revolutionary movement is complete without it’s poetic expression. If such a movement has caught hold of the masses they will seek a vent in song for the aspirations, fears, and hopes, the loves and hatreds engendered by the struggle. Until the movement is marked by the joyous, defiant singing of revolutionary songs, it lacks one of the most distinctive marks of a popular revolutionary movement it is the dogma of the few and not the faith of the multitude. " –James Connoly 1907

"Working against exploitation in nonhierarchical, creative, spontaneous collaboration with thousands of dedicated people reminds me that, when we nonviolently resist oppression, we are already free."
-Shannon Service p 27 YES! Winter 20001

" The movement is about reclaiming ownership of our schools, our towns, our open spaces, our celebrations, our food, our water, our identities, our economy, and our democratic process. Measuring progress and wealth by those standards- by the quality of our lives, our environment, and the lives of others- links us in fundamental ways that corporate culture never can." -Shannon Service p 28 Yes! Winter 2001

"…denial is our biggest personal and global enemy. To deny our personal grief, suffering, despair, or evil impulses is to carry these as a heavy, unknown burden. This leads to lethargy, depression, and apathy or violence. On the other hand, to become aware leads us into the powerful emotions that need to be channeled appropriately into creative projects. Using our creativity for awareness, release, insight, and action again leads us to the path of spirituality." –Natalie Rogers (The Creative Connection p188)

"The actual unsung truth about a lot of organizing is that it feels really good, and that’s why people do it, again and again, and again. It feels good because when were actually organizing and taking action to stop the destruction of the Earth, we’re doing an act of healing and we are free. There are few times that we are free in this culture and this is on of them. We need to speak about the joy and wildness and sense of liberation that comes when we step beyond the bounds of authorities to resist control and create change." –Starhawk (p78 reweaving the world)

"Keeping the interest of the media and the public in eco-issues while maintaining a non-violence creed demands ever evolving approaches to the problem. The shifting grounds of the environmental movement offer the most vibrant and critical canvas for artistic expression ever available- a functional, vital arena for the debut of artistic statements." –Andrew Rodman

In 1968, Land distributed among 1,600 5-year-olds a creativity test used by NASA to select innovative engineers and scientists. 98% of the children scored "highly creative." Land retested the children five years later. Only 30% of the 10-year-olds scored in this category. By 15, just 12% of the adolescents tested "highly creative." And when Land gave the test over a period of years to 280,000 adults, he found that only 2% fell into the "highly creative" category. "What we have concluded," wrote Land, "is that noncreative behavior is learned." –Susan Vaughn (LA Times, 1/11/99)

"The challenges of the next century must be met by citizens with enormous energy and a well developed capacity for imaginative discipline. Our communities need creative pioneers, adept at risk taking, challenging assumptions and questioning conventional wisdom. This is the domain of the artist: listening, translating, borrowing and synthesizing. The creator takes the old and new and links them.
He or she celebrates the common threads and the dissonance, reflects our triumphs, our pain, our folly, creating fresh images and giving new vision. This is the creative process. This is the territory of the artist." –William Cleveland

"The time has come to give everyone in our community an opportunity to know and experience creativity as our most powerful human capacity. The time has come for all of us to discover this power beyond the realms of entertainment and decoration and investment. We must recognize how our neglect of, and disdain for, our creative capacities has contributed to many of our social problems. Together, let us rewrite our cultural dictionary and democratize our cultural hierarchies. Let us speak of a new cultural continuum, a 21st Century alliance of artists, arts organizations and an expanded array of community partners, working to build a New American Aesthetic." -William Cleveland