Art for Change, Through the Church

I think that cultural change often happens first through ritual. And that art can address what is yet unspoken, before we have words for what is. Ritual and art can work on an intuitional, preverbal level, and together they can birth a new idea onto a more conscious plane, even into a physical reality.  Art in the church can birth new ways of living. 

In the next two weeks I'll be speaking in 3 different cities about the power of art to change the world. The locations are all in churches and one seminary.

The first workshop is April 31-May 1 at 1st United Methodist, Tacoma WA, with keynote speaker Jenny Phillips. Jenny is the founder of  Creation Change, and has been trained by Al Gore to teach from
An Inconvenient Truth to faith-based organizations.

The second event, May 8, 1-4, at St. Marks Episcopal Cathedral, Seattle,  is with several other Grunewald Guild faculty. The workshop is entitled "Greening Hearts and Minds with Art", and we each will be doing sessions on how we use our art to enhance and support change in the church. Here's who's speaking:

• Ron Skylstad, eco-theological speaker "Connecting Micro & Macro in our Living Spaces as Points of Meditation"
• enamel artist Jean Tudor,"Endangered Species Project: The Bestiary"
• Artist Laurie Clark "Caught Green-Handed: Using Discarded Items for the Creation of Art for the Church" 
• and myself, "Art, Community and the Word: Living Art in our Sacred Spaces" 

The third event is also with Grunewald Guild, at  Regent College, Vancouver BC.  Several of us will participate as visiting artists in a week-long seminary class entitled "Heart, Hands and Head: Crafts, Creativity and the Spiritual Art of Making Things." I'll be speaking again about how art can be used as a powerful tool to help a community shape itself.

Things are happening for the "greening" mindset in our culture.  Often unseen and unnoticed, often on the edge of things, people who have never met each other are working in concert.  Should we be surprised? Isn't this how nature works?



    

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