Mentor Of The Month

Q & A WITH JUDITH MARCUSE

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Judith: We have launched something called the International Center of Art for Social Change, which is really a response to the needs of people who want to learn about this field, to have activist artwork in the community. Using art as a tool for creating all kinds of social change. People who want to learn, people who want to connect with each other, people who want to connect with people in the health, or justice, or human rights or other sectors, a sort of cross pollination where these practices are actually used a lot all over the world and to do research—that’s a partnership with Simon Fraser University. We’ll be offering a program, a diploma program, in art for social change. A one-year program that will include a six-week internship program with our colleagues in Canada and other parts of the world. There will be workshops, and all kinds of public activities, and so here I am sitting with you today…and launching the center and planning for the tour in the spring of ’09.

You speak of artist activists, for young people who are interested in being an artist activist what are effective ways of being an activist in what you do, in a way that will actually have a positive effect?

Judith: There are so many ways to use your art in an activist setting. That’s one of the reasons why we started the center— is to help people understand some of those ways and connect with some of those ways. There are many organizations that are sort of opening their doors to artists to be communicators and facilitators of empowerment or dialogue or education. The arts are being used in all kinds of social change agendas, everything from HIV/Aids education all over Africa, with puppets and theatre and music to work with street involved youth, making stories about their own lives, or videos, or music or murals or tiles. I think one of the best ways is to just connect with artists and their organizations who are already doing this work. One of the things our center will have up on the website is a list of about 300 organizations who are actually doing this work—a lot of them in Canada and North America, but also all over the world. Just get involved. It’s very hard to sort of break into school systems, or to just go cold without really a fair amount of knowledge about strategic ways to do it. But also, there are very specific skills about how to do it; things to do with facilitation and dialogue and safe practices because a lot of artwork opens up all kinds of issues for people and you have to know how to deal with it. If you get a disclosure from someone who is suicidal, or if a fight breaks out in a workshop, if somebody starts crying, or if a whole group goes awry and you can’t get them to concentrate. There’s just lots and lots of skills to learn, so if you can apprentice yourself with an organization that’s already this kind of work, or come to the center when we’re up and running. But I think there is a lot of new opportunities for young artists who really want to have an impact for positive change, and you know the whole environmental movement, the social justice movement, artists are central in a lot of that stuff.

Could you please tell me a little bit about your career path, and how you got to where you are today?


Judith: I was born in Montreal, started dancing when I was about three, went to the royal ballet school in England when I was 15. I was a professional dancer working with both ballet and contemporary companies in Europe, and the (United) States and Canada, and I started to choreograph during that time. I came back to Canada, and started to concentrate, well I did solo and duet tours across the country, and then started choreographing seriously, working for the theatre, and dance companies, opera, television, and all those kind of things.

I then started our own company that lasted for fifteen years, until I decided to move onto other things. We toured a huge amount, doing all kinds of work in all kinds of settings, including some of the very early residencies where we would work inside the community, doing workshops and things like that. We also produced one of the very first programs for children during that time that toured a lot; it was a participatory program. Since then we produced a lot of festivals, multi-arts festivals that were designed to sort of introduce people to the arts and to connect artists across disciplines. There were six of them, and they were called the ‘kiss projects’ and they were annual, sort of four-week winter festivals that were held on Grendal Island in Vancouver. I continued to choreograph in other sorts of situations but not with the company at that time and then started on this long journey, working for social change, which is kind of a natural outcome for my background—which is an activist background.

For the last fifteen years or so, we’ve been working on a variety of projects, largely with young people. One five year project called the ‘Ice project’ explored the issues that lead to teen suicide—that included lots of workshops, hundreds of young people, using different kinds of art. So that was the ‘Ice Project’ and the ‘Fire Project’ was the next five year project that looked at how youth are affected by violence in their lives, and again, just a translation from the workshops, just trying to be really true to what people said and thought, and felt about the issues, using their own words and images, got turned into a professional show that toured again, toured twice actually, across the country. Skipping ahead to the ‘Earth Project’ which we’re just closing off with a national tour, with a show called ‘earth equals home’ which is going to nine cities across the country. We produced a large, international festival two summers ago where twenty thousand people came to the festival over five days and about three hundred artist-activists came from all over the place, that had been working around  the world for the past ten years or so.

How would you say that dance informs what you do?  Because in a sense, it all started with dance, and dance seems to be informing your drive for social change, and activism as well…how does that play in?

Judith: I think a lot of people live in their heads, and I really believe that to be really truly integrated we have to embody ourselves, embody our knowledge, communicate with our bodies and I think dance, as all art forms, allows us to communicate with each other at a very different level. It’s a level of metaphor, it’s using metaphor as a way to create safe space to communicate, people can enter metaphor with their own expertise in their own lives. So, it’s kind of a conscious and subconscious way of communicating and creating dialogue—and for me that takes the form of dance. But, I think all art works that way.

You know, the areas I am really fascinated in, as I was thinking about this new initiative that you’re spearheading and all the work that you do, is I’ve been very interested in how people maintain their health, their sanity, keep it together, so that they can fuse as much energy as possible into what they do. I was wondering if you could speak to that a little bit?

Judith: Self-care is just such a critical thing for all of us, but especially of those, well I think for everybody, but in the arts sometimes, our passion sort of takes us on a roll of energy that never seems to let up and then a lot of people burn out…and I’m one of those people (laughs). But over the years, maybe I learned a couple of things, I guess it’s really important to have people around you that are honest with you and can tell you when you need to stop…tell you when you need to just take a break. Also, I try really hard to take a couple hours a week, even if it’s only two, for yourself, I call it ‘vegetable time’ and I do whatever, wherever my nose leads me—that’s what I do. I also think it’s impossible to do anything by yourself, and it’s really important to work with other people, and to try and establish relationships that are sort of even, where you don’t feel like you’re pulling people along all the time as a leader, but rather that you can count on your colleagues to take over when you need to step back and that’s a really hard thing to do—to find those relationships and maintain them, it takes energy, to make those connections and keep them healthy. But, ultimately it’s about the people you work with…so I guess being mindful about yourself and making good connections with other people, safe practice with people who will sustain the work after you’re gone, all kinds of things that are really helpful for the community people you’re working with and yourself in terms of doing the best that you can. So I would just encourage people to learn the most that they can about the best way to do this work. You have to be a good artist, that’s number one, but there’s all kinds of skills that you really need to do this work better and they’re not hard to learn, but they need lots of practice and there are a lot of people around who can help.

One of the things that you brought up at the Canadian Youth Arts Forum was an answer to someone’s question regarding funding. I think the arts will always be challenged by a lack of funds, and will always be put under threat and so forth, but you had some interesting ways in terms of alternative funding for the projects you do, could you repeat some of that please.

Judith: I think that government funding is not going to be increasing over the short term and what I found really interesting and what I found to be helpful is to work in the private sector and the community for partnerships to help do your work. Everything from service clubs like the Lion’s club or the Rotary club to obvious foundations that are opening their doors now to art (they’re beginning to realize how potent and effective artwork is in the community), to businesses just in your community, inviting people in to see what you do, because people don’t understand this, they don’t get it—and to make it a invitation and not a beg is often a really good way to start and there is a whole sector in the business community that is now internationally that is now called the corporate social responsibility sector and they’re beginning to open their doors to open opportunity for positive change—and art is becoming part of that agenda.

What inspires you and what keeps you coming back and committing to the arts and these initiatives?

Judith: I see the transformations when people make art that express their feelings and thoughts. I see how people gain their own power both collectively and initially and I see people do amazing things as a consequence of that—not only in Canada but all over the world. I see colleagues in other parts of the world, especially the global south with nothing and doing the most extraordinary work, I find it inspiring to see the results of this kind of work.