The Creative Process · Arts, Culture & Society: 2015-2021 (The Creative Process - Books, Film, Music, TV, Art, Writing, Education, Environment, Theatre, Dance, LGBTQ, Social Justice, Spirituality, Feminism, Technology, AI)

Novelist and short-story writer Yiyun Li discusses her two homelands – the China she left when she came to the University of Iowa to study immunology, and America, which has been her home for almost 20 years. In novels like Kinder than Solitude and The Vagrants, and short story collections A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, she has impressed critics and fellow writers with the grace and subtlety of her writing, even as she tells stories so truthful and critical that she won’t publish her books in China. Michel Faber, writing for The Guardian, said, “Yiyun has the talent, the vision and the respect for life’s insoluble mysteries...[she] is the real deal.”

Li has received numerous awards, including Whiting Award, Lannan Foundation Residency fellow, 2010 MacArthur Foundation fellow, 2014 Benjamin H. Danks Award from American Academy of Arts and Letters, 2015 Sunday Times EFG Short Story Prize, among others. She was selected by Granta as one of the 21 Best Young American Novelists under 35, and was named by The New Yorker as one of the top 20 writers under 40. She has served on the jury panel for Man Booker International Prize, National Book Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, and other. She is a contributing editor to the Brooklyn-based literary magazine, A Public Space.

www.creativeprocess.info

Paul Auster is the bestselling author of Winter Journal, Sunset Park, Invisible, The Book of Illusions, and The New York Trilogy, among many other works. He has been awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, the Prix Médicis étranger, an Independent Spirit Award, and the Premio Napoli. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has also penned several screenplays for films such as ‘Smoke’ (1995), as well as ‘Lulu on the Bridge’ (1998) and ‘The Inner Life of Martin Frost’ (2007), which he also directed.

Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam and raised in America, and currently lives in Los Angeles. His novel The Sympathizer won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and other awards. He is also the author of the nonfiction books Nothing Ever Dies and Race and Resistance. Apart from writing, Nguyen is also the Aerol Arnold Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, and is also a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and the editor of The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives.

www.creativeprocess.info

David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor, and Professor of Comparative Literature, at Stanford University. Founding editor of the e-journal, Occasion: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities, he writes for Truthout‘s Public Intellectual Project, and his work has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian, Jacobin, Salon, Al Jazeera, The Hill, Buzzfeed, Vox, and other venues.

www.creativeprocess.info

Christina Mossaides Strassfield is the Museum Director/Chief Curator of Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton, New York. She oversees the artistic leadership and overall management of the Museum and its exhibition schedule, curating or overseeing as program manager. The mission of the museum is to showcase artists who have an affiliation with Eastern Suffolk County. The Hamptons is the summer home for most of the New York Art world.  This has allowed Strassfield to forge close relationships with leading artists, dealers and collectors. She has been instrumental in coordinating biannual group invitationals. At Guild Hall she is charge of curating the collection of over 2000 objects, works of art by artists associated with the Eastern Long Island, as well as organizing the traveling exhibition of works from the collection, managing education programs, design, conservation and other exhibition related work.

· www.guildhall.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam and raised in America, and currently lives in Los Angeles. His novel The Sympathizer won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and other awards. He is also the author of the nonfiction books Nothing Ever Dies and Race and Resistance and the short story collection The Refugees. Apart from writing, Nguyen is also the Aerol Arnold Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, and is also a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and the editor of The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives.

www.creativeprocess.info

Ralph Gibson began taking pictures while in the U.S. Navy in the 1950s, and later assisted Dorothea Lange and Robert Frank before establishing his own studio in New York. His work is widely exhibited and held in public collections around the world, such as the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. His books include The Somnambulist, Déjà-vu,, Days at Sea and Ralph Gibson: Self-Exposure.The recipient of NEA and Guggenheim grants, Gibson was made a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government in 2002. He lives and works in New York.
· www.ralphgibson.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

Vallejo Gantner led Performance Space 122 (now Performance Space New York) from 2005 to 2017 and was responsible for all programming and strategic direction, including the creation of the annual, interdisciplinary COIL Festival; the production of worldwide tours for multiple PS122 shows; and the conception, fundraising, and management for the recent $35 million renovation of the organization’s longtime East Village home. Most recently, he has been an artistic adviser to BAM Artistic Director David Binder and a curatorial advisor and dramaturge for Theater der Welt in Dusseldorf. At Onassis USA, Gantner leads all of the Foundation’s cultural activities in the U.S., harnessing its evolution into a formidable contemporary producer and presenter of arts-and-ideas programs that substantially contribute to timely national conversations and effectively inspire social change.
· www.onassisusa.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

Since 1971, Pilobolus Dance Company has toured more than 65 countries, performing to over a quarter of a million people each year. Pilobolus has appeared on Oprah, the Academy Awards, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, NBC’s TODAY Show, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, MTV’s Video Music Awards. Their honors include a TED Fellowship, a Grammy® Award Nomination, a Primetime Emmy® Award, and several Cannes Lion Awards. Pilobolus has collaborated with more than 75 brands and organizations to create bespoke performances for television, film, and live events.
· www.pilobolus.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

Helen A. Harrison is the director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center and an authority on 20th century American art. She is the author of Hamptons Bohemia and Such Desperate Joy: Imagining Jackson Pollack. In 1990, after serving as curator of the Parrish Art Museum, director of the Public Art Preservation Committee in Manhattan, and curator of Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton, she became the director of the Pollock-Krasner House, a National Historic Landmark museum and research collection in East Hampton. She has lectured widely at Stony Brook University, the School of Visual Arts, and other universities. For five years her visual art commentaries, “Art Waves,” were heard on NPR affiliate WLIU 88.3 FM.

www.creativeprocess.info

Neil Patrick Harris is a Tony and Emmy award-winning stage and screen performer, famous for his roles as Barney Stinson in the popular CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and as the iconic and beloved Doogie Howser, M.D., and Count Olaf in A Series of Unfortunate Events. He’s hosted the Oscars, Tony, and Emmy Awards, and performed in several Broadway shows, including Rent, Cabaret, Proof, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. His film credits include Starship Troopers , the Harold and Kumar series, and Gone Girl.

www.creativeprocess.info

The technique, the means of expression is dictated by what those feelings are. It's not the other way around. People think – Oh, he used the liquid material and then he sort of danced around and that kind of gave him ideas. – No."

Helen A. Harrison is the director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center and an authority on 20th century American art. She is the author of Hamptons Bohemia and Such Desperate Joy: Imagining Jackson Pollack. In 1990, after serving as curator of the Parrish Art Museum, director of the Public Art Preservation Committee in Manhattan, and curator of Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton, she became the director of the Pollock-Krasner House, a National Historic Landmark museum and research collection in East Hampton. She has lectured widely at Stony Brook University, the School of Visual Arts, and other universities. For five years her visual art commentaries, “Art Waves,” were heard on NPR affiliate WLIU 88.3 FM.

Mechtild Rössler is the Director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and has worked at the organization for almost 30 years holding different positions, including overseeing the Cultural Heritage Treaty Section, Programme Specialist for Natural Heritage and cultural landscapes, Chief of Europe and North America, and Chief of the Policy and Statutory Meeting Section. She also managed the team of the History, Memory and Dialogue Section (HMD) dealing with the Slave Route, Silk Road Platform and the UNESCO Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture. She has published and co-authored 13 books and more than 100 articles, including, together with Christina Cameron, “Many voices, one vision: the early history of the World Heritage Convention”.

· https://whc.unesco.org

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

Alicia Longwell is the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Chief Curator, Art and Education, at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York. She has organized numerous survey and solo exhibitions on Marsden Hartley, Frederick Kiesler, Dorothea Rockburne, Alan Shields, and Jack Youngerman. Longwell received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Center, City University of New York, where her dissertation topic was John Graham, the subject of a retrospective she organized for the Parrish Art Museum in 2017.

· parrishart.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

Neil Patrick Harris is a Tony and Emmy award-winning stage and screen performer, famous for his roles as Barney Stinson in the popular CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and as the iconic and beloved Doogie Howser, M.D., and Count Olaf in A Series of Unfortunate Events. He’s hosted the Oscars, Tony, and Emmy Awards, and performed in several Broadway shows, including Rent, Cabaret, Proof, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. His film credits include Starship Troopers , the Harold and Kumar series, and Gone Girl.

www.creativeprocess.info

Jacques Franck is a specialist in Leonardo da Vinci who has trained both as an art historian and as a classical painter. A consulting expert to the Louvre, the Armand Hammer Centre for Da Vinci Studies at UCLA, and other institutions, he has spent almost fifty years immersed in the Italian master’s body of work. Franck has made “critical copies” in order to better understand DaVinci’s techniques, which have been shown at the Uffizi, and has dedicated his life to raising awareness about the dangers of restoration based on insufficient knowledge. He spoke to Mia on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the death of DaVinci and his major retrospective exhibition at the Louvre bringing together almost 120 works from the most prestigious European and American institutions.

www.creativeprocess.info

Jacques Franck is a specialist in Leonardo da Vinci who has trained both as an art historian and as a classical painter. A consulting expert to the Louvre, the Armand Hammer Centre for Da Vinci Studies at UCLA, and other institutions, he has spent almost fifty years immersed in the Italian master’s body of work. Franck has made “critical copies” in order to better understand DaVinci’s techniques, which have been shown at the Uffizi, and has dedicated his life to raising awareness about the dangers of restoration based on insufficient knowledge. He spoke to Mia on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the death of DaVinci and his major retrospective exhibition at the Louvre bringing together almost 120 works from the most prestigious European and American institutions.

www.creativeprocess.info

David Rubin began his career in New York on the production staff of Saturday Night Live, before working on the casting of Ragtime, Silkwood, and Amadeus. His career as a casting director includes more than 80 motion pictures, including The English Patient, Men in Black, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Lars and the Real Girl. He has also assembled the casts of TV productions such as Big Little Lies, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Little Fires Everywhere. In 2002, he received the Casting Society of America’s Hoyt Bowers Award for outstanding contribution to the casting profession. David Rubin is currently the president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

This episode originally aired in 2020.

. www.oscars.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

Kate Mueth is the Founder and Artistic Director of the award-winning dance theater company The Neo-Political Cowgirls. In their 13th year of devised theater making, NPC continues to present bold, "Mind bending" theater that seeks to deepen and challenge the ways in which audiences experience theater. Committed to shining light on female-identifying theater makers, NPC produces and supports work by women+ in a myriad of ways to create parity on the stage. NPC's Arts Education Outreach programming has been called "Crucial to our community" for their tireless work in using the Arts to creatively address social (in)justice, education and conflict. She trained in the prestigious Arts Leadership program at Lincoln Center, Circle in the Square Conservatory and Shakespeare & Company, and is Co-VP of Communications of the League of Professional Theatre Women. She has worked as actress/director/ choreographer with such luminaries as Blythe Danner, Tony Walton, Simon Jones, Cathy Curtin, Liz Larsen, Heather Lind, Joe Pintauro, Joy Behar, and others at Lincoln Center, John Drew Theater, Bay Street Theater and other notable venues.
· www.npcowgirls.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

David Rubin began his career in New York on the production staff of Saturday Night Live, before working on the casting of Ragtime, Silkwood, and Amadeus. His career as a casting director includes more than 80 motion pictures, including The English Patient, Men in Black, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Lars and the Real Girl. He has also assembled the casts of TV productions such as Big Little Lies, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Little Fires Everywhere. In 2002, he received the Casting Society of America’s Hoyt Bowers Award for outstanding contribution to the casting profession. David Rubin is currently the president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

This episode originally aired in 2020.

Image courtesy of OSCARS.ORG · Artwork: Victoria Villasana

. www.oscars.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

Since 1971, Pilobolus Dance Company has toured more than 65 countries, performing to over a quarter of a million people each year. Pilobolus has appeared on Oprah, the Academy Awards, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, NBC’s TODAY Show, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, MTV’s Video Music Awards. Their honors include a TED Fellowship, a Grammy® Award Nomination, a Primetime Emmy® Award, and several Cannes Lion Awards. Pilobolus has collaborated with more than 75 brands and organizations to create bespoke performances for television, film, and live events.

· www.pilobolus.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

Ralph Gibson began taking pictures while in the U.S. Navy in the 1950s, and later assisted Dorothea Lange and Robert Frank before establishing his own studio in New York. His work is widely exhibited and held in public collections around the world, such as the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. His books include The Somnambulist, Déjà-vu,, Days at Sea and Ralph Gibson: Self-Exposure. The recipient of NEA and Guggenheim grants, Gibson was made a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government in 2002. He lives and works in New York.
· www.ralphgibson.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

Christina Mossaides Strassfield is the Museum Director/Chief Curator of Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton, New York. She oversees the artistic leadership and overall management of the Museum and its exhibition schedule, curating or overseeing as program manager. The mission of the museum is to showcase artists who have an affiliation with Eastern Suffolk County. The Hamptons is the summer home for most of the New York Art world.  This has allowed Strassfield to forge close relationships with leading artists, dealers and collectors. She has been instrumental in coordinating biannual group invitationals. At Guild Hall she is charge of curating the collection of over 2000 objects, works of art by artists associated with the Eastern Long Island, as well as organizing the traveling exhibition of works from the collection, managing education programs, design, conservation and other exhibition related work.

· www.guildhall.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor, and Professor of Comparative Literature, at Stanford University. Founding editor of the e-journal, Occasion: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities, he writes for Truthout‘s Public Intellectual Project, and his work has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian, Jacobin, Salon, Al Jazeera, The Hill, Buzzfeed, Vox, and other venues.

www.creativeprocess.info

Alicia Longwell is the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Chief Curator, Art and Education, at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York. She has organized numerous survey and solo exhibitions on Marsden Hartley, Frederick Kiesler, Dorothea Rockburne, Alan Shields, and Jack Youngerman. Longwell received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Center, City University of New York, where her dissertation topic was John Graham, the subject of a retrospective she organized for the Parrish Art Museum in 2017.
· parrishart.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

Novelist and short-story writer Yiyun Li discusses her two homelands – the China she left when she came to the University of Iowa to study immunology, and America, which has been her home for almost 20 years. In novels like Kinder than Solitude and The Vagrants, and short story collections A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, she has impressed critics and fellow writers with the grace and subtlety of her writing, even as she tells stories so truthful and critical that she won’t publish her books in China. Michel Faber, writing for The Guardian, said, “Yiyun has the talent, the vision and the respect for life’s insoluble mysteries...[she] is the real deal.”

Li has received numerous awards, including Whiting Award, Lannan Foundation Residency fellow, 2010 MacArthur Foundation fellow, 2014 Benjamin H. Danks Award from American Academy of Arts and Letters, 2015 Sunday Times EFG Short Story Prize, among others. She was selected by Granta as one of the 21 Best Young American Novelists under 35, and was named by The New Yorker as one of the top 20 writers under 40. She has served on the jury panel for Man Booker International Prize, National Book Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, and other. She is a contributing editor to the Brooklyn-based literary magazine, A Public Space.

www.creativeprocess.info

Vallejo Gantner led Performance Space 122 (now Performance Space New York) from 2005 to 2017 and was responsible for all programming and strategic direction, including the creation of the annual, interdisciplinary COIL Festival; the production of worldwide tours for multiple PS122 shows; and the conception, fundraising, and management for the recent $35 million renovation of the organization’s longtime East Village home. Most recently, he has been an artistic adviser to BAM Artistic Director David Binder and a curatorial advisor and dramaturge for Theater der Welt in Dusseldorf. At Onassis USA, Gantner leads all of the Foundation’s cultural activities in the U.S., harnessing its evolution into a formidable contemporary producer and presenter of arts-and-ideas programs that substantially contribute to timely national conversations and effectively inspire social change.
· www.onassisusa.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

Kate Mueth is the Founder and Artistic Director of the award-winning dance theater company The Neo-Political Cowgirls. In their 13th year of devised theater making, NPC continues to present bold, "Mind bending" theater that seeks to deepen and challenge the ways in which audiences experience theater. Committed to shining light on female-identifying theater makers, NPC produces and supports work by women+ in a myriad of ways to create parity on the stage. NPC's Arts Education Outreach programming has been called "Crucial to our community" for their tireless work in using the Arts to creatively address social (in)justice, education and conflict. She trained in the prestigious Arts Leadership program at Lincoln Center, Circle in the Square Conservatory and Shakespeare & Company, and is Co-VP of Communications of the League of Professional Theatre Women. She has worked as actress/director/ choreographer with such luminaries as Blythe Danner, Tony Walton, Simon Jones, Cathy Curtin, Liz Larsen, Heather Lind, Joe Pintauro, Joy Behar, and others at Lincoln Center, John Drew Theater, Bay Street Theater and other notable venues.
· www.npcowgirls.org
· www.creativeprocess.info

FX Harsono, one of Indonesia’s most revered contemporary artists, has been a central figure of the Indonesian art scene for over 40 years. In 1975, he was among a group of young artists who founded Indonesia’s Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru (New Art Movement), which emphasized an experimental, conceptual approach, the use of everyday materials, and engagement with social and political issues. Over the course of recent decades that have seen enormous transformations in Indonesia, Harsono has continuously explored the role of the artist in society, in particular his relationship to history. During Indonesia’s dictatorial Suharto regime (1967-98), his installation and performance works were powerfully eloquent acts of protest against an oppressive state apparatus. The fall of the regime in 1998, which triggered rioting and widespread violence, mainly against Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese minority, prompted an introspective turn in Harsono’s artistic practice. He embarked on an ongoing investigation of his own family history and the position of minorities in society, especially his own Chinese-Indonesian community. The recovery of buried or repressed histories, cultures, and identities – and the part that the artist can play in this process – have remained a significant preoccupation. Through looking into his own past, Harsono has touched on concerns that resonate globally, foregrounding fundamental issues that are central to the formation of group and personal identities in our rapidly changing world.

www.creativeprocess.info

FX Harsono, one of Indonesia’s most revered contemporary artists, has been a central figure of the Indonesian art scene for over 40 years. In 1975, he was among a group of young artists who founded Indonesia’s Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru (New Art Movement), which emphasized an experimental, conceptual approach, the use of everyday materials, and engagement with social and political issues. Over the course of recent decades that have seen enormous transformations in Indonesia, Harsono has continuously explored the role of the artist in society, in particular his relationship to history. During Indonesia’s dictatorial Suharto regime (1967-98), his installation and performance works were powerfully eloquent acts of protest against an oppressive state apparatus. The fall of the regime in 1998, which triggered rioting and widespread violence, mainly against Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese minority, prompted an introspective turn in Harsono’s artistic practice. He embarked on an ongoing investigation of his own family history and the position of minorities in society, especially his own Chinese-Indonesian community. The recovery of buried or repressed histories, cultures, and identities – and the part that the artist can play in this process – have remained a significant preoccupation. Through looking into his own past, Harsono has touched on concerns that resonate globally, foregrounding fundamental issues that are central to the formation of group and personal identities in our rapidly changing world.

www.creativeprocess.info

Pinaree Sanpitak is one of the most compelling and respected Thai artists of her generation, and her work can be counted among the most powerful explorations of women’s experience in all of Southeast Asia. Her primary inspiration has been the female body, distilled to its most basic forms and imbued with an ethereal spirituality. The quiet, Zen-like abstraction of her work owes something to her training in Japan and sets it somewhat apart from the colorful intensity of much Thai art. Her rigorous focus on the female form, explored through a variety of media – painting, drawing, sculpture, textiles, ceramics, performance, and culinary arts, to name but a few – has resulted in an astoundingly varied and innovative body of work. For the past twenty years, a central motif in her work has been the female breast, which she relates to imagery of the natural world and to the iconic forms of the Buddhist stupa (shrine) and offering bowl. Often called a feminist or Buddhist artist, she resists such easy categorizations, preferring to let her work speak to each viewer directly, to the heart and soul, with the most basic language of form, color, and texture. Her work is not lacking in a conceptual framework, but it is one informed primarily by a deeply felt spiritual sense rather than by rigid dogmas or ideological constructs.

Pinaree’s work has been featured in numerous museum exhibitions in Asia and Europe during the past twenty years, and she has participated in major biennials in Australia, Italy, Japan, and Korea.
· www.trfineart.com/artist/pinaree-sanpitak
· www.creativeprocess.info

Doctor in English studies and lecturer at the University of Paris-Diderot until 2002, Bénédicte Alliot was Director of the French Institute of South Africa in Johannesburg (2002-2006), then Cultural Attaché at the French Embassy in New Delhi, India (2006-2010). She then headed the Cultural Seasons unit at the Institut Français in Paris. Since early 2016, Bénédicte Alliot has been the Executive Director of the Cité internationale des arts, a residency centre that welcomes 326 artists, writers, filmmakers, dancers, playwrights, etc. from more than 100 countries located in the centre of Paris, in the Marais and Montmartre districts.
· www.citedesartsparis.net
· www.creativeprocess.info

And it's made of different studios where you have a living space and a working space. So, it means that the artists come live and work in the same space. This stems from a very 20th-century idea and concept which was the need for Paris to provide itself with proper accommodation and working spaces for artists. There are some memories of Picasso and the likes struggling all through winter in horrid conditions precisely because there was no adequate infrastructure for artists, so that was why the two people, mostly one person, Félix Brunau, decided that he wanted to build a Cité Internationale des Arts for artists to come for temporary residencies. It was founded by Félix Brunau then, who was an architect and much more, also a diplomat, and an extraordinary figure of the 20th century, but it gets all sorts of public support from the Minister of Culture, the City of Paris, and also the Academie des Beaux-Arts, which actually provided some assistance when Cité Internationale des Arts was conceived. "

Doctor in English studies and lecturer at the University of Paris-Diderot until 2002, Bénédicte Alliot was Director of the French Institute of South Africa in Johannesburg (2002-2006), then Cultural Attaché at the French Embassy in New Delhi, India (2006-2010). She then headed the Cultural Seasons unit at the Institut Français in Paris. Since early 2016, Bénédicte Alliot has been the Executive Director of the Cité internationale des arts, a residency centre that welcomes 326 artists, writers, filmmakers, dancers, playwrights, etc. from more than 100 countries located in the centre of Paris, in the Marais and Montmartre districts.
· www.citedesartsparis.net
· www.creativeprocess.info

Award-winning landscape artist April Gornik’s paintings and drawings of land, sky and sea are anchored in observed reality and a world synthesized, abstracted, remembered and imagined.

Award-winning artist April Gornik has work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney, and other collections. Retrospectives of her art have traveled to museums in the U.S. and Canada. She has shown at the Whitney and Venice Biennales, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Weisman Museum, Guild Hall, Parrish Art Museum, and in Seeing Nature, a traveling exhibition of Paul Allen's collection featuring Monet, Klimt, Turner, Hockney, and others.

She has contributed much to preserve the history and culture of Sag Harbor, leading many projects, including the Sag Harbor Cinema Arts Center and The Church.

Mia recently completed a residency, as an inaugural artist participating in The Church’s new program, where she was able to witness first hand the depth of April’s engagement with the community and her dedication to art, not just as a means of self-expression but as a vehicle for bringing people together. She sat down with April in her studio in North Haven.

· www.aprilgornik.com

· www.creativeprocess.info

"You know, I've always liked, since I started painting, particular landscapes, I like to see work as the artist wants it to be seen. I'm curious about the creative process to a certain extent, but I'm much more interested in the effect of the final work. And the underpainting for me is always important because I believe that there is a bit of a thin dimension on the surface of all of these paintings that exists that's a conversation that's going on between the underpainting and what it is eventually subsumed by on the surface of the painting. And it's more or less evident in different paintings that I do. Sometimes it gets almost completely obliterated, but I still believe that there's a little resonance that exists between the final layer of the painting."

Award-winning landscape artist April Gornik’s paintings and drawings of land, sky and sea are anchored in observed reality and a world synthesized, abstracted, remembered and imagined.

Award-winning artist April Gornik has work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney, and other collections. Retrospectives of her art have traveled to museums in the U.S. and Canada. She has shown at the Whitney and Venice Biennales, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Weisman Museum, Guild Hall, Parrish Art Museum, and in Seeing Nature, a traveling exhibition of Paul Allen's collection featuring Monet, Klimt, Turner, Hockney, and others.

She has contributed much to preserve the history and culture of Sag Harbor, leading many projects, including the Sag Harbor Cinema Arts Center and The Church.

Mia recently completed a residency, as an inaugural artist participating in The Church’s new program, where she was able to witness first hand the depth of April’s engagement with the community and her dedication to art, not just as a means of self-expression but as a vehicle for bringing people together. She sat down with April in her studio in North Haven.
· www.aprilgornik.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

Vlad Sokhin is a Russia-born documentary photographer, videographer, and multimedia producer covering sociocultural, environmental, and human rights issues worldwide. His projects are supported by various UN agencies and international NGOs. Vlad’s work has been featured in over 40 publications, including National Geographic, NPR, Newsweek Japan, BBC, and The Guardian. In 2014, he was named Best Photographer in Russia, and in 2017, he was awarded the Visa d’or Franceinfo: Award for the Best Digital News Story for his “Warm Waters, Kamchatka” series.

Vlad is a citizen of the world. He is currently based in the Asia-Pacfic region and continues to work on photography and video projects there, in addition to Africa, Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. www.vladsokhin.com · www.creativeprocess.info

Vlad Sokhin is a Russia-born documentary photographer, videographer, and multimedia producer covering sociocultural, environmental, and human rights issues worldwide. His projects are supported by various UN agencies and international NGOs. Vlad’s work has been featured in over 40 publications, including National Geographic, NPR, Newsweek Japan, BBC, and The Guardian. In 2014, he was named Best Photographer in Russia, and in 2017, he was awarded the Visa d’or Franceinfo: Award for the Best Digital News Story for his “Warm Waters, Kamchatka” series.

Vlad is a citizen of the world. He is currently based in the Asia-Pacfic region and continues to work on photography and video projects there, in addition to Africa, Europe, Russia, and the Middle East.

Roxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She is the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, the New York Times bestselling Bad Feminist, the nationally bestselling Difficult Women and the New York Times bestselling Hunger. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel.

· www.roxanegay.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

Paul Auster is the bestselling author of Winter Journal, Sunset Park, Invisible, The Book of Illusions, and The New York Trilogy, among many other works. He has been awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, the Prix Médicis étranger, an Independent Spirit Award, and the Premio Napoli. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has also penned several screenplays for films such as ‘Smoke’ (1995), as well as ‘Lulu on the Bridge’ (1998) and ‘The Inner Life of Martin Frost’ (2007), which he also directed.

Debra Kerr is the Executive Director of Intuit - the Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in Chicago. She was previously at the John G. Shedd Aquarium for 17 years - she is a past board member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, past chair and instructor for its Professional Development Committee and management courses, past chair of the zoo and aquarium committee for the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, and former board member of the National Veterans Art Museum.

She currently serves on the board for the Merit School of Music and the National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes Leaders Council.She frequently presents on issues related to museum relevance, teen empowerment and activating the public for social good.

· www.art.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

Museum director, curator, and cultural producer at large, Chris Dercon is the President of the Réunion des musées nationaux – Grand Palais, an umbrella group of national museums in France. His career in major cultural institutions across Europe spans several decades. From 2011 to 2016, he was director of London's Tate Modern. He has been program director of MoMA PS1 in New York, and has served as director of the Witte de With Center of Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Haus der Kunst in Munich, and Berlin's Volksbühne theater. He is also a presenter, writer and maker of cultural documentaries.

· www.grandpalais.fr

· www.creativeprocess.info


Photo Dazaifu89 CC BY-SA 4.0

Museum director, curator, and cultural producer at large, Chris Dercon is the President of the Réunion des musées nationaux – Grand Palais, an umbrella group of national museums in France. His career in major cultural institutions across Europe spans several decades. From 2011 to 2016, he was director of London's Tate Modern. He has been program director of MoMA PS1 in New York, and has served as director of the Witte de With Center of Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Haus der Kunst in Munich, and Berlin's Volksbühne theater. He is also a presenter, writer and maker of cultural documentaries.
· www.grandpalais.fr
· www.creativeprocess.info

Jordan Kerner is a widely acclaimed film and television producer. He is president and founder of The Kerner Entertainment Company, which is committed to high quality, value-oriented, provocative entertainment. Most recently, Kerner was engaged to develop and produce a film adaptation of Clifford the Big Red Dog. His previous films include The Smurfs, Charlotte’s Web, The Mighty Ducks, Fried Green Tomatoes, and When A Man Loves A Woman. Kerner is also a dedicated custodian of his community-- he is involved with such organizations as Planned Parenthood, RiverLA, and the Starbright Foundation.

Jordan Kerner is a widely acclaimed film and television producer. He is president and founder of The Kerner Entertainment Company, which is committed to high quality, value-oriented, provocative entertainment. Most recently, Kerner was engaged to develop and produce a film adaptation of Clifford the Big Red Dog. His previous films include The Smurfs, Charlotte’s Web, The Mighty Ducks, Fried Green Tomatoes, and When A Man Loves  A Woman. Kerner is also a dedicated custodian of his community-- he is involved with such organizations as Planned Parenthood, RiverLA, and the Starbright Foundation.

· www.creativeprocess.info

George Pelecanos is an award-winning author, essayist, screenwriter and producer from Washington, D.C. He has written over 20 novels and four series in the crime and detective fiction genre. He is also a recipient of the Los Angeles Times Book prize, the Raymond Chandler award, the Hammett Prize, the Barry Award, the Gumshoe Award, and the Grand Prix Du Roman Noir award. Pelecanos worked as a screenwriter for HBO’s The Wire, where his writing earned him an Emmy nomination as well as an Edgar and Writers Guild of America Award. Other shows he has written and/or produced for are The Pacific, The Deuce, and Treme.

· www.george-pelecanos.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

“I do want to point out–many writers don’t want to admit to it or say it–it’s just words on a page until everybody else makes it come alive. You had Idris Elba and Wood Harris acting in that scene. I had Joe Chappelle shooting it. He was the director. All the craftsmen and artists that worked on that made it what it is. And that’s actually what I like about it. It’s why I continue to work in television. I like working with all these artists. I like getting together with these people and making something together. It’s not just the writing. It’s everything that everybody contributes to make it what it is.”
George Pelecanos is an award-winning author, essayist, screenwriter and producer from Washington, D.C. He has written over 20 novels and four series in the crime and detective fiction genre. He is also a recipient of the Los Angeles Times Book prize, the Raymond Chandler award, the Hammett Prize, the Barry Award, the Gumshoe Award, and the Grand Prix Du Roman Noir award. Pelecanos worked as a screenwriter for HBO’s The Wire, where his writing earned him an Emmy nomination as well as an Edgar and Writers Guild of America Award. Other shows he has written and/or produced for are The Pacific, The Deuce, and Treme.

· www.george-pelecanos.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

Roxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She is the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, the New York Times bestselling Bad Feminist, the nationally bestselling Difficult Women and the New York Times bestselling Hunger. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel.

· www.roxanegay.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

Matthew Libatique is an Oscar-nominated cinematographer best known for his work with director Darren Aronofsky on Pi, Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan, and other films. He received his second Academy Award nomination for Bradley Cooper's directorial debut A Star Is Born, and has worked with Spike Lee, Joel Schumacher, and Jon Favreau. Known for bringing an edgy elegance and psychological tension to films, his unique visual style can also be seen in Tigerland, Phone Booth, Iron Man 1 & 2, and Venom.

· www.creativeprocess.info

Composer John Powell is a multiple Annie Award winner for “Best Music in an Animated Feature Production” and “Best Original Score”. Since rising to prominence with his scores to the Matt Damon Bourne trilogy, he has become known for family animated films, scoring Shrek, Chicken Run, Ice Age (2 & 3), Bolt, Rio, Happy Feet (1 & 2) and Kung Fu Panda (1 & 2) and action music for Hancock, Green Zone, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Italian Job, X-Men: The Last Stand, and Solo: A Star Wars Story, among others.

Nominated for multiple Grammys, BAFTAs and other awards, his score for How to Train Your Dragon earned him his first Academy Award nomination. His concert music includes "A Prussian Requiem", an oratorio to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of World War I which premiered at The Royal Festival Hall.

· https://johnpowellmusic.com


· www.creativeprocess.info

Composer John Powell is a multiple Annie Award winner for “Best Music in an Animated Feature Production” and “Best Original Score”. Since rising to prominence with his scores to the Matt Damon Bourne trilogy, he has become known for family animated films, scoring Shrek, Chicken Run, Ice Age (2 & 3), Bolt, Rio, Happy Feet (1 & 2) and Kung Fu Panda (1 & 2) and action music for Hancock, Green Zone, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Italian Job, X-Men: The Last Stand, and Solo: A Star Wars Story, among others.

Nominated for multiple Grammys, BAFTAs and other awards, his score for How to Train Your Dragon earned him his first Academy Award nomination. His concert music includes  "A Prussian Requiem", an oratorio to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of World War I which  premiered at The Royal Festival Hall.

· https://johnpowellmusic.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

Daniel Handler is the author of seven novels. As Lemony Snicket, he is responsible for numerous books for children, including Swarm of Bees, illustrated by Rilla Alexander. His books have sold more than 70 million copies, have been translated into 40 languages, and adapted for screen and stage. The first season of Netflix’s adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events, for which he served as Executive Producer and Writer, won a 2018 Peabody Award for its “lively excellence, strange silliness, and compelling storytelling,” and the teleplay won a 2019 Writers Guild Award.

· www.danielhandler.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

Bestselling author and screenwriter Delia Ephron's most recent novel is Siracusa now being adapted into a feature film. Her other novels include The Lion Is In and Hanging Up. She has written humor books for all ages, including How to Eat Like a Child and Do I Have to Say Hello?; and nonfiction, most recently Sister Mother Husband Dog (etc.). Her films include You've Got Mail, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Hanging Up (based on her novel), and Michael. Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times, O: The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. Her hit play Love, Loss, and What I Wore (co-written with Nora Ephron) ran for more than two years off-Broadway and has been performed all over the world. She lives in New York City.

· www.deliaephronwriter.com


· www.creativeprocess.info

Bestselling author and screenwriter Delia Ephron's most recent novel is Siracusa now being adapted into a feature film. Her other novels include The Lion Is In and Hanging Up. She has written humor books for all ages, including How to Eat Like a Child and Do I Have to Say Hello?; and nonfiction, most recently Sister Mother Husband Dog (etc.). Her films include You've Got Mail, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Hanging Up (based on her novel), and Michael. Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times, O: The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. Her hit play Love, Loss, and What I Wore (co-written with Nora Ephron) ran for more than two years off-Broadway and has been performed all over the world. She lives in New York City.

· www.deliaephronwriter.com


· www.creativeprocess.info

Daniel Handler is the author of seven novels. As Lemony Snicket, he is responsible for numerous books for children, including Swarm of Bees, illustrated by Rilla Alexander. His books have sold more than 70 million copies, have been translated into 40 languages, and adapted for screen and stage. The first season of Netflix’s adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events, for which he served as Executive Producer and Writer, won a 2018 Peabody Award for its “lively excellence, strange silliness, and compelling storytelling,” and the teleplay won a 2019 Writers Guild Award.

· www.danielhandler.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

Political, outspoken and passionate, Chilean singer-songwriter and activist Nano Stern has created his own musical language – an otherworldly sound that blends the youthful exuberance of folk music mixed with years of classical and jazz training against the powerful force of traditional Chilean revolutionary songs. What has emerged is a brilliantly layered confluence of indigenous African, European and North and South American musical influences that reverberate with a soulfulness and originality unlike any other South American artist performing today. He appeared with Joan Baez in 2016 at her 75th birthday celebration at the Beacon Theater in New York where she praised him as the best young Chilean songwriter of his generation.

· https://www.nanostern.cl

· www.creativeprocess.info

Political, outspoken and passionate, Chilean singer-songwriter and activist Nano Stern has created his own musical language – an otherworldly sound that blends the youthful exuberance of folk music mixed with years of classical and jazz training against the powerful force of traditional Chilean revolutionary songs. What has emerged is a brilliantly layered confluence of indigenous African, European and North and South American musical influences that reverberate with a soulfulness and originality unlike any other South American artist performing today. He appeared with Joan Baez in 2016 at her 75th birthday celebration at the Beacon Theater in New York where she praised him as the best young Chilean songwriter of his generation.

· https://www.nanostern.cl

· www.creativeprocess.info

The Creative Process' Poetry & Prose series introduced by co-host Yu Young Lee & Creative Process Founder & Host Mia Funk.

Martin Ruhe is the internationally-acclaimed German cinematographer behind the Netflix film The Midnight Sky directed by and starring George Clooney. Previously, Ruhe worked on Catch-22, also directed by Clooney, as well as the critically acclaimed Counterpart, Run All Night with Liam Neeson, and the British Independent film award winner Control. Ruhe photographed the dark spy thriller Page Eight for BBC Films, directed by David Hare. The film earned him an American Society of Cinematographers Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Motion Picture/Miniseries Television Award for his work on the film.

Working closely with director Anton Corbijn, Ruhe photographed The American. Starring Clooney as an aging assassin on an assignment to create a specialized weapon, Ruhe’s meticulously arranged shots helped to build the tone of The American, while reviews applauded the film’s beauty. Ruhe lensed Harry Brown, a Michael Caine-starring vigilante thriller which premiered at 2009’s Toronto International Film Festival. His photography on Harry Brown received critical acclaim; Joe Leydon of Variety saying, “The moody lensing by Martin Ruhe vividly conveys the no-hope squalor of a contemporary urban wasteland.” Combining the best cultural influences from the U.S. and Europe, Ruhe is fluent in English, German and Spanish. He loves stills photography and travel.
· www.ruhe.net

· www.creativeprocess.info

Martin Ruhe is the internationally-acclaimed German cinematographer behind the Netflix film The Midnight Sky directed by and starring George Clooney. Previously, Ruhe worked on Catch-22, also directed by Clooney, as well as the critically acclaimed Counterpart, Run All Night with Liam Neeson, and the British Independent film award winner Control. Ruhe photographed the dark spy thriller Page Eight for BBC Films, directed by David Hare. The film earned him an American Society of Cinematographers Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Motion Picture/Miniseries Television Award for his work on the film.

Working closely with director Anton Corbijn, Ruhe photographed The American. Starring Clooney as an aging assassin on an assignment to create a specialized weapon, Ruhe’s meticulously arranged shots helped to build the tone of The American, while reviews applauded the film’s beauty. Ruhe lensed Harry Brown, a Michael Caine-starring vigilante thriller which premiered at 2009’s Toronto International Film Festival. His photography on Harry Brown received critical acclaim; Joe Leydon of Variety saying, “The moody lensing by Martin Ruhe vividly conveys the no-hope squalor of a contemporary urban wasteland.” Combining the best cultural influences from the U.S. and Europe, Ruhe is fluent in English, German and Spanish. He loves stills photography and travel.
· www.ruhe.net

· www.creativeprocess.info

Matthew Libatique is an Oscar-nominated cinematographer best known for his work with director Darren Aronofsky on Pi, Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan, and other films. He received his second Academy Award nomination for Bradley Cooper's directorial debut A Star Is Born, and has worked with Spike Lee, Joel Schumacher, and Jon Favreau. Known for bringing an edgy elegance and psychological tension to films, his unique visual style can also be seen in Tigerland, Phone Booth, Iron Man 1 & 2, and Venom.

· www.creativeprocess.info

Cinematographer Jonathan Furmanski’s credits include the film Good Boys. For TV, he’s lensed the cult crime comedy Search Party, Inside Amy Schumer, and The Detour. He’s shot on massive glaciers, active volcanos, and in international combat zones. His documentary feature films include The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling, May It Last: A Portrait of the Avett Brothers, 30 for 30: Doc & Darryl, Big Men and The Family Business: Trump and Taxes.

· www.jonathanfurmanski.com

· www.creativeprocess.info

Cinematographer Jonathan Furmanski’s credits include the film Good Boys. For TV, he’s lensed the cult crime comedy Search Party, Inside Amy Schumer, and The Detour. He’s shot on massive glaciers, active volcanos, and in international combat zones. His documentary feature films include The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling, May It Last: A Portrait of the Avett Brothers, 30 for 30: Doc & Darryl, Big Men and The Family Business: Trump and Taxes.

· www.jonathanfurmanski.com

· www.creativeprocess.info

Eimear McBride trained at The Drama Centre in London. Her debut novel A Girl is a Half-formed Thing received a number of awards, including the Bailey Women’s Prize for Fiction, and the Irish Novel of the Year. She occasionally writes interviews for The Guardian, TLS, and The New Statesman.
· http://eimearmcbride.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

The National Museum of Contemporary Art EMST started its operation in Athens in 2000. With help from grants and funding, EMST was able to begin moving into a permanent museum space by 2015 and opened fully to the public in February 2020. This museum is the first of its kind in Greece, as much of the museums and culture are focused more on ancient history or foreign artists. Curators Daphne Vitali, Tina Pandi, and Elena Ganiti are focused on the areas of painting, sculpture, and engraving, while Stamatis Schizakis curates photography and audiovisual works.

· www.emst.gr

· www.creativeprocess.info

The National Museum of Contemporary Art EMST started its operation in Athens in 2000. With help from grants and funding, EMST was able to begin moving into a permanent museum space by 2015 and opened fully to the public in February 2020. This museum is the first of its kind in Greece, as much of the museums and culture are focused more on ancient history or foreign artists. Curators Daphne Vitali, Tina Pandi, and Elena Ganiti are focused on the areas of painting, sculpture, and engraving, while Stamatis Schizakis curates photography and audiovisual works.

· www.emst.gr

· www.creativeprocess.info

Eimear McBride trained at The Drama Centre in London. Her debut novel A Girl is a Half-formed Thing received a number of awards, including the Bailey Women’s Prize for Fiction, and the Irish Novel of the Year. She occasionally writes interviews for The Guardian, TLS, and The New Statesman.
· http://eimearmcbride.com
· www.creativeprocess.info

"The idea of this convention is really unique because it is about heritage of outstanding universal value, which is to be preserved not for us, but for the generations to come. And that idea came together in 1972 when we had the first International Conference on the Human Environment. The first UN Conference on this. And it was quite interesting. It was a time when you had many NGOs. It was after the publication of a book which was called Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. And it was the idea that there are so many threats to this amazing heritage that the whole of the international community has to do something."

Mechtild Rössler is the Director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and has worked at the organization for almost 30 years holding different positions, including overseeing the Cultural Heritage Treaty Section, Programme Specialist for Natural Heritage and cultural landscapes, Chief of Europe and North America, and Chief of the Policy and Statutory Meeting Section. She also managed the team of the History, Memory and Dialogue Section (HMD) dealing with the Slave Route, Silk Road Platform and the UNESCO Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture. She has published and co-authored 13 books and more than 100 articles, including, together with Christina Cameron, “Many voices, one vision: the early history of the World Heritage Convention”.

· https://whc.unesco.org

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org

· www.creativeprocess.info

Kathleen Rogers is the President of EARTHDAY.ORG. Under her leadership, it has grown into a global year-round policy and activist organization with an international staff. She has been at the vanguard of developing campaigns and programs focused on diversifying the environmental movement, highlighted by Campaign for Communities and Billion Acts of Green. Prior to her work at EARTHDAY.ORG, Kathleen held senior positions with the National Audubon Society, the Environmental Law Institute, and two U.S. Olympic Organizing Committees. She’s a graduate of the University of California at Davis School of Law, where she served as editor-in-chief of the law review and clerked in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org








This interview is the first in our new One Planet Podcast series, which is available both on The Creative Process and on its own channel from the end of March. The podcast features environmental groups and notable changemakers from around the world, including European Environment Agency, Citizens’ Climate Lobby, EarthLife Africa, One Tree Planted, Global Witness, Earth System Governance Project, Marine Stewardship Council, National Council for Climate Change, Sustainable Development and Public Leadership, Association des Amis de la Nature, Forest Stewardship Council, Polar Bears International, and many others.

Episodes feature a host of ways you can take action and get involved in local or international environmental movements so that we can work together for a better tomorrow.

· "Rebirth" by Juan Sánchez is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

“The history of Earth Day is pretty remarkable. The net result is 20 million people came out on the streets. It remains the largest civic day of action in human history. There’s no other country, no other world that ever had 20 million people coming out on the streets around a single issue. That was on April 22, 1970, and right after that, it became apparent with that many people that Congress and State legislators had to do something about it because, frankly, they were afraid of that many people all speaking in one voice.

The philosophy of Earth Day is very much about building a big movement, making sure it’s diverse, constantly improving the ways that people access information, and have access to mechanisms for legal relief.

Over the course of the next couple of decades it became year-round, it went international. This organization now works 365 days a year. At this point, we’re in 192 countries with about a billion people participating, so we take advantage of that bully pulpit to really educate people about critical issues.”

Kathleen Rogers is the President of EARTHDAY.ORG. Under her leadership, it has grown into a global year-round policy and activist organization with an international staff. She has been at the vanguard of developing campaigns and programs focused on diversifying the environmental movement, highlighted by Campaign for Communities and Billion Acts of Green. Prior to her work at EARTHDAY.ORG, Kathleen held senior positions with the National Audubon Society, the Environmental Law Institute, and two U.S. Olympic Organizing Committees. She’s a graduate of the University of California at Davis School of Law, where she served as editor-in-chief of the law review and clerked in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

· www.oneplanetpodcast.org






"Rebirth" by Juan Sánchez is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

"I'm a deep believer in the values of democracy, human rights, and the system where civil society and people play a key role in the discussions about society and also assuming responsibility, whether it's through labor unions, youth organizations…I think one key solution at the level of society is more equality. More equal societies bring a lot of advantages. I think that is a critical component to building a sustainable society. We cannot pretend that the current distribution of wealth on this planet between countries and within countries is a fertile ground for longterm sustainability. It isn’t."

Hans Bruyninckx is the Executive Director of the European Environment Agency. He is a political scientist and international relations scholar specializing in global environmental governance, climate change, and sustainable development. Previous to his work at EEA, he was head of the HIVA Research Institute and of the Political Science department at KU Leuven, senior member of the interdisciplinary Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies and promoter-coordinator of the Flemish Policy Research Centre on Transitions for Sustainable Development.

· https://www.eea.europa.eu/about-us/governance/executive-director


· https://www.eea.europa.eu/


· www.oneplanetpodcast.org






This interview is the first in our new One Planet Podcast series, which is available both on The Creative Process and on its own channel from the end of March. The podcast features environmental groups and notable changemakers from around the world, including European Environment Agency, Citizens’ Climate Lobby, EarthLife Africa, One Tree Planted, Global Witness, Earth System Governance Project, Marine Stewardship Council, National Council for Climate Change, Sustainable Development and Public Leadership, Association des Amis de la Nature, Forest Stewardship Council, Polar Bears International, and many others.








"Rebirth" by Juan Sánchez is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Hans Bruyninckx is the Executive Director of the European Environment Agency. He is a political scientist and international relations scholar specializing in global environmental governance, climate change, and sustainable development. Previous to his work at EEA, he was head of the HIVA Research Institute and of the Political Science department at KU Leuven, senior member of the interdisciplinary Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies and promoter-coordinator of the Flemish Policy Research Centre on Transitions for Sustainable Development.

· https://www.eea.europa.eu/about-us/governance/executive-director
· https://www.eea.europa.eu/
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org






"Rebirth" by Juan Sánchez is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Writer and producer Rebecca Walker has contributed to the global conversation about race, gender, power, and the evolution of the human family for three decades. Author and editor of seven bestselling books on multiracial identity, Black Cool and ambivalent motherhood, she has co-founded the Third Wave Fund, which makes grants to womxn and transgender youth working for social justice. For her efforts, she has been named by Time as one of the most influential leaders of her generation.


· www.rebeccawalker.com

· www.creativeprocess.info

Laurent Le Bon, President of Musée Picasso in Paris at the time of interview, is now the President of the Centre Pompidou. The Musée Picasso holds over 5,000 of Spanish artist Pablo Picasso’s artworks and tens of thousands of sketches, photos, and many scripts, making the collection an impressive and holistic representation of Picasso’s career.
Centre Pompidou houses the largest museum for modern art in Europe Musée National d'Art Moderne, a vast public library, andIRCAM, a centre for music and acoustic research. His curatorial practice has included curating 50 exhibitions for Centre Pompidou, Musée d’Orsay, Musée de l’Arte Moderne Versailles and others across France.

www.museepicassoparis.fr

www.creativeprocess.info

“Picasso is a symbol of the creative process.

Always in metamorphosis. Always in transformation. Sometimes when you become wealthy and famous, you stop having the energy of the creative process, but if you see the whole span of his career, you have 50,000 works of art in all mediums. So the main mission of the museum is to display like a kaleidoscope, and we have always a new angle, a new direction.”
Laurent Le Bon, President of Musée Picasso in Paris at the time of this interview, is now the President of the Centre Pompidou. The Musée Picasso holds over 5,000 of Spanish artist Pablo Picasso’s artworks and tens of thousands of sketches, photos, and many scripts, making the collection an impressive and holistic representation of Picasso’s career.

Centre Pompidou houses the largest museum for modern art in Europe Musée National d'Art Moderne, a vast public library,  and IRCAM, a centre for music and acoustic research. His curatorial practice has included curating 50 exhibitions for Centre Pompidou, Musée d’Orsay, Musée de l’Arte Moderne Versailles and others across France.

· www.museepicassoparis.fr

· www.creativeprocess.info

· www.centrepompidou.fr/en/