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THEMES
Our work is constantly inspired by the artists, educators, practitioners and thinkers who share our missions and values. Below are inspirations that build on our programming. Many readings from the mentioned works feature in our professional development program,
Teaching With Courage: Relationship Building in the Classroom.
The Moral Imagination: The Art & Soul of Making Peace
by John Paul Lederach
John Paul Lederach’s The Moral Imagination argues that lasting peace and reconciliation require more than technical solutions; they demand creativity, imagination, and the courage to envision futures that don’t yet exist. Drawing on stories from global conflict zones, he shows that peacebuilding is an art as much as a skill, rooted in re-humanizing relationships and restoring broken narratives. The moral imagination is “the capacity to imagine something rooted in the real world yet capable of giving birth to that which does not yet exist.”
As teaching artists, we are inspired by this lens to approach classrooms not just as sites of instruction, but as spaces where imagination repairs community and restores belonging.
Making Change: Teaching Artists and Their Role in Shaping a Better World
by Eric Booth
In his book on the profession of Teaching Artistry, Eric Booth defines the Fundamentals of Teaching Artistry, among them "Authenticity."
He states "our greatest impact comes from our artist-selves in the room with participants, openly seeing, responding, discovering and creating connections with what is happening in real time during a project." The Law of 80% is a reminder and a call to responsibility - as well as an enriching relief. It is our hearts, not our content, that ultimately brings the most to our students.
The Moral Imagination: The Art & Soul of Making Peace
by John Paul Lederach
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."
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Rainer Maria Rilke advises a young man, in his fourth Letter to a Young Poet (1929). We use this text as a prompt in our professional development course, inviting teachers to create their own Ted Talk, considering the point of views both of an older poet (advising, suggesting and comforting), and the younger one (searching, seeking, asking).