“All our futures”

In a thought-provoking report from May 1999, conducted by a committee of scholars, and artists, chaired by the late Sir Ken Robinson entitled All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education, written for the British government, one of the themes discussed was Creative Potential. 

The committee wrote: “Creativity is possible in all areas of human activity, including the arts, sciences, at work at play, and in all other areas of daily life. All people have creative abilities, and we all have them differently. When individuals find their creative strengths, it can have an enormous impact on self-esteem and on overall achievement.”

I couldn’t agree more. If governments worldwide would adopt the recommendations in this report, I believe the world would be changed. It is an integral part of Sir Ken Robinson‘s legacy.

Culture change

The report also says this: “The engine of cultural change is the human capacity for creative thought and action.”

For many years, after coming back to Israel from Germany in September 2000, I believed, rather innocently, that Circus could bring peace to the Middle East. It was my “doing period”; thus, action was the order of the day. For several years, we courageously invented artistic collaborations with Palestinian artists in Israel, France, in the Palestinian Authority. Then in 2007, there were “democratic elections” there, and the whole geopolitical precarious situation changed. 

I was tired. I was tired of investing so much time in bureaucracy instead of doing the creative work. In other words, I gave up on the action.  I was disappointed with myself, and so were my partners, who left Gaza for Paris in the meantime…

These were hard times. a time of disillusionment, and… I was pregnant with my first son. I said to myself, “Peace starts from within,” and set about finding my peace with having a child born into conflict… Something I could never reconcile since. 

What now?

Fifteen years later, I am in my “Being phase.” I meditate every morning; I can think these thoughts and look at them without thinking it’s the end of the world. 

The truth is, outside, in the streets, not much has changed, new kinds of Intifadas, new governments, new politicians, and the same old story. 

Yet the power of faith is beyond circumstances, proof of evidence, or scientific findings. My aspiring spirit, rather innocently, will not budge. I believe in the possibility of peace. I believe in our creative and imaginative powers.

Inspiring legacies

I am reading the book Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Amazed at who Martin Luther King Jr.  Described as: …” a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today” on Aug. 28, 1963

He went on to say, in his famous “I have a dream” speech:

“We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force”.  

“With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords… into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together… to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”

Amen.

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