Can Art Save Us?
I’m raising the first national and international conversation to explore courage and curiosity and why it makes a big difference to our mental, societal and democratic health. Scroll down for all episodes. I’m grateful to share my reviews below. I talk to award-winning, diverse, national and international artists about the role of courage and curiosity in their lives. What do these qualities really mean and why do they matter to our mental, societal and democratic health? Can the Arts change the global epidemic of mental illness, loneliness, the polarization of our communities and global conflict? My dedicated website including interview transcriptions is www.canartsaveus.com All of my guests share personal stories, often life changing, their deep challenges and perseverance with success through their different responses to courage and curiosity. Be inspired, we talk, hip-hop poetry, Islamic architecture building peace , tap dance in protest, surrealism and WWII front line photography, life as a drag King, the Queen of the Qanun, war displacement and Syrian music, the Art School for the Homeless, the 1970s West Indian Front Room, inclusive dance, wheelchair acrobatics, British-Pakistani, Black-British, Jewish, and Irish spoken word artists, giant talking ceramics, an end of life film, the music industry and discrimination, graffiti art and Muslim faith, shamanic storytelling, a Cameroonian clay addict, a world leading sculptor and voices of Windrush in arts activism, comedy, photography and iconic sculpture.
Can Art Save Us?
I talk to diverse and award-winning artists about the role of curiosity and courage in their lives and work. I'm exploring the role of courage and curiosity in our mental, societal and democratic health, why these qualities matter and their wider meanings. I explore international and national perspectives. In the UK the Arts have been relentlessly cut and notably ripped out of education systems. This podcast series is in response to that political prejudice, the arts inequality that exists as a result and to assert the value and purpose of the Arts to our mental, societal and democratic health. This is a free to listen podcast for everyone.
The dedicated website with all episode visuals and transcripts are at: www.canartsaveus.com
Your Host and Reviews
Paula has interviewed throughout her career in music and film television, including Talkin' Jazz, Talkin' Blues and Music Legends for NBC Europe and A list actors and cast for BSkyB Movies. In recent years she has regularly interviewed artists and craft makers.
"Amazing Episode of Can Art Save Us? Such a well-informed and intelligent interview. I thought you did an amazing job. Really great podcast idea." Listener, Dr. Craig Jordan-Baker, author.
"I am in floods of tears. What an awesome, inspiring and generous conversation." Listener, Ali Beddoes.
"Thank you so very much, your questions trigger the narrative in a really intuitive and splendid way." Guest, Marice Cumber, Ceramicist and CEO of the Art School for the Homeless.
"I listened to Barry J. Gibb, so great and you're excellent at extracting info and making the conversation flow. Really loved it!!!" Listener, Jody Levitus.
"Wow, I really enjoyed that question!" Guest, Adam Kammerling, Poet and former Slam Poet Champion.
"Listened to your podcast and it's fantastic! Really authentic conversation, congratulations on such a great show!" Listener, John Offord, BBC Producer.
"Wow, that's such an interesting question. Wow. That really speaks to me." Guest, Otis Mensah, the UK's first hip-hop poet laureate.
"These are very interesting, very good questions. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation." Marwa Al-Sabouni, Architect, Author, Top 50, Global Thinkers List.
"I love the way you are steering the interviews, I'm loving the Anthony Penrose interview. I have enjoyed my first two episodes immensely." Listener, Giles Pooley
"Great to have an interviewer who delves deep and is so well prepared! Thank you. A great pleasure." Guest, Cherry Smyth, Royal Society of Literature, Fellow.
"Excited to discover your podcast and can’t wait to listen to this." Listener, Carrie Stanley.
"Your podcast is creating important conversation Paula. Thank you for inviting me!" Guest, Qudsia Akhtar, Poet, Highly Commended, Forward Book of Poetry.
"Excited for this to be out in the world!" Guest, Bobby Brown, Music and Creative Producer.
"Absolutely brilliant to see this pop up in my podcast feed today. Can’t wait to listen! Inspiring stuff!" Listener & Guest, Barry J. Gibb, award winning filmmaker.
"I love the content you do because it is soo important!!!" Listener, Podcast Host of Crisis Talk, Pelumi.
"You're such a joy to talk to, right, because people don't ask, you're waiting for people to ask those questions." Guest, Tom Delahunt, Hobo Poet and author.
"What a stunning line up!" Listener, Bhumika Billa.
"I’m dead excited to be here." Guest, Lady Kitt, Drag King & Maker.
"I’m a fan ! … amazing episode, I think you’ve created an extraordinary body of work." Listener, James Russel.
"Loved coming on your podcast Paula. It was wonderful." Guest, Princess Arinola, spoken word artist, musician, songwriter, BBC Words First winner.
Episodes
Thursday Jun 22, 2023
A Cameroonian Clay Addict Spotlights the World Stage of Ceramics.
Thursday Jun 22, 2023
Thursday Jun 22, 2023
Cameroonian clay addict, Djakou Kassi Nathalie, is a ceramic artist now based in Nigeria. With over 30 years of practice and numerous prestigious awards, this is statement art that understands architectural design, artistic innovation and creative craft. Natalie responds to discrimination, racism, solidarity, human and environmental violence, education and equality. Her work combines contemporary issues with ancestry always reflecting her deep love and admiration of African art. Her use of the iconic African mask carved into her clay in repetitive patterns, is like a language of love, showing the cultural roots of her life that continues to flourish with possibility. From objects to sculpted figures, all of her work, just like her larger-than-life fist clenched in solidarity ‘Speaks Out.’ We talk about fighting for her place at the only art school and the cultural disapproval, learning to be creatively fearless, to be a mother figure to her siblings and in the community and how she is an inspirational educator. We talk about the power of art as knowledge and our responsibility to educate each other. We talk about love over brutality and how the use of her iconic African mask is also a statement of human accountability in the world.
We were relying on a power generator lasting for this interview and Nathalie was kindly working in a second language too. I asked her to write an additional few words in her first language in response to the question, Can art save us?
L'art peut nous sauver si les sujets abordés par les artistes sont pertinents et accessibles au plus grand nombre et surtout accessibles aux plus jeunes . L'art peut nous sauver à travers une education permanente sur les sujets de société en revelant et en proposant des solutions à travers l'expression artistique que ce soit par la musique, le theatre les arts visuels, les performances, l'ecriture ou autres formes artistiques. L' art peut nous sauver en nous montrant l'autre facette des choses que nous voyons mal.
Translation: Art can save us if the subjects addressed by the artists are relevant and accessible to the greatest number of people and especially accessible to the youngest. Art can save us through a lifelong education on social issues by revealing and proposing solutions through artistic expression whether through music, theater, visual arts, performances, writing or others art form. Art can save us by showing us the other side of things we see are wrong.
Series Audio Editor - Joey Quan.
Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview can also be found here: https://www.canartsaveus.com
Discover Djakou Kassi Nathalie:
51.3k Followers https://www.instagram.com/djakoukassi/?hl=en
Thursday Jun 22, 2023
Two Bodies with One Voice on Poetry, Dance and the Law.
Thursday Jun 22, 2023
Thursday Jun 22, 2023
What does a commended poet, dancer of the Indian, classical form Kathak, outstanding legal academic and occasional writer in the hope-punk story genre, have in common? One person it seems, Bhumika Billa. What stands out is Bhumika’s astonishing ability to communicate through dance, language and legal linguistics. She has a sharp eye on identity, whether it’s her own as an Indian woman living in the UK, the gendered constraints on her female ancestors, gender and sexual politics today, social class or caste and the digital identity that we now adopt or are arguably forced into. In 2021, the BBC recognised Bhumika as one of Britain’s most exciting emerging spoken word artists and she has been a finalist in several, prestigious slams since then. She is in the business of observing and unravelling the intricacies of data politics, artificial intelligence and law, structural inequality and the future we all face if we don’t stand up for justice. We talk about living in two bodies, the male gaze, anger, curiosity as a privilege, freedom and storytelling through dance and poetry.
Series Audio Editor - Joey Quan.
Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview can also be found here: https://www.canartsaveus.com
Discover Bhumika Billa:
https://applesandsnakes.org/2022/11/25/bhumika-billa-my-mother-lives-in-me/
Thursday Jun 22, 2023
The Faerytale Doctor, a Shamanic Pathway to Community Service.
Thursday Jun 22, 2023
Thursday Jun 22, 2023
Can you imagine making an appointment to see Dr. Lovely or better still the Faerytale Doctor? Would you be open to the spiritual practice of shamanism through storytelling as a way of navigating your life or to find a compass for your soul? Could we all benefit from connecting to something sacred to help us find ourselves in our ever complex and intense world? Elizabeth Lovely begun her shamanic pathway with the 'breaking of her brain,' when she had to find new ways to interpret her life. After her vibrant and hectic years in theatre and arts festivals she turned to indigenous spiritual practices, a deeply held respect for shamanism and the art of storytelling. We don't talk about conjuring up magic and trickery but how to find connections to live better. We talk about shamans as healers, as the first visionary artists, accepting the sacred as real, life in community service and making plenty of cups of courage tea.
Series Audio Editor - Joey Quan.
Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview can also be found here: https://www.canartsaveus.com
Discover Elizabeth Lovely: https://faerytaleapothecary.wixsite.com/sacredstories/elizabethjanelovely
Thursday Jun 22, 2023
Stand Up for Sit Down AJ!
Thursday Jun 22, 2023
Thursday Jun 22, 2023
AJ O’Neil is an internationally recognised West End, TV and Film performer. He’s a dancer, choreographer and long-standing teacher of the famous Pineapple Dance Studios, home to some of the world’s most famous stars. His fitness classes have been listed in British Vogue, Cosmopolitan and Timeout as their ‘Best Pics’ and viewed 100s of 1000s times online. He was the personal trainer for dancers on ITV's, Dance, Dance, Dance and he choreographed and presented Pop Up Popstar for the Irish national broadcaster RTÉ. He's choreographed television dancethons and dance virals, getting British celebrities like Olympic gold medallist Tom Daley, multi-million record selling singer, Louise Rednapp and TV and Radio presenter, Dermot O’Leary, all dancing. His has numerous TV credits and has worked on and appeared in ads including Dior, Nintendo and Puma. His theatre credits include Chicago in the West End and the European and West End Premiere of ‘A Man of No Importance,’ and he played Jamie in the Irish premier of The Last Five Years. But, after all that glitter, here comes the real shine. AJ gets everyone dancing. He’s also known as Sit Down AJ because of his inclusive work and his poptastic cardio sessions, are met with an outpouring of gratitude, thank yous and love from people struggling with exclusion. He’s also bringing new joy into the special educational needs space. We talk about a life changing accident, putting low self-esteem under the spotlight in more ways than one and how to flourish.
Series Audio Editor - Courtesy of Joey Quan.
Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview can also be found here: https://www.canartsaveus.com
Discover AJ:
https://www.movewithaj.com/
https://www.ajoneill.co.uk/home
Tuesday Jun 20, 2023
Speak Your Excellence - The Word Came First.
Tuesday Jun 20, 2023
Tuesday Jun 20, 2023
Shirley May is an acclaimed poet, writer and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of literature. She is also CEO and Artistic Director of Young Identity, Manchester's premier spoken word collective in the UK. In 2006, Shirley founded the Inner Voice, a voluntary Youth Arts Project that 16 dedicated years later, has become Young Identity, a literature and performance arts charity. Young Identity now has the prestigious status of being a national portfolio organisation with the UK Arts Council. In other words, Young Identity is recognized as a leader both in their field and in our collective national arts. Shirley's work is described as "blazing with emotion, challenging all the senses." We talk about her work responding to pain and pride in the experience of migration, her Jamaican heritage and in African history. We start with how one day "she woke up with a poem in her mouth," how "the word was first" and developing the "risk of excellence," in marginalised youth today. Young Identity is important legacy work that talks to truth.
Series Audio Editor - Courtesy of Joey Quan.
Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview can also be found here: https://www.canartsaveus.com
Discover Shirley May here:
www.youngidentity.org/
https://www.shirleyannemay.co.uk/
Tuesday Jun 20, 2023
Pain, Poetry and a Jamaican Born Nigerian Princess.
Tuesday Jun 20, 2023
Tuesday Jun 20, 2023
Princess Arinola Adegbite a.k.a. P. A. Bitez is a British Jamaican-born Nigerian poet, she’s a spoken word artist, a songwriter and filmmaker whose artistic expression is described as social activism and spiritual healing. At 16, she published her debut poetry collection 'Soft Tortures.' At 17, she won Slambassadors, a national poetry competition and by 2020, she was one of six finalists of the BBC Words First talent scheme, searching for the Best Spoken Word Poets in the UK. In 2021 she was awarded Manchester Creative of The Year at The Manchester Culture Awards and she has won a number of successful commissions too. Currently Princess Arinola, is a member of Young Identity, Manchester’s Premier Spoken Word Collective and in early 2023, we can look forward to her Afrofuturistic EP Vintage Destiny. We talk about self-actualisation and dysmorphia, poetry defined by proximity to blackness, page poets and spoken word artists, editing versus erasure, love and loss and whether Shakespeare and Tupac were the same.
If you're lucky enough to be in Manchester (UK), Saturday, 18th March, 2023, head to Manchester Central Library from Midday to 2pm. FREE, Princess Arinola will be part of a live performance, 'Rehearsal Methods,' by Jade Montserrat. We support #free and #accessforall at Can Art Save Us?
Series Audio Editor - Courtesy of Joey Quan.
Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview can also be found here: https://www.canartsaveus.com
Discover Princess Arinola here 'On the Team': https://www.youngidentity.org/
Tuesday Jun 20, 2023
Partition, Silence and Poetry. A British-Pakistani Poet Speaks Up.
Tuesday Jun 20, 2023
Tuesday Jun 20, 2023
Manchester based poet Qudsia Akhtar is already recognised as an important new voice for her generation, her debut collection of poems, 'Khamoshi' (Silence), is out now, published by Verve Poetry Press. She is also highly commended in the Forward Book of Poetry, 2023, considered the indispensable annual guide to contemporary poetry. Qudsia reflects modern Britain as a British-Pakistani writer. She talks about the noise of cultural duality as well as the silence that builds inside generations of migrant women. Her soft and gentle voice doesn't betray the histories of massacres, genocides, patriarchy, colonial legacies and Islamophobia. We talk about gruesome truths uncovered by the arts, creativity, self-expression and speaking up to demand justice for those who can't. Illustrated with readings by Qudsia throughout.
Series Audio Editor - Courtesy of Joey Quan.
Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview can also be found here: https://www.canartsaveus.com
Discover Qudsia Akhtar here: https://www.couldseeher.com/
Wednesday Jan 25, 2023
Holding the Holocaust in a Poetic Heart.
Wednesday Jan 25, 2023
Wednesday Jan 25, 2023
Adam Kammerling is a former, UK slam poet champion who has since become an inter-disciplinary artist combining his innovative poetry with theatre, dance and music. He embraces collaboration, risk and experimentation and his poetry creates movement both on and off the page. His debut poetry collection, Seder, is a National Jewish Book Awards Finalist. Adam's collection explores his Jewish heritage, inter-generational trauma and his deeply personal visit to Auschwitz. Please be sure to listen to him recite the poem Orange, orange, orange, in this podcast. We talk about his creative journey from punk and metal bands to slam poetry to inter-disciplinary performances of his poems today. We talk about trauma, the holocaust, his family and memory. "It's a strange feeling to reach for memory and hold nothing." We talk about male identity distorted by violence and confused courage and his creative workshops with homeless affected people and looked after children. Adam is a compassionate soul with a very deep and "shared root." His theatre work has been reviewed as ‘dazzling brilliance,’ his rap as 'unpretentious' and his work with young people in foster care as 'sensational.'
Published on January 25th, 2023, Adam is headlining on January 27th at the Holocaust Memorial Day, in Wrexham and his website link is below.
Series Audio Editor - Courtesy of Joey Quan.
Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview can also be found here: https://www.canartsaveus.com
Discover Adam Kammerling here: https://adamkammerling.co.uk/
Wednesday Jan 25, 2023
Irish identity, Pilgrimage, Partition, Pain and Poetry.
Wednesday Jan 25, 2023
Wednesday Jan 25, 2023
Cherry Smyth is an Irish writer and poet who lives in London. In 2022 Cherry was nominated as a Fellow for the Royal Society of Literature and she is Associate Professor in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of Greenwich. Critically acclaimed, Cherry has had four poetry collections published and a debut novel, Hold Still. Her current work, If the River is Hidden, is a collaboration with Craig Jordan Baker. This has also been developed for performance with the flautist Eimear McGeown, one of the world's most versatile exponents of both the classical and Irish flute. If the River is Hidden, is a shared pilgrimage, over 8 days, Cherry Smyth and Craig Jordan Baker walk the length of the River Bann, Northern Ireland’s longest river. This hybrid work of prose and poetry, is a deeply personal, journey between friends. With backgrounds from each side of the sectarian divide, they explore together their Irish identity, of belonging and not belonging, of the Troubles, trauma and truth. This is by no means an easy pilgrimage and we talk about the pain of partition, of bombings, the Irish famine, deep personal losses but also of compassion, connection and landscape as coming home.
Discover the musical composition by flautist Eimear McGeown, specially commissioned to accompany If the River is Hidden.
https://www.epoquepress.com/cherry-smyth-craig-jordan-baker-if-the-river-is-hidden
Discover Cherry Smyth here: https://www.cherrysmyth.com/
Edit - Courtesy of Katherine Wiley.
Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview can also be found here: https://www.canartsaveus.com
Wednesday Jan 25, 2023
Follow the Hobo Poet for Unconditional Love.
Wednesday Jan 25, 2023
Wednesday Jan 25, 2023
Tom Delahunt, the hobo poet, is an award-winning academic and an advanced nurse practitioner with years of experience in intensive and emergency care. In 2019 he was awarded Most Innovative Teacher of the Year, by the prestigious Times Higher Education Awards, this was in recognition of his use of poetry to support nursing students dealing with trauma. Tom created the blog Poetic Nursing Heart and he also advocates creating a safe space for neurodiversity in education. He says “poetry fuels my hopes and aspirations for inclusion and a rise in educational wonder.” Tom’s complex dyslexia was diagnosed as an adult and he attributes his survival at school to his autistic tendencies navigating what he describes as the ‘mechanistic and impersonal system that is school.’ We talk about, trauma, addiction, neuro-diversity, philosophies of serenity and pessimism and ultimately love. His new children’s book, The Wandering Lamb, is about unconditional love and acceptance. And then, there's The Butterfly Farmer... Ready to fly?
Series Audio Editor - Courtesy of Joey Quan.
Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview can also be found here: https://www.canartsaveus.com
Discover Tom Delahunt here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-delahunt-71a1559a/