Cynthia Cohen
Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and what it is that you do?
“My name is Cynthia Cohen, and I retired from the program in Peacebuilding and the Arts at Brandeis University about a year and a half ago. However, I’m still working on strengthening the arts, culture and conflict transformation field as an IMPACT Senior Fellow and as an independent scholar/practitioner. At the moment, I’m focusing on how arts and culture can join the emerging movement to counter authoritarianism and political violence around the world. Most recently, I’ve been working as a consultant with the Horizons Project on an initiative called HOPE: Harnessing Our Power to End Political Violence. Their goal is to connect more artists, arts organisations, and cultural workers to political activists who are trying to form a multi-sectoral movement.There’s also a longstanding initiative that I’ve been working on for many years. Alongside my dear friend, musician and cultural worker Jane Sapp, I’ve helped her write a book ‘Let’s Make a Better World’ about her cultural work practice and now we’re getting her archives established at Brandeis. I truly think she’s a national treasure. She’s an incredible musician whose approach to cultural work arises out of the African-American musical tradition, which links spirituality with the quest for justice and creativity. She grew up under the cruel Jim Crow laws and was active in both the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement. Lately, she has new songs that she’s been writing, and we’re going to try to record a song cycle. She’s a very important mentor to me.”
Do you have your own creative practice at all ?
“My most significant practice has been as a community oral historian; I work with communities to elicit stories. The core of my practice lies in teaching people how to listen in ways that evoke stories that need to be told. I’ve designed many oral history projects that build relationships across differences and work in collaboration with artists to represent community stories through art forms like quilts, murals, and poetry. I also write a bit of poetry myself. It’s really important to me, but I’m not a published poet or anything.I think, as human beings, we’re hardwired to tell stories and interpret the world through story. It’s how we make meaning out of our experiences; it’s an important kind of empowerment. In this way, we don’t just have experiences that happen to us, we actually create the meaning of those experiences ourselves. Similarly, I believe that listening is a greatly undervalued language art. It’s not the answer to everything, but it is a necessary – an often overlooked – ingredient.”
Have there been any stories that you’ve encountered that have particularly impacted you?
“A very pivotal project in my life was one called ‘A Passion for Life: Stories and Folk Arts of Palestinian and Jewish Women.’ It was very important for me to hear the stories of Palestinian people because they reflected an experience that my own Jewish community was a part of but that I had never considered. It was very shattering to hear those stories. It shattered a lot of constructs that I had grown up with and had made meaning from. In fact, I think those experiences where we listen deeply to the stories of people who’ve been outside of our circle and allow ourselves to experience that sort of shattering is a really important dimension of becoming a peacebuilder. Another story that was really impactful for me was told to me by my dear friend and fellow IMPACT Senior Fellow Dr. Polly Walker. Polly, a Cherokee woman herself, told me about various reconciliation rituals that emerged from her peacebuilding work in Australia between various groups of Aboriginal peoples and descendants of European settlers. One of the most important things that I learned from Polly’s stories is that, when working on and making attempts at reconciliation, the format and form of the work is just as important as the content. In this case, it was ritual. This is important because rituals are a large part of what has been and is being violated during colonialist appropriations. And so, engaging in reconciliation through ritual processes is, in itself, a kind of transitional justice. Courtrooms or tribunals can sometimes reinforce the original harms, because they don’t often honour the forms of knowing and ways of being that were violated in the original injury.”
In your opinion, what should be the first step in overcoming some of the challenges currently facing the arts and conflict transformation world?
“There definitely need to be more spaces for conversation. I mean, that’s what IMPACT is doing, right? Greater recognition for the contributions of arts and culture has been happening in recent years – slowly, but it’s happening. Even within the United Nations world, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has focused on cultural rights and on the importance of artists in protecting human rights. They recognise artists as victims of human rights violations and recognise the significance of artistic practice. Then, there’s the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) which has been working recently to bring more artists into the field to work with refugees. There’s also UNESCO, of course.
I think activists, peacebuilders, and social change strategists are beginning to invite artists and cultural workers in more often. The challenge is, now, learning how to engage artists as equals when bringing them to the table as plans are being developed rather than simply subcontractors who perform at the rally at the end. Generally, when people do collaborate with the arts and culture sector, it’s often only the celebrities that are recognised. That being said, many celebrities have a large platform through which they can reach a lot of people. I would definitely like to see more local artists and cultural workers at the table more often, though.”
If you could give yourself one piece of advice 20 years ago, knowing what it is that you know now, what would it be?
“My advice would be to get involved with local theatre. I did perform a little bit as a storyteller, but through my work with IMPACT and Acting Together, I’ve come to really admire the combination of skills and values that are evoked in people through their engagement with theatre. It’s just really incredible. Because it’s a practice that’s deeply felt, and because it requires trust alongside engaging with conflict in generative ways, I think that many of the theatre traditions we have around us emphasize hospitality and caring for others in very visceral ways. The qualities of self-awareness that are cultivated through engaging with theatre are very admirable. The visceral embodiment with the intellectual, the cognitive, the emotional, and the spiritual – theatre uses all of our faculties at once, you know? That’s how you know it’s good theatre, and why it contributes so much to personal and community development and well-being.”